Their games steeply declined in sales after the first Walking Dead. From selling many millions to the last few selling only a few hundred thousand in spite of high profile licenses like Batman.
I’m not surprised TWD was fairly innovative for its time and also came close to the peak popularity of the series it was also likely the cheapest license they could get since IIRC they licensed the comic not the series from AMC.
Game of Thrones and the marvel and DC licensed games couldn’t have been cheap to license and they “upped” their game with getting bigger and bigger voice actors and for GoT they licensed the likeness of quite a few of the main cast of GoT so HBO and the actors had kept most of the revenue I presume.
Also as their biggest games weren’t something you would let children play i wonder how many parents assumed that shit I’m not letting my kid play this and the adults weren’t really interested in the franchise.
Most licensed games are a pretty big flop only the really good ones make it because they are a good game and not because of the license.
Comic book and movie games have always had a horrible stigma with being poor games and in all honest the staleness of the TTG formula didn’t really help at that point.
> Also as their biggest games weren’t something you would let children play
Minecraft Story Mode was presumably their next best selling after The Walking Dead of recent output, presumably because it could appeal to a broader and younger audience.
Though that still isn't saying much looking at the Steam chart presented in the post. Though Minecraft Story Mode sales is also presumably under-reported in Steam numbers as you would expect more console owners among families with kids than PC players.
I wonder how much this decline was to do with how heavily they embraced things like Humble Bundle
I for one never bought a Telltale game because I knew they'd wind up as either in part of a pretty solid bundle or even just a full fledged Telltale bundle. Can't think of another company in the games industry who so willingly devalued their whole catalogue as quickly. Assume the goal was to get loads of people up to date so they'd pay full price on launch for the next season of w/e but...
I think the use of Humble was definitely about the episodic nature of the product, but I'm not sure it worked very well. Humble buyers were presumably a bit less excited for the games than others, and I seriously doubt it was enough extra headcount to overcome the fact that Telltale basically sold games to shrinking funnels.
Everyone I know who enjoyed the first GoT Telltale game had quit by the third, but apparently there were six in total? That hardly looks like a sustainable technique.
Game of Thrones and the marvel and DC licensed games couldn’t have been cheap to license and they “upped” their game with getting bigger and bigger voice actors and for GoT they licensed the likeness of quite a few of the main cast of GoT so HBO and the actors had kept most of the revenue I presume.
Also as their biggest games weren’t something you would let children play i wonder how many parents assumed that shit I’m not letting my kid play this and the adults weren’t really interested in the franchise.
Most licensed games are a pretty big flop only the really good ones make it because they are a good game and not because of the license. Comic book and movie games have always had a horrible stigma with being poor games and in all honest the staleness of the TTG formula didn’t really help at that point.