You can find a long and excellent interview with Telltale CEO Dan Connors at gamesTM right about now. The subject of the hour is definitely Back to the Future, but the status of other Telltale licenses is addressed as well:
Moving on to Telltale’s other works, how well would you say Puzzle Agent did? Would you consider the Pilot Program a success?
Puzzle Agent we’re super excited about. It’s really resonated well with people and is doing super well on iPad. We’re also bringing it out on consoles as well. I think you’ll continue to see a lot of products coming out from Telltale that are different in concept. Poker Night At The Inventory is the next thing we have coming out in that vein and we’ll look and see how people respond to that but Puzzle Agent I would say has been a great success for us.
Does that success mean more Nelson Tethers games or more Pilot Program games?
Definitely more Pilot games. From a Nelson Tethers standpoint we’ve just got to sit down and think about what it takes to make the next one and put it through a green light process and see when we can get it done by.
How about more Monkey Island?
Well Tales went great for us as well. From our perspective telling the story over five episodes and being able to work with those characters, to work with classic characters like Guybrush and Elaine while also introducing our own characters like Morgan and Winslow was a great experience for the studio and a great opportunity to do a Telltale game that resonated with people. We loved it, it’s been successful on every channel it released on, as have the LucasArts remakes of the first two games. So the sheer love that people have for that franchise was immediately obvious and clear. So we’d love to do more, we still have details that need to be worked out with LucasArts in order to get it done and none of those details have been addressed yet. They recently changed management over there and I think they’re working on their strategy for where they want to go in the future. As soon as that gets sorted out we’ll certainly bring it up with them again.
That's a lot of text! But not as much as you can find in the whole interview.
Source: gamesTM
Ascovel
Star Wars - Wha!?.
The Tingler
Ascovel
Trying to make a successful IP completely from scratch is very risky and time-consuming, especially in todays oversaturated market (you need to develop the style, take more time with marketing). Puzzle Agent was a decent compromise - they took a relatively unknown IP of one of their employees and turned it into a game with his participation.
Or Star Wars.
Hit The Road - Yeah!
Star Wars - Wha!?.
Ascovel
Trying to make a successful IP completely from scratch is very risky and time-consuming, especially in todays oversaturated market (you need to develop the style, take more time with marketing). Puzzle Agent was a decent compromise - they took a relatively unknown IP of one of their employees and turned it into a game with his participation.
Or Star Wars.
ocki
He also mentions that the Universal titles will be designed in a more straightforward style contra the "convoluted style of Monkey Island and S&M", with more accessibility for new players.. I thought Tales of Monkey Island was a very straightforward game, and I'm sure that if BTTF will be an easier game puzzle-wize, there will be a huge rampage amongst the core TT-fans.
He might just mean that the surreal style of storytelling will be gone. Though I guess that would affect the puzzles too.
Trying to make a successful IP completely from scratch is very risky and time-consuming, especially in todays oversaturated market (you need to develop the style, take more time with marketing). Puzzle Agent was a decent compromise - they took a relatively unknown IP of one of their employees and turned it into a game with his participation.
The Tingler
Puzzle Agent IS a new, original IP, as is (to an extent) Poker Night At The Inventory. I'm sure future Pilots will be too.
Counter-argument:
In truth it's based on the Grickle-shorts, created by Graham Annable as much as Sam & Max is based of the comics by Steve Purcell.
That said, I can see why people considers Puzzle Agent as an original IP with mr Annable previously working for Telltale and all. In my opinion its a Grickle-game, developed by Telltale.
I was talking about a brand new concept, that aren't "based of" something that already exists..
ocki
Awesome interview! I'm sure Telltale will do it great in the future.
My only two concern are that Connors seems to hint that they won't focus on creating new IPs - only existing franchises. I would really like them to come up with something original for a change.
Puzzle Agent IS a new, original IP, as is (to an extent) Poker Night At The Inventory. I'm sure future Pilots will be too.
I'm glad he's honest about LucasArts. I would've thought he would finish at "we'd love to do it", but he gave the full reason. Good for him, nice to hear my suspicions about the Lucas House confirmed.
Awesome interview! I'm sure Telltale will do it great in the future.
My only two concern are that Connors seems to hint that they won't focus on creating new IPs - only existing franchises. I would really like them to come up with something original for a change.
He also mentions that the Universal titles will be designed in a more straightforward style contra the "convoluted style of Monkey Island and S&M", with more accessibility for new players.. I thought Tales of Monkey Island was a very straightforward game, and I'm sure that if BTTF will be an easier game puzzle-wize, there will be a huge rampage amongst the core TT-fans.
Cool to hear they are not afraid to speak about the future of Monkey Island and their discussions with LucasArts.
I also kind of want more Nelson Tethers, though I'm actually playing the pilot right now.