4cr Interview – Telltale Games

Telltale Games has been a company to follow lately. Haven’t heard of them yet? You will. Their Sam & Max titles have not only reinvigorated the PC Adventure genre, but they have proven that episodic content is a viable medium. Having conquered the digital distribution avenues of the PC, they are looking at taking over your living room.

Join us as we sit down with senior designer Dave Grossman and CEO Dan Connors. We’ll touch on Sam & Max, Bone, designing episodic content, Wii development, and more. Strap yourself in; it’ll be one hell of a ride.

4 Color Rebellion: We’re rapidly approaching the end of this season. Is there a second season in the works? What, if any, details can you tell us about that?

Dave Grossman: There are plenty of things in the works at Telltale. I can neither confirm nor deny that a second season is already among them. Sam and Max, you say? Lotsa guys come in here. Can you describe them? Any tattoos or distinguishing features?

Details surrounding the finale, Bright Side of the Moon, remained a mystery. What can we expect out of the season finale?

Dave: You can expect that it will, indeed, finalize the season. Quite a few familiar characters will be involved. Most likely it will be funny, and it will definitely have a title. Oh, and Sam and Max go to the moon.

Will the story be completely resolved, or will we be left with a “who shot Mr. Burns?” cliffhanger?

Dave: No cliffhanger. The main storyline of the season will wrap up, you will know who shot Mr. Burns, and that person will be fed through the gears of the greasy machinery of justice.

How involved has (Sam & Max creator) Steve Purcell been with the series? What is his overall role in the project?

Dave: Steve’s main role has been to get us going in the right direction. Repeatedy. At the outset of the season he put in a lot of work to make sure that things felt right from all angles ““ art, story, dialog and so on. It hasn’t proved feasible to have him do a pass on the script every time like we wanted to, but we do run the important things by him. As the season continues, the most important and useful thing is that we sit down with him for a story meeting when we start working on each episode, mainly to pump him for crazy Sam & Maxy ideas. That whole thing about Abe Lincoln? Steve. And this may not seem like a lot to you, but it’s more involvement and feedback than I’ve had from any other license holder in the eighteen years I’ve been doing this, and it’s ridiculously helpful.

What have been some of the ups and downs of the development process on Sam & Max? Any cool stories that you’d like to share with us?

Dave: Game development is usually pretty dry, but it has its moments of adventure. One night Steve, Brendan, Dan and I went to a taco shop after work to talk about the next episode ““ I can’t even remember which episode it was any more. There was a belligerent drunk guy there who started talking really loud, like he wanted the whole restaurant to hear him. We attempted to ignore him until we realized he was actually talking to US. He seemed quite angry, but we couldn’t chisel our way through his limited English to find out what he actually wanted. We gave him beer (possibly unwise in retrospect) and he allowed us to escape with our lives. I’m actually kind of surprised he hasn’t turned up as a character in a game yet.

We haven’t seen a new Bone chapter since this season of Sam & Max began. Is there anything that you can reveal about Bone episode three? When do you expect to release it?

Dan Connors: We’ve been really focused on Sam & Max and nailing the episodic model. This has helped the company better understand digital distribution, and we’re in a great position to take advantage of the Bone license, but our teams are very busy right now. As the company grows we will revisit Bone.

Has your work on the episodic Sam & Max series changed your approach to developing future Bone chapters?

Dave: I’d say so. Maybe not in a large-scale way, but certainly in the details of how we approach the designs and run the production. We’re learning how to be more and more efficient about these things as we go. Working episodically is like folding a live octopus into a CrackerJack box. Practice helps.

Obviously digital distribution has been a major asset for you. Do you see an overall shift to digital distribution for the industry as a whole in the near future?

Dan: Absolutely. We built our business around digital distribution because we saw it as a growing opportunity.

Episodic gaming was hyped as the next big thing, but Telltale has been one of the few developers to really deliver on the potential of it. What are some of the pros and cons of episodic development?

Dave: Well, the con is, like I just mentioned, that it’s not that easy. You have to be extremely efficient about production or you’re not going to get things turned around quickly enough for it to be interesting. The reason it’s worth doing is that it really changes the nature of the relationship between the developers and the audience. It allows us to provide a constant stream of entertainment, which we think is more satisfying than a single product every few years. And feedback from the audience is likewise a constant stream, that starts right at the beginning of the season ““ or, hopefully, even earlier.

Do you have any other projects in the works right now?

Dan: We have a few things in the works, but nothing we’re ready to talk about just yet. Sometimes it’s fun to go online and see what the internet says we’re working on.

Are there any licenses that you’d love to develop adventure games based upon?

Dan: Many! I personally have always wanted to do Spinal Tap, but I am having a hard time getting buy-in.

It seems that Telltale is seriously looking into console development. Has the advent of digital distribution on consoles swayed that decision?

Dan: Our content is built specifically for digital distribution, so the more channels, the better. Xbox Live has really shown that people not only like to download content, but at this point they are starting to expect downloadable content.

How does Telltale feel about each of the new consoles?

Dan: We like them all, and we’d like to get our games on all of them at some point. Each of the consoles brings something a little different to the table. Since our tools are for the PC, the first step is porting our tools over to the consoles, which is something we’re working on.

We know that you have some Wii content in the works. Obviously the pointer can be used as a mouse, but do you have any cool ideas for using motion-based controls in your Wii titles?

Dave: I had this great idea where you strap the controllers to your legs and walk around. Which we’re not doing, unfortunately, but we are doing more than just using the pointer like a mouse. That would be a waste of an opportunity. Designing for the Wii is pretty interesting, by the way ““ it forces you to think in a different way than you’re used to.

Will your upcoming Wii content be available through the Virtual Console, or are you seeking a publisher for a retail release?

Dan: This hasn’t been decided yet. We’d be open to either.

I know that several of the staff members at Telltale love the DS. Are you guys considering jumping into DS development?

Dan: The DS is a great platform for the type of games we make, but the tech is so different on the DS than on the PC and other consoles. We would have to completely rework our development tools, and that’s not something we’re doing right now. There are a lot of story-driven games coming out for the DS, so that’s encouraging. We’re interested to see how Deck13′s DS port of Ankh turns out because the PC version is pretty similar to our games.

We’d like to thank Dan, Dave, and the entire crew at Telltale for taking the time to answer our questions and for bringing us some incredible games. We wish them luck with all of their upcoming efforts, and we’ll be there to enjoy them. To conclude, here’s a piece of concept art for the upcoming Bright Side of the Moon. Fans might recognize him from an earlier episode, where he had a slightly more glamorous role.

The Sam & Max season finale ““ Bright Side of the Moon ““ hits GameTap this Thursday. It will be available on Telltale’s website on May 10th. Each episode is available for $8.95, or you can pay $34.95 for the entire season. Check back early Thursday morning for our review!

Telltale Games Official Site
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