Telltale's Game of Thrones Took a Year to Get Off the Ground

[Cognimancer]

Telltale's Game of Thrones Took a Year to Get Off the Ground

Telltale loves working with big franchises with great characters, but it isn't easy to get the rights to series like Game of Thrones.

Telltale has an awful lot of irons in the fire right now. The developer is currently working on season two of The Walking Dead, as well as The Wolf Among Us, and two more games have just been announced: Tales From The Borderlands and a Game of Thrones adaptation. That last one won't be coming for a long while, but it's understandable that Telltale is excited about it - the developers have been trying to get permission from HBO for over a year.

"We want franchises that are really difficult to translate into traditional gaming," explains Telltale's Steve Allison. "We don't want to make another Walking Dead first-person shooter. What works with the franchises we have is the characters, the story and drama and the relationships. We look for franchises that are huge and have all those elements."
Using those criteria, the Telltale team decided to approach HBO to ask about a Game of Thrones video game, and kept at it. More than a year later, HBO finally gave them what they needed: a multi-year, multi-title deal working with the Game of Thrones IP.

Telltale's Game of Thrones is still very early in development, and will likely remain on the back burner until work on The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead finishes up. The first episode is set for a 2014 release, though, so fans won't have to wait too long for winter to come again.

Source: Polygon [http://www.polygon.com/2013/12/23/5224694/how-telltale-teamed-up-with-game-of-thrones-and-borderlands]

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[teebeeohh]

this actually makes me worried, it sounds very much like they are rushing the game a bit. i have no clue how long development of a telltale game usually takes but a year and change seems awfully short when you are working on so many project.
if anything has to, i hope the borderlands thing suffers in quality.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

this actually makes me worried, it sounds very much like they are rushing the game a bit. i have no clue how long development of a telltale game usually takes but a year and change seems awfully short when you are working on so many project.
if anything has to, i hope the borderlands thing suffers in quality.

Well, remember that the episodes usually are pretty short, so I think the time will suffice.

 

[Sight Unseen]

this actually makes me worried, it sounds very much like they are rushing the game a bit. i have no clue how long development of a telltale game usually takes but a year and change seems awfully short when you are working on so many project.
if anything has to, i hope the borderlands thing suffers in quality.

Well, remember that the episodes usually are pretty short, so I think the time will suffice.

Not to mention that they probably had at least some kind of a story idea put together to pitch to HBO. I can't imagine they just went to HBO and asked them for the rights to their current cash cow without a pretty decent story framework already set up. If they did, I'm sure HBO probably would have thrown them out of their offices.

 

[truckspond]

Telltale are masters of episodic gaming. If they could make a good game out of what another developer turned into The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct then they should be able to handle Game of Thrones

 

[teebeeohh]

this actually makes me worried, it sounds very much like they are rushing the game a bit. i have no clue how long development of a telltale game usually takes but a year and change seems awfully short when you are working on so many project.
if anything has to, i hope the borderlands thing suffers in quality.

Well, remember that the episodes usually are pretty short, so I think the time will suffice.

crafting a story that is as good as TWD takes and effort and ideally that should be done for all episodes before the first one ships. i know some people think writing is something that happens on its own by voodoo magic but that stuff is actually hard work. on the other hand the fact that they tried to get this really hard and are more or less on their own timetable with the wolf among us and TWD probably means we won't get a bad episode next Christmas but still, this means that telltale working on four games at a time was more bad timing(because they did not know when and if they were gonna get the OK from HBO) and less something they planned to drown us in pure awesome next year.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

this actually makes me worried, it sounds very much like they are rushing the game a bit. i have no clue how long development of a telltale game usually takes but a year and change seems awfully short when you are working on so many project.
if anything has to, i hope the borderlands thing suffers in quality.

Well, remember that the episodes usually are pretty short, so I think the time will suffice.

crafting a story that is as good as TWD takes and effort and ideally that should be done for all episodes before the first one ships. i know some people think writing is something that happens on its own by voodoo magic but that stuff is actually hard work. on the other hand the fact that they tried to get this really hard and are more or less on their own timetable with the wolf among us and TWD probably means we won't get a bad episode next Christmas but still, this means that telltale working on four games at a time was more bad timing(because they did not know when and if they were gonna get the OK from HBO) and less something they planned to drown us in pure awesome next year.

I spoke actually from more of a development view, not a writing view. I'm no fool to how writing works, and I get that Telltale writes very much in advance, otherwise TWD wouldn't have worked as well as it did and make me cry unmanly tears. I'd say that they've got the pre-production going well for them, where the story is finished way before the development starts, and that had to be the case if they were to pitch an idea to HBO. Maybe they didn't have a full story, but I'm pretty sure they had the main points figured out.

 

[dragongit]

I assume the meeting went something like this

Telltale: Will you allow us to make a point and click adventure game.

George R R Martin: Will there be a chance that everyone will die?

Telltale: Yes.

George R R Martin: Sold.

 

[Scorpid]

NVM!

::EDITED::

 

[Gary Thompson]

What kind of art style are they going to use with GoT?

I can't see the comic book style they used for TWAU and TWD working in ASoIaF, it just doesn't sit right to me.

 

[Baldr]

Telltale are masters of episodic gaming. If they could make a good game out of what another developer turned into The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct then they should be able to handle Game of Thrones

Um did you play the horrible Back to the Future games? The story and gameplay were almost unbearable, I have not played another of their games because of this.

 

[[REDACTED]]

Telltale are masters of episodic gaming. If they could make a good game out of what another developer turned into The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct then they should be able to handle Game of Thrones

Um did you play the horrible Back to the Future games? The story and gameplay were almost unbearable, I have not played another of their games because of this.

They've improved. Really improved. And considering the amazing first episode of The Wolf Among Us, that improvement definitely isn't a fluke.

 

[truckspond]

]

Telltale are masters of episodic gaming. If they could make a good game out of what another developer turned into The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct then they should be able to handle Game of Thrones

Um did you play the horrible Back to the Future games? The story and gameplay were almost unbearable, I have not played another of their games because of this.

They've improved. Really improved. And considering the amazing first episode of The Wolf Among Us, that improvement definitely isn't a fluke.

That's just what I was about to say!

And the BTTF games were not as bad as people are making them out to be! (Haven't played the Jurassic Park one though). Just take a look at the reviews of The Walking Dead seasons 1 and 2 and The Wolf Among Us and it should be quite clear that the BTTF games were a small mistake that was promptly corrected