As a result of the toxic manual, Telltale Games lost the best developers.

In 2012, actress Zoe Saldana, standing on a light-flooded stage, announced the game of the year according to the Spike Video Game Awards: The Walking Dead . This victory was a huge success for the relatively small development company Telltale Games. Her emotional look at the popular zombie franchise with a strong focus on the plot was won by such popular games as Dishonored and Mass Effect 3 , on which hundreds of developers worked and for which tens of millions of dollars were spent.

The Telltale Games team, including its co-founders Kevin Bruner and Dan Connors, as well as The Walking Dead author Robert Kirkman took the stage to receive an award. Kirkman received a large black statuette from Saldan and handed it to Connors and Bruner. Bruner, in turn, with gestures drew attention to two other people who were on the scene - Sean Wanamen and Jake Rodkin, leading project experts and co-authors of the game, thanking them for creating the game characters. None of them were named by name and did not mention that they were the cause of the studio’s greatest creative success. Shortly before two women in brilliant costumes took everyone away from the stage, Vanaman suddenly snatched the statuette from Bruner’s hand and said: “We work with the most talented people on the planet.”

Then in the studio Telltale worked less than 100 people - quite a small team by the standards of modern studios, which can work hundreds or even thousands of people. And in the industry, in which the plot is often secondary to “interesting gameplay,” the victory won by Telltale established the studio as a successful developer, who appreciated primarily the plot and character development. For several months, The Walking Dead continued to receive awards - this was a turning point for the studio, which had financial problems only a year ago. The company began to hire staff at tremendous speed and in just a few years it tripled the number of employees. Soon, she caught the attention of several of the largest Hollywood franchises and created spin-up games such as Batman , Game of Thrones and Guardians of the Galaxy , which were mainly focused on the narrative and feelings, and not on action or graphics.

But the instant rise of the studio did not last long. In November 2017, the company announced the dismissal of 90 developers, that is, about a quarter of the staff. For some Telltale workers, the news came as a shock. Others considered it an inevitable result - sources familiar with the company describe its years of work as a culture that stimulates continuous processing , toxic leadership and creative stagnation. (Before writing this article, The Verge spoke to more than a dozen current and former Telltale developers, many of whom demanded anonymity because of fear of revenge from current or future employers.) Although some of the difficulties are specific to Telltale and its leadership, many of the problems developers turned out to be an indicator of the destructive and erroneous development practices of the video game industry in general.
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The prevailing conditions are almost always the hardest to hit one group: the developers, that is, the people who actually create the game. Layoffs are an integral part of life, even successful studios often massively hire developers to catch tightly set deadlines, and then fire them to save money after releasing or canceling the game. Before the next deadline, the cycle repeats again. Recycling, job instability and severe burnout are ubiquitous; More than three quarters of developers report that they are working under conditions of crunching , which may mean, for example, working 20 hours a day and more than 100 hours a week . Such practices can cause serious damage to employees, but nonetheless seem to be an indispensable element of the video game development culture.

The story of Telltale - its heyday, decline and possible reformation - is not only the history of one studio's erroneous decisions. This is a striking look at the $ 36 billion video game industry (today it is so big that it competes with the film industry) and how worse practices can harm and lead to burnout of even the most enthusiastic and valuable employees.


Telltale originated in the ashes of the adventure genre, which was once synonymous with PC games. In popular games like King's Quest , The Secret of Monkey Island , and Myst , creativity, imagination, and puzzle solving were the most important skill sets. Adventure developers Sierra and LucasArts were kings of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but by the end of the 90s their popularity declined - players began to prefer shooters and 3D games. The founders of Telltale Games - Bruner, Connors and Troy Molander - are former employees of LucasArts, and by the time of the creation in 2004 of Telltale and the revival of the once popular LucasArts Sam & Max and Monkey Island series, adventure games were considered to be “ hopelessly dead ”.

To make this gameplay style popular again (and profitable), the company's co-founders decided to focus on improving the interactive storytelling and deepening the associated role-playing. In 2007, Telltale raised over six million venture capital. These investments were associated with inevitable restrictions - the studio had to show the growth and success of a group of investors, not directly related to the studio.

As is the case with the film industry, licensed franchises have proven to be a safer alternative to creating their own original intellectual property. Therefore, instead of investing resources in the creation of the original worlds, Telltale decided to turn to ready-made worlds and fan bases that love them. Namely, to franchises like “Back to the Future” , “Jurassic Park” and, of course, “The Walking Dead” .

Jurassic Park: The Game critics called " mediocre " and " failure ." Released after it in 2011, The Walking Dead was the studio’s most amazing project: the perfect combination of studio creative talent, a popular franchise, and a storyline that took advantage of Telltale’s narrative power. Instead of a standard adventure game in which players roam around the screens and solve puzzles, the relationship between the main character Lee and a little girl named Clementine played an important role in The Walking Dead , which he saves from death and protects. The game was similar to the film and stood out from other works Telltale: high-quality script, great voice and high emotional intensity. It forced players to make difficult moral choices, in which there are no simple solutions: two members of your small group of survivors are on the verge of death. You can save only one. Who will survive, and who will you quit? From your choice depends on the further development of the plot.

Most sources inside the studio consider The Walking Dead to be the cause of success for leading developers Jake Rodkin and Sean Wenman. Vanamen wrote several episodic chapters of the game. Vanamen and Rodkin together became the directors of the first chapter and together managed the first season as a whole. Telltale's financial problems also had a positive side - because of the failure of Jurassic Park , the studio had too little time to slow down or cancel the development of The Walking Dead . The game had to go out, and this gave the Walking Dead creative team the opportunity to ignore or circumvent the instructions of the top management, with whom they were completely disagree. Rodkin and Venamen created a reputation for personalities strong enough to contradict the company's founders in making creative decisions. According to a source familiar with the project, they again and again pushed through the idea of ​​creating a game the way they like it. "They won, and this resulted in tremendous success."


After the release of the first episode of The Walking Dead in April 2012, the positive reaction of the audience surprised even some of the people involved in the development of the game. By January 2013, the game had sold over 8.5 million copies (or episodes), earning more than $ 40 million. In October 2013, the company announced that it had sold more than 21 million different episodes on all platforms individually. Telltale began to grow, signed partnerships with Gearbox Software, HBO and Mojang, and evolved from a small studio to a mid-level company with several licensed franchises.

As a result, the culture within the company has changed significantly. Former employees describe Telltale in the early stages as a small closely related group with a strong camaraderie. The company rarely had new employees. Top management was less involved in day-to-day work, and developers had more freedom to realize their vision. But the success of The Walking Dead led to the hectic growth of the company: in order to satisfy its growing ambitions and to please investors, it turned into a company in which the contribution of veteran employees did not pay tribute. “We turned from a small patchwork team into a giant studio of more than three hundred employees,” says Telltale former programmer and designer, who worked in the studio from 2008 to 2015. "When I walked around the office, I did not see a single familiar face."

Our sources say that the company’s culture has never been adapted properly, the transition from indie mentality to a more suitable one for such a big studio never happened. Secret knowledge was stronger than clearly documented processes, and lack of communication between employees led to confusion. “People very rarely recorded something on the wiki or confluence, or on any type of documentation,” says a former employee. “People moved from place to place so often that sometimes it was possible to hear a version of the plot that was out of date for a week, and the person telling it did not know anything about it.”

In addition, of course, it was not done without staff replacement. Instead of cherishing the most successful project of the studio, Vanamen and Rodkin quit and did not work on the second season. Their resounding dismissal, and even at the very peak of success, became the forerunner of the problems that Telltale met again and again in the course of her life. These problems are constantly forced to leave the company the best people.


The more successful Telltale was, the more projects she took at the same time. In 2013, she released The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead: Season 2 episodes. At the end of 2014, she released episodes for the licensed Game of Thrones and Borderlands licenses, which stretched to 2015, as well as the game for Minecraft . In 2017, she also took on Batman , the Guardians of the Galaxy , as well as the new seasons of The Walking Dead and Minecraft .

To cope with all this workload, the company began to transfer developers from project to project. The work schedule of the developers became more and more aggressive, and the management was looking for a solution in attracting more employees. This “solution” almost did not solve the problem. One of the former Telltale developers put it this way: nine women will not be able to have a baby in one month. “Instead of providing high quality, the principle of“ let's just make as many episodes as possible ”was taken as the basis,” says the source.

The main problem was time management. The release dates often shifted after the games passed through multiple and detailed testing, which gave a huge amount of feedback, but the developers didn’t have enough time to make all the changes. “The speed of the studio was both its most amazing feature and the biggest problem,” said a former employee. “The management often asked the teams to rewrite the scripts, change the design and characters, modify the animation until the very last moment, without editing the schedule accordingly. With each successful release, the requirements for production grew, and at some point we could not give anything from above. ”

The culture of crunchy is well documented and is an integral part of the gaming industry . Telltale is no exception. Some of the former employees claimed that they had to work in shifts of 14-18 hours a day for weeks. But most development companies are switching to “crunch mode” in the last months before the release of the game, and in Telltale they were permanent. Due to the episodic structure of Telltale games, the development cycle resembled a constantly rotating wheel. After completing work on one episode, the team proceeded to the next one, again, and again, and again. “The terms were constantly burning,” says one source with direct knowledge of the company. "I never managed to take a break." This statement was confirmed by four different people from different departments of Telltale.

While the pressure required to achieve financial goals and strict requirements and late requests from owners of large franchises was acceptable to many employees, the rapid pace of development led to a serious burnout of many others. Over time, e-mails from management encouraging staff to actively work on particularly complex tasks began to seem redundant. “They were exactly the same as last month, and the month before last, too,” says the same source, describing the reaction to letters. "And in previous months, too ... It was weary."

Telltale paid for unlimited labor hours, but as often happens in such cases, when people themselves are offered to determine their capabilities, some are less willing to take time off . Sources say that at Telltale, vacation was perceived as a desire to shift their work to other team members, and therefore, despite the fact that crutches were never considered “obligatory” in the office, they were often felt that way.

Developers who were given a six-day work schedule lasting for months felt that they had two choices: quit or accept. “Those who were most involved in the work suffered the most,” says a former employee. “People who were proud of the product more than others, were driving themselves more strongly. And it was not worth it to drive such people because they were the most valuable employees of the company. ”

Six to seven sources in the company also mentioned a deep-rooted low wage culture. They reported their salaries below industry standards, under which, however, they had to live in the notoriously high cost area of ​​the San Francisco Bay. The problems of crunches and underpayments were almost constant in the cinematography department, where mostly junior workers who came to the studio directly from college worked.

“We had a lot of people who came straight from school, thinking“ I want to test myself and make a contribution, ”says a source who is intimately familiar with the company. “My heart was broken by how all these new members of the team, optimistic and inspired by the work on Telltale, were used and exploited, because they could not draw a line in the sand and say“ This is my limit ”. They either pounded themselves to death and fell ill, or became burnt cynics. "

In addition, the cinematography department took the main burden on the visual construction of Telltale’s invented worlds, especially when production schedules were created without taking into account the time needed to make changes after changing the narrative. For example, a scene plot can be rewritten in a few hours or days, but transferring changes to a graphic is a much more time consuming process. One person familiar with Telltale’s internal work compared this to building rails in front of a train full of steam.

Some managers tried to reduce the strain on crunching by ordering food or alcohol to processing employees. Sources say there have been attempts to make the process as comfortable as possible. “They put a bandage on a perennial wound,” the source says. “The managers simply tried to do their job correctly, but no one thought for the long term and did not say“ this is unbearable ”.”

In addition to Vanamena and Rodkin, who are often referred to as the studio’s two most serious losses, resources in the company have decreased due to other layoffs, including Adam Heins, Chuck Jordan, Dave Grossman and Mike Stemmla. In early 2017, veteran developers Dennis Lenart, Pierre Shoret, Nick Herman and Adam Sarason left the studio at the same time , and then they moved to Ubisoft. This four worked on one of the most successful games of the studio. Their absence created a vacuum in the management of the creative process. “These people, who were carriers of Telltale's creative fire, are gone, so who else is left with us?” Said one of the sources.

Quietly left the studio and many others. “These were very good, hardworking employees who did not catch the stars from the sky, but did a good job,” says a source who directly knows the company. “With the departure of each of them, my heart broke. It was sad to see how very talented, controversial, aggressive people had great success in Telltale, while the quiet, creative employees slowly left it. ”


Several sources reported that the source of one of the most problematic studio speakers was one person: its co-founder Kevin Bruner.

Prior to Telltale, Bruner mainly worked as a programmer, including at LucasArts. But in Telltale, he had to assume many responsibilities: first, the chief technical director, then the director and general director. According to many current and past employees, the behavior of Bruner after the success of The Walking Dead has become controversial and inflexible. Thanks to his programming experience, he could actively assist in creating game development tools for Telltale. After the explosion of the studio's popularity, some employees felt that he wanted to take on the role of the author of the design, which, according to sources, he began to interfere with the fame of other company employees.

“It was then that everything became very bad,” says a former employee. "I think the feeling of insecurity arose because of The Walking Dead ." The success of the game greatly elevated Rodkin and Vanaman and gave them widespread popularity. “I think that was what irritated Bruner so much. He felt that fame should have been his. It was his project and his company. He should have received all the recognition, ”says the source.

Some argue that the behavior of Bruner led to the final departure of Rodkin and Wanamen after the wide success of the first season of The Walking Dead . “They are tired of arguing with Bruner,” says a knowledgeable source directly. They chose indie development and founded their own studio, Campo Santo, in which they released the most popular game, Firewatch . One source claims that the success of Campo Santo, along with Night School Studios and its supernatural thriller Oxenfree , co-authored by Telltale's former veteran Adam Heins, became catalysts for "tightening the screws" Bruner.

“He really didn’t want someone to pay tribute to his creative vision,” says one source. "He believed that the person would immediately leave and become a competitor of the studio, because before his eyes there were already two examples of people who did just that." If the behavior of Bruner and was aimed at eliminating future competitors, it led to the departure of even more people. Those who remained in the leading positions of the project often felt that they were not trusted to do their work and pushed them aside so that Bruner would hit the spotlights. “There were dark times when, if you managed a project, you could not give any interviews,” says one source. “There should be one Bruner in sight. Only he participates in all the interviews. Only he is mentioned in journal articles. ”

Bruner objects to these charges. In a letter to the editors of The Verge, he wrote that he wanted to ensure that none of the episodes did not seem to be the brainchild of someone, because a lot of joint work was invested in each project. “All Telltale projects were truly team work and I thought it important that they were perceived that way,” he says. “Developing any game is an incredibly complex enterprise that many people are working on. This is especially true for our five-episode series with five development branches (script, design, graphics, code, etc.). ”

Former employees and sources who are familiar with Telltale's internal work describe Bruner as a “bottleneck” in the company's work. He was constantly engaged in micromanagement of each part of the development process, from sketch to finished product, sometimes going as far as rewriting the text of the tutorial independently. “He wanted to be consulted on all issues, ranging from the color of the walls to hiring staff and writing a specific dialogue,” says a former employee.

Bruner became CEO of Telltale in 2015 instead of Connors, whom former employees describe as a much less annoying person. Many employees describe Bruner as cultivating a culture of fear. The company constantly jokingly compared the attention of Bruner with the Eye of Sauron. “Sooner or later, the Eye of Sauron will turn on you and this stream of light will burn out everything and turn into hell, over which you will no longer have control,” said a former employee. "Very often in Telltale, I felt unnecessary."

According to half a dozen sources, a panel with the participation of such senior management as Bruner became notorious in the company as violent hours-long disputes, in which Bruner played down and questioned the decisions of the participants in the studio's projects. « - — , — », — .

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“I remember how one of the bosses said:“ I like that we can just shout and curse each other at the meetings. This is just wonderful "," - says a former employee. “But I didn’t feel that way at all. It was disgusting. I do not want to go to work every day, where I have to yell at people so that my voice can be heard. I think many have burned out because of this. ”

Bruner defends scheduling as a necessary part of the studio's workflow and objects to how his former employees characterize him. “I don’t think that someone was deliberately harassed or humiliated. Because of the episodic nature of our games, decisions have to be made quickly in order to create the highest quality content. ”

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Many say that they do not blame Hawley for these layoffs, but see in them the results of many years of dubious business decisions. “The current state of Telltale as a company was completely inevitable,” says Rafferty. “She had to not expand so aggressively. I think that the new leader came and saw it, and decided that something had to be done with this. I absolutely do not blame him for what needs to be done to make the company work. ”

At least two sources said that it was an inevitable step for the company, which continued to bake the same games again and again. “It was always interesting for me when the audience gets tired of the games we release,” says one of the former employees. "And it was surprising that this did not happen before."

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