Telltale hit with class-action lawsuit for breaking labor laws - Sensationalist Headlines

You guys know that Telltale doesn't own Sam and Max, right? Purcell owns them, he created the original comics. He also gave Telltale the license at the start because the company was founded by his friends and fellow Lucasarts alumni. I think aside from Telltale Texas Hold'em Puzzle Agent,, and Poker Night at the Inventory (which relies heavily on licensed characters), Telltale HAS no IPs. Everything was licensed.

The post also specifically mentions that this exception doesn't apply in the California version of the law, only the federal. And it's in California they are basing the lawsuit in, no?

And were still hiring people. Fuck all of these people seriously. Running their own employees into the ground

Which explains why they basically turned in to a story game shovelware house by the end of their run. They just went to anyone who might pay them and make a game.

Calling their games "shovelware" is harsh. They weren't perfect and its cool if youre not into them but they don't fit the definition of shovelware at all.

I mean it was the same engine in every title with virtually no improvements and an obvious collapse in quality for the sake of efficiency, dumped on to the market fast so they could get the next title produced and out the door as fast as possible. Licensed game shovelware has always been an easy cash market. They were cranking out games as fast as they could.

I don't think you realise how hard full 3d games with entire branching paths are to make. There's a reason they are very rare. Most story games are 2d, immensely cheaper, doesn't even require the same kind of studio. Shovelware are games that arent even made to be good in the first place, it's a scheme. I think Telltale devs tried to do good with what they had - multiple of theses games were good and quality doesn't happen by accident, it's always the result of hard work. Different games having the same engine is literaly meaningless, the immense majority of devs use license engires they didn't make like Unity and Unreal and use that and almost every studio keeps the same engine from game to game. Changing engine is sometimes completely impossible.

I wholly disagree, I feel they just mishandled writing her as a timid and paralytically indecisive dweeb. A player, by mere involvement in the game, is pretty decisive, and trying to convey that while retaining a lot of character in a protagonist can be difficult. Before the Storm really cinched that element of Max -- her not speaking to Chloe is clearly a result of her social anxiety and crippling indecision rather than cruelty.

So the game is atrociously written on purpose? Because nearly every piece of dialogue is about as hella cringe inducing as that clip. People don't criticize the writing for being not stereotypical, if anything it's the opposite. Mostly though, it seems as if it was written by a couple of middle-aged french dudes trying desperately to emulate what teenagers sound like, and failing spectacularly. Also the story was shit, and made zero sense.

People used to say "hella" in the late 90's and early 2000's I get that the game is supposedly set in 2014, but can you really blame the devs for not just dropping f-bombs everywhere like we used to do in the late 00's? That'd be some REAL cringe IMO. I find when people have these issues with writing of characters and dialogue, it stems from either being unable to relate to the people in their setting or being unable to recognize characters outside of archetypes for what they are. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't some epic new writing epic. But the main characters were believable in their setting and the first 4 episodes were really fucking solid IMO. To each their own, of course. But i find being this reductive about it just seems more forced into negativity.

Ok just watched through an "important storyline" video that cut all the side story junk. Yeah this game is awful. Unlikeable charicters, including out and out destructive sociopaths, that we're supposed to sympathise with or care for who destory everying around them, have roughly no consequences happen to them and then learn nothing, for every single part of the story, repeating until the end. And the ending is a binary choice of either undo everything with the big red "oopsie" button, undoing everything that happened and killing sociopath cunt, who everyone is then sad over despite her in universe being an uttterly reprehensible person at that point in the timeline still, or not doing that and literally killing an entire town, looking sad and learning nothing fade to black the end. Yeah thematically and charicterwise it's even worse than i remembered. It's not a charicter study because none of them are interesting or progress in any meaningful way, it's not a traditional story because nobody grows, learns anything or accomplishes anything (especially if you choose the big red button ending), and it's not even a good fucking use of time travel mechanics. And that astonishgly bad diologue just takes us six levels deeper. Nothing about this is redeemable, jesus christ why did you do this to me

This confused me very much because I was thinking of max from sam and max.

HOOOLY fuck! She's a malcontent teenager in bumfuck nowhere who doesn't give a shit about authority figures and you immediately write the character off as a sociopath? Do you not know how kids work when the world throws shit at them and their guiding role-models are cancerously useless at communicating? Is this a joke? Do you even have Pædagogy in Canada?

Oh man, Puzzle Agent was great, I wish they had made more original games like it instead of samey licensed games.

No it isn't. No engine upgrades Two branches per "decision", three decisions per chapter, only one of which actually changes content distribution later in the story Consistent act and chapter structure across games. They were literally making asset flips with AAA voice acting, while hiring people not to make more depth to ensuing products, but to make copies of the existing format faster and in more abundance. No it's pretty much how sociopathy works, that the writers can't tell the difference or thinks that all teenagers are that self absorbed or even worse they needed the kids to be that simplistic and stereotypical in order for the narrative premise to work at all is pretty telling. Textbook overpraised hyperpretentious "social consciousness raiser and object lesson as game'. This is not how you advance the artform or the genre.

It's literally just one malcontent (chloe), one psychopath (that murderer-kid) and one insecure girl (that drama queen) i forgot the other character's names. But Chloe and miss Drama-queen aren't sociopaths' They're kids who have been left either feeling abandoned after a huge loss (chloe) or legitimately being neglected and left to figure out how to socialize for themselves (Blonde girl.) Sociopathy is a legit disease. There is not cure, there is no amount of positive reinforcement that can fix the underlying problem. It's a chemical imbalance in the brain. Only the teacher and that insane kid shows any signs of being clinical sociopaths. This is literally the closest we've gotten outside of sci-fi or fantasy settings and somehow not being left with a charicature SJW-authored mess. Again, it's not a huge game-changer, but it was pretty damn solid.