"Original content from a gaming perspective is pretty romantic, but it's pretty difficult," he says. "Franchises have always been a part of our strategy. We want to create great interactive stories and we think there's a wealth of great stories that exist in the (film and television) worlds that need interactive stories - and we can supply that. As far as being able to establish a brand, every time we connect to a franchise, we're associating ourselves with something that has a lot of fans – and we can reach out and introduce ourselves to them and let them know we do other things."
Some might argue that the franchise "part" of the strategy is closing in on 100%, but who am I to split hairs? Read the interview for more.
Source: Gamesutra
Do the terms; 'Rough around the edges' , 'rushed' , 'unrefined' equal bad writing as well?
There's not a question in my mind that they do. I don't think those words have any business being used except as a summary of actual, specific points that are stated in the same piece. That doesn't stop the infuriating habit of reviewers using them otherwise.
fco
Another interesting quote from the same interview:
Dan Connors
"we like the idea of doing something legal"
Well yeah, they announced Law & Order yesterday. I'm quite certain it's a reference to that.
Dan Connors
"we like the idea of doing something legal"
elTee
What does Poland have to do with all of this anyway?
Fine, I will lecture you about this: It's polish. Got it?
Gabez
Just because I know what something means doesn't make it decent writing. I said it doesn't mean anything *on its own*, like it's something that can be pointed to as an example: 'there's the polish'. It's a representative value for goodness knows what, and it's lazy to use it all the time like a magic word that will fit a general dissatisfaction.
I'm writing a quick comment here, not a bloody review. If I was writing a review, I'd say a hell of a lot more than "it was lacking in polish".
Zaarin
Could you be any more patronizing?
I tried, but couldn't quite manage with the space I had.
AlfredJ
For everyone saying they don't want to play licensed games: The pre-order for Hector: Badge of Carnage has just gone up. It's ten dollars and it will be released next week. Technically not a Telltale game (it's developed by Straandlooper with Telltale providing the engine, technical assistance and marketing), but it's an original IP and sort of, in a way, part of the Telltale-family.
Thanks AlfredJ, don't worry, we've not forgotten about Hector!
Ceres
Do the terms; 'Rough around the edges' , 'rushed' , 'unrefined' equal bad writing as well?
I was thinking of 'rushed' as a good replacement for 'unpolished'. If you say a game feels like a 'rush job', everyone knows what you mean: if only the developers had put more time and effort into it, the game would be a lot better (more enjoyable, less frustrating, prettier).
Nevertheless, it's all subjective, so no matter what word you use, everyone will feel differently about it.
Polished.
The Tingler
Gabez
I wish people would stop saying "polished" as if the word means something on its own (which it doesn't, unless you're reviewing shoes). Be specific! It's bad writing otherwise.
Let me educate you on gaming terms then: "polished" means "made to look its best". As SurplusGamer said, that includes eliminating bugs, glitches, and any general number of small problems. It does not include deep problems with the gameplay or story.
If a game "is not a polished product" that means it's been rushed, and a layer of quality has been abandoned to get the game out on time. Some people may use "polish" as a catch-all phrase admittedly for problems, but do not expect that with me.
Could you be any more patronizing?
If people are posting a lengthy review of any media, they'll always point out the good and bad points, so why not use the word in context?
I mean, why stop there?
Do the terms; 'Rough around the edges' , 'rushed' , 'unrefined' equal bad writing as well?
Gabez's point about the use of the word 'polish' is valid, though, in my opinion. I suppose if it's a game industry-specific word, then that's what it is, but with regards to some of these Telltale games the problems aren't just cosmetic. There's a healthy debate to be had about the company, because they are capable of brilliant moments, but I've not played a consistently brilliant season. Again, their business model comes into play - breaking a game up into five parts isn't easy, and sacrifices have to be made to ensure they don't all end 'mid-sentence'.
I'm not really making a good point here, because no-one is really wrong. The lack of 'polish' is definitely an issue, but it's not the only one, and not the most important in my opinion. (I know no-one said that.) It's a symptom of another problem which is the one I feel we should be trying to illuminate.
You said it yourself: 'it's inherently going to be a sort of fuzzy concept'. Why use 'fuzzy concepts' in criticism? It's idiotic.
You would really review a book that had typing errors by saying that 'it lacks polish'? Or would you simply say that the book had a number of typos?
Why use the vague word for the specific meaning? Why ask the reader to do the work for you?
Link to the Hector pre-order: http://www.telltalegames.com/store/Hector101
Gabez
'Made to look its best' -- you mean graphically? But then you talk about bugs. If you mean polish to mean eliminating bugs then just say so? Or is it bugs AND graphics? Or is it bugs, graphics, and any number of other things left unspecified? Is it, in fact, just a word that's been appropriated to stand in for even vaguer terms, like 'a level of quality'?
Can you imagine the term being used so often in other instances? 'Much Ado About Nothing isn't as good as Macbeth. It lacks polish.' or 'The Social Network was more polished than the King's Speech'. What does this painting need? More polish!
Also, this is full of poor arguments. Yes, 'made to look its best' wasn't necessarily the best word to use, but I don't believe you when you say that you don't know what it means to a game to be polished. I think you're splitting hairs because we can't define it really exactly, when it's inherently going to be a sort of fuzzy concept what's going to fall under polish and what's a deeper problem. But that's okay, lots of concepts are fuzzy but we can still talk about them meaningfully.
And what does it matter whether we talk about other media in that way. And y'know what? The reason we don't call films and books unpolished is because the film and book audiences are generally expectant of a higher level of polish in the first place that less polished things won't get published. But there are indie films, right, and if you had an indie film which maybe had some special effects which weren't quite up to scratch, and had some awkward editing, perhaps saying it lacks a bit of polish would be a good starting point. Or if a book was released with a bunch of typos, or with some repetetive phrasing, despite generally being quite good and well-plotted, like you get a lot with people self-publishing on Kindle, sure, I could see a case for talking about polish. The problem is, the examples you gave were all of -polished- (or at least historical and therefore difficult to talk about in context) publications, in line with the vast majority of the output of those industries.
The Tingler
Gabez
I wish people would stop saying "polished" as if the word means something on its own (which it doesn't, unless you're reviewing shoes). Be specific! It's bad writing otherwise.
Let me educate you on gaming terms then: "polished" means "made to look its best". As SurplusGamer said, that includes eliminating bugs, glitches, and any general number of small problems. It does not include deep problems with the gameplay or story.
If a game "is not a polished product" that means it's been rushed, and a layer of quality has been abandoned to get the game out on time. Some people may use "polish" as a catch-all phrase admittedly for problems, but do not expect that with me.
Yeah, polish is surface-problems. If some of the textures are aligned weirdly, that's poor polish. If the game's story makes no sense, that's nothing to do with polish. If you're likely to run into various minor-but-noticeable glitches and bug in a regular play through of the game, that's polish. If it's not fun to play because the controls suck, that's not.
What I'll agree with what the others are saying, is that saying something is unpolished without elaborating is not enough if you're trying to make a detailed critique. But it's not automatically bad writing; it depends on context. If someone says a game is unpolished, it definitely means something, I know I can expect a bunch of surface-problems.
'Made to look its best' -- you mean graphically? But then you talk about bugs. If you mean polish to mean eliminating bugs then just say so? Or is it bugs AND graphics? Or is it bugs, graphics, and any number of other things left unspecified? Is it, in fact, just a word that's been appropriated to stand in for even vaguer terms, like 'a level of quality'?
Can you imagine the term being used so often in other instances? 'Much Ado About Nothing isn't as good as Macbeth. It lacks polish.' or 'The Social Network was more polished than the King's Speech'. What does this painting need? More polish!
Gabez
I wish people would stop saying "polished" as if the word means something on its own (which it doesn't, unless you're reviewing shoes). Be specific! It's bad writing otherwise.
Let me educate you on gaming terms then: "polished" means "made to look its best". As SurplusGamer said, that includes eliminating bugs, glitches, and any general number of small problems. It does not include deep problems with the gameplay or story.
If a game "is not a polished product" that means it's been rushed, and a layer of quality has been abandoned to get the game out on time. Some people may use "polish" as a catch-all phrase admittedly for problems, but do not expect that with me.
Gabez
No, it's like saying a view is 'nice'. People only know what you mean if they've seen the view before, or another nice view that they can use to fill in the absent details about the view actually being talked about. Polished doesn't specifically refer to the object.
It also implies that polish is a stage of game development that you can add in itself, like when the actors in that viral beta testing advert talked about 'tightening up the graphics'.
But I can imagine various sorts of nice views, and various sorts of not nice views and get a very broad idea of what you're talking about. If people talk about nice views, they generally mean that you can see quite a lot or a long way, and the things you are looking at fall into the general broad category of what people usually describe as pretty. You can be pretty sure the window isn't facing onto a dirty brick wall. It's vague, but it's not devoid of meaning.
And to an extent polish CAN be a stage of development. Getting rid of continuity bugs, animation glitches, bad audio encoding, stuff like that is absolutely the kind of thing that can be sorted out late in the game, or with enough testing. Yes, certain problems that get lumped under polish are sometimes deeper than that, like what elTee is talking about, but that's because I think we're talking about different things. Design/Narrative problems exist in some Telltale games, but they're also unpolished (among other things in the ways I listed above).
Shmargin
Every game that comes to mind right now, that I play, or played years ago, were original, and anything based off a movie, or TV series, was $4.99 bargain bin garbage.
With BTTF episode one as an example, I don't think it would be possible to 'polish' that episode and fix it. I'm not a huge fan of the license to begin with, but I wanted to give the game a chance. Almost immediately it started falling back on run of the mill, lazy adventure game logic - I gave a shoe to a dog, which took me to an apartment. There were some newspapers, and I figured I needed to read them because there was nothing else to do. But this isn't Scabb Island, it's Hill Valley - once I realise, "hey, I could figure out where Doc is by checking out old newspapers!" what's to stop me abandoning this old broad and going to the library?
And okay, people can argue that it's okay to settle for old-fashioned adventure game logic (that increasingly appears to just be bad design) but there's something else at play here too. That's the start of the game. It's supposed to pull you into it, and all the best adventure games almost force you to play them whether you want to or not because you start it and it pulls you in. It fundamentally doesn't matter if the game "gets better later on" - it suffers from a problem that 'polish' won't fix, which is that the narrative was laid out and locked down and had to be committed to because of the turnover time.
Not to mention that it did not feel very Back to the Future-y at all to me, but whatever. I'm kind of with Schmargin on the license issue because he's right; you're bound by limitations that you didn't design. The concept of licensing isn't inherently flawed, but if I were a Telltale writer I would be getting tired of the research and imitation at this point.
It also implies that polish is a stage of game development that you can add in itself, like when the actors in that viral beta testing advert talked about 'tightening up the graphics'.
Gabez
I wish people would stop saying "polished" as if the word means something on its own (which it doesn't, unless you're reviewing shoes). Be specific! It's bad writing otherwise.
Well, it's meaningful. It's a fairly general statement, but I basically know what someone is SAYING when they're saying a game isn't polished. I can imagine an unpolished game in constrast with a portal2ished game. I don't think there's anything wrong with using it as shorthand, but sure if you want to talk in detail then specific examples are good.
Shmargin
The Sam & Max episodes are a hollow shell of what Hit the Road was. Not as funny, not as clever, not as good. In my opinion, S&M Hit The Road was pretty much an original IP when it came out. Pretty much no one had heard of the comic, even most of us that played the game when it was new, were too young to have read the comic at the time, or had just never heard of it. So when Lucas made HTR, they had Steve there, working his blood sweat and tears into it, because it was his, it was an original IP, and if he wanted their office to look the way it does in HTR, he can do it, its his. With TTG, the office looks the way it does, because they want it to look like how Steve wanted it to look. And thats where you start getting the Muliplicity effect, of copies not being as good as the originals...
I don't know. I think both Season Two and The Devil's Playhouse beat Hit the Road. Season Two's mariachi gag along made it funnier, and, well, though I still have episode 5 of TDP to play, the first four have more or less beaten Hit the Road.
For one, I completely disagree with this guy in the article. I mean really, to this day, I hate almost all licensed games, adventure or other wise, and the few games I can bring myself to play now a days, are all original IPs.
Like, everything old adventure wise from Lucas that we love? 95% original, the only one I can think of is Indy, which was good, but had the same insanely good team behind it that was good at being original.
Every game that comes to mind right now, that I play, or played years ago, were original, and anything based off a movie, or TV series, was $4.99 bargain bin garbage.
(This is where the hater part really kicks in)
This goes for TTG too. I don't feel like they've done a great job with any of their episodic games. They've done OK. But not great, not at all. The problem is, when you're licensing something, you didn't ACTUALLY create any of the main ingredients: Characters, main plot idea, locations, none of it. So you're always trying to be like someone else, when you cant, because you're not that someone else.
The Sam & Max episodes are a hollow shell of what Hit the Road was. Not as funny, not as clever, not as good. In my opinion, S&M Hit The Road was pretty much an original IP when it came out. Pretty much no one had heard of the comic, even most of us that played the game when it was new, were too young to have read the comic at the time, or had just never heard of it. So when Lucas made HTR, they had Steve there, working his blood sweat and tears into it, because it was his, it was an original IP, and if he wanted their office to look the way it does in HTR, he can do it, its his. With TTG, the office looks the way it does, because they want it to look like how Steve wanted it to look. And thats where you start getting the Muliplicity effect, of copies not being as good as the originals...
So I keep seeing TTG doing licenses, and I keep seeing them not be that good. Back to the Future feels nothing like BTTF, the first 10 minutes did, where it was practically word for word scene from the movie, then after that it peters off into some thing else, some other person pulling the strings, making characters do things that don't feel quit right, because its NOT really the original characters.
Dan needs to look at the most popular games of all time, and figure out how many are licensed products, because without even googling that list of games, I bet none or next to none, where IPs licensed from movies or TV. It just doesn't happen.
Being original breeds good ideas, forces you to be creative, to love your characters and your work because they're YOUR characters and YOUR work. When you license something, none of that's there, no matter how much you love the original license, you're still just trying to be something you're not, trying to think like someone else might have. And it shows.
jp-30
Sounds like "The Orgastic 4" to me, Jason.
Oh man, I sure hope Telltale scoops up that license while they're at it; the marketing blurbs write themselves. "Some say our Back to the Future episodes were premature releases, but wait ''til you see THESE guys!"
...I can't begin to tell everyone how sorry I am.
Jason
Ascovel
Or maybe someone here owns a cool franchise?
Okay so once when I was a kid I came up with this quartet of accidental super heroes called The Sutchbauthers who despite the best intentions always destroy whatever it is they're called upon to fix. One of them was definitely a girl.
Annual license fee: $36 million.
Was that a comic book. How many adventures did you come up with for those characters?
Ascovel
Or maybe someone here owns a cool franchise?
Okay so once when I was a kid I came up with this quartet of accidental super heroes called The Sutchbauthers who despite the best intentions always destroy whatever it is they're called upon to fix. One of them was definitely a girl.
Annual license fee: $36 million.
They've also done a serviceable-to-good job on their non-adventure-based IPs, like Wallace and Gromit.
"Okay" and "serviceable" seem to be what Telltale shoot for (though they occasionally hit "good" or even "great"), and it seems like that "safeness" from the perspective of design is also a part of their philosophy when it comes to dealing with IP.
It would be interesting to see them do something more original, and see if it made them more ambitious. Their takes on established properties hold up okay, but and hardly as memorable as the game whose memories they're capitalizing on. (Tales was pretty good, but completely not in the same league as MI2, one of the greatest adventures of all time, likewise with the Sam & Max games).
Hopefully they do more things through the pilot program. Puzzle Agent, while it wasn't horribly innovative from a gameplay/design standpoint was a nice breath of fresh air tonally and aesthetically. They have some really creative people at that company, and it would be nice to let them stretch a bit more.
Really, though, it would be fine if they sought out licenses that were well-suited to adventure games. And even with that stipulation, certainly not 24 of them in production all at once...