Telltale Games Rises Again: New Holding Company To Announce First Game By End Of 2019 - Forbes

Telltale Games' 'The Wolf Among Us.'

Telltale Games

Like the zombies in its hit narrative series based on "The Walking Dead," Telltale Games may rise again after its abrupt shuttering last fall.

Known for its storytelling in games including The Wolf Among Us, Telltale ceased operations suddenly last October, with management telling the several hundred employees remaining in the already-reduced studio that the money had run out.

This morning a new holding company, LCG Entertainment, will announce that it has acquired Telltale's "key assets, trademarks, technology, and select intellectual properties" with the intent of continuing to build on the company's existing IP, narrative tools and new games as well.

LCG will be doing business as Telltale Games, and has hired and contracted with "key talent" from the original company. I caught up with new chief executive Jamie Ottilie to talk about what this means for the well-regarded Telltale name, and narrative games in general.

A scene from 'Batman: The Telltale Series.'

Telltale Games

Ottilie, and most of the rest of the new holding company management team, hails from Galaxy Pest Control and before that, Abandon Interactive. GPC is best known for licensed mobile games, including titles for Atari and Cabela's. Abandon was a pioneer in the "toys to life" genre, since perfected by Skylanders, the discontinued Disney Infinity series and Nintendo's Amiibo.

Investors in the new venture, whose price tag has not been released, include: Chris Kingsley, cofounder of Sniper Elite developer Rebellion Developments Ltd.; Lyle Hall, president and CEO at former THQ subsidiary Heavy Iron Studios; Tobias Sjögren, CEO at Swedish escape room maker Fox in a Box; and Athlon Games, which will act as a publishing partner.

Ottilie told me that the company will eventually want to create ways to use the Telltale Tool for narrative games from other developers, and is looking hard at streaming games as a way of delivering Telltale titles to multiple devices.

A longtime industry vet, Ottilie he was running on "caffeine and adrenaline" in advance of today's announcement. "I care a lot about what we're doing right now, and I just don't want to [mess] it up," he said. Only he didn't say "mess."

New Telltale Games chief executive Jamie Ottilie

Telltale Games

Heather Newman: How did you first get involved in the purchase of Telltale Games' assets?

Jamie Ottilie: I was actually doing a little bit of consulting for another company that was interested in acquiring some IPs or existing products in the marketplace. I started asking around and I talked to Brian Waddle [now chief revenue officer at LCG.] And Brian was like, "Hey, I know some guys over at Telltale and they're selling some stuff off." So we went through and we did the evaluation.

It wasn't a good fit for the company that I was doing the consulting with, and Brian and I were both kind of disappointed.

Newman: What made you decide to take it on?

Ottilie: It seemed like an interesting opportunity and good brands and a great game genre that should continue. Gamers should be able to tell stories in addition to making multiplayer shooters or MMOs. It's a category that should exist.

As somebody who grew up making video games near Hollywood, who lived through the era being treated like the t-shirt company by most of film studios, I took it personally. Telltale told stories, stories I like to play. Let's see what we can do about this. And that started the process.

Newman: What challenges did you face in the acquisition?

Ottilie: We really had to rush to pull together money. This was November of last year, my house burned down in the middle of it all, and I thought it all went away. And then it came back.

Brian had done a lot of the due diligence, and while there was a lot of stuff to dig through, like it seemed like somewhere inside of there was a business that could be stood back up. Most of the initial money came from other people in the video game industry who felt the same way that we did: Telltale should live, and it would be great to be part of that. So how do we make that happen?

Newman: How long did you have to put in the bid?

Ottilie: We did it in like three weeks. It was crazy. I'm not a big believer in fate or pre-ordained things, but there was a whole bunch of stuff that had to happen very quickly, that had a small chance of happening, and it did.

We finally closed in the middle of May.

Newman: What parts of the business did you want to buy?

Ottilie: We really felt that there was brand equity in the name; it pretty much invented the genre. Without much else, if you took that, you could have a good shot of standing it back up. Obviously we were also interested in the technology, the [Telltale Tool], the various other copyrights that went with that. And we wanted what we could get of the catalog.

Newman: What IP did you end up acquiring?

Ottilie: We got the Batman games, [The] Wolf Among Us, Puzzle Agent 1 and 2, RGX [Showdown] and another older title.

A scene from 'The Wolf Among Us.'

Telltale Games

Newman: Did you get any of the original developers? They were long gone by then, right?

Ottilie: They were long gone. We had a few key people that we'd been speaking to throughout the process that we've brought in, and we'll continue to recruit and build as we can.

A lot of the work right now has been about stabilizing the catalog and just getting the transition done. We've used a mix of a former Telltale people, both as hires and as contractors, to make that part work. Later this year, we'll announce our first game. That will include some additional folks that will be rejoining us at that point.

Newman: How do you plan to avoid the financial and "crunch culture" development problems that plagued Telltale in its later years?

Ottilie: We are going to to build at a slower pace than what was being done at the end of Telltale. My intention is to announce one game and get it fully into production. When that's well on its way to completion, we'll worry about what we're doing after that game.

Most of what needs to be avoided is about cost control and being realistic about what you can spend on a Telltale-style game, and hitting your quality marks inside of that box — and bringing it out on time and on schedule for your players.

Another scene from 'Batman.'

Telltale Games

Newman: What do you consider to be the greatest challenge in reaching those goals?

Ottilie: It's very tempting from where I sit right now to put three games into production. There's a lot of interest. You definitely feel like kids in the candy store. We look at some of the IP and the things that we could be doing, and that, and oh my god, what's that?

Wait, stop, stop. Let's do one big and let's do it right. And then when we know that that's going the right way, and we're comfortable, and we have the capacity to truly analyze what it takes to do a second thing, then okay, let's do that.

I'd say the most challenging thing about that is keeping your financial partners happy. Our investors are pretty friendly.

Newman: Telltale Games was, at its peak, a 300-plus person operation. What does an appropriately-sized Telltale look like to you?

Ottilie: I don't see us with more than 25 people in the first year. In three years, I doubt it goes above 50.

One of our approaches is definitely that we don't need to own every single person who works on the content. We do need to own the creative leaders. The engineers supporting the tool and driving that, those need to be internal to Telltale. But the three and a half hours of animation that I need, I don't really need to do that internally.

Newman: Why not do three games? Why not jump in big?

Ottilie: We're building a company conservatively is the real answer, right? I'm not building it, we're not building this to sell it. We're not building it to make it worth $100 million next year.

I'm building it to put out high quality narrative-driven games, so if we keep that as the goal, everything else has to fall into place around that.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2019/08/28/telltale-games-rises-again-new-holding-company-to-announce-first-game-by-end-of-2019/

2019-08-28 13:01:08Z
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