Telltale Fans Exclusive Interview!

[Heatherlee]

Dear Telltale Fans,

Because of your continued loyalty and love we have decided to give you, our stalwart fans, a chance to interview the Telltale team.

Here’s how this will work:

Amongst yourselves choose a moderator for this project. I don’t care how you do it, its completely up to you. I would recommend someone who works well with others.

Use the bulletin board to discuss which questions you would like to ask. They could be about anything related to Telltale…our staff members, Bone, Hold Em, Dank, donuts…anything.

You get 20 questions. (Multi-part questions will be disqualified).

Once you are satisfied, the moderator is in charge of making sure the questions are what everyone is expecting and then posting them.

I will make sure the correct people answer the questions. The answers will be in the next Telltale Blog.


During the above process, I will attempt to help you out by heading off any questions to which I am pretty sure the answer would be along the lines of “we can’t tell you.” (You probably have a decent idea of what these are). I don't promise I'll catch them all, though.


So there you have it. A Telltale Fans Exclusive Interview. Feel free to start a new thread to get organized, or just use this thread. The choice is up to you.

[Alucard]

Alright ! It seems my post was heard. I look forward to this interview.

[anonima]

Ok, so, who's the master?

[anonima]

Anyone with above average secretarial skills? Preferably someone that checks the forum daily.

Though I think the best way to do this would be to have a 'question' thread, first post made by the moderater who can edit her or his post to include all 20 questions (question debate would go on below obviously.

[anonima]

Wow, this is cool idea.

[Alucard]

ok well we can figure out who the figure head will be later. I think this would be a good place to start posting possible questions and then we can vote or something from there.

[anonima]

Great. Here's my question.

"What does it take to start a company like Telltale and what are the processes that you had to go through before you started any of the pre-production on your first title?"

By the way, if JP shows up anytime soon, I think he should be our mod because of all that experiance he has had over at mixnmojo. Only if he wants to though....

[Heatherlee]

That's a two-part question my friend. Re-read the rules:
"Multi-part questions will be disqualified".

try again.

[Alucard]

yeah we could break that up. My questions are mostly to bone. is a release date been set. can we expect to see a demo in the future or near future. If dank is going to get his own game or will appear in other tell tale games. If bone will have any new twists compared to that of a normal adventure game.

[Alucard]

oh and will bone be released in retail stores

[jp-30]

By the way, if JP shows up anytime soon, I think he should be our mod because of all that experiance he has had over at mixnmojo. Only if he wants to though....

I quite like the vote & sort it all out by consensus within the thread idea, personally. Anyway, if this is Alucard's idea, he should be the Grand Pooh-Bah when it comes to delivering the 20 questions.

My potential questions (obviously only one of these will probably actually get asked);

Will the 3D engine you have developed / are developing ever be licensed for use by a 3rd party developer?

What are your potential distribution & marketing channels for Bone outside of the internet?

How do you propose to market the Bone games to 'Bone' / comic fans, rather than Adventure Game fans?

[Udvarnoky]

Anything about the deceased Sam & Max: Freelance Police you can share? At all??!

[Alucard]

well I possibly could be the so called " Grand Pooh-Bah " of this if people would want me to. I guess I do haunt the forum a fair bit. Though if anyone else wants to give it a go thats great too. JP from the sounds of it you have lots of xp in this area. Lets see what questions we get overall. We might only end up with 30 questions or something so it won't be hard to sort though and probably not much to vote on

[anonima]

Okay, fair enough. Here's another one.

Were there any other franchises besides Bone and Sam and Max that you were considering?

[Alucard]

I like that one. I wonder how much they would be willing to tell us

[anonima]

One quick question off the top of my head...

Where does Telltale go when they are looking for talent for voices or other aspects like that? Would someone, meaning I, be able to audition for a Telltale game?

[anonima]

Ok, let's go:

"Are you going to produce translated versions of your games?"

"Is the game engine full real-time 3D or simply the classic 2d/3d hybrid?"

Ciao,
Dom

[anonima]

Didn't they say it that their engine was going to be full 3D anyway? That's not my question to Telltale.

[anonima]

Didn't they say it that their engine was going to be full 3D anyway? That's not my question to Telltale.

That's what they said, but the environment graphics in the Bone teaser looks pre-rendered to me.

[anonima]

I was thinking... After this 20 questions thing is over, are we still allowed to ask questions? Or do we have to shut up? hehe

[anonima]

I've got a couple. Is The Blades of Stenchtar going to be a real game?

or

whatever happened to the hole in Brendan's closet?

[anonima]

We still need more questions. Here are a couple.

Was Dank always going to be a comic?

[anonima]

- What sort of development tools are you using to create the game?

- What games are your major influences on the design of Bone.

- How do you plan to market Bone.

- In the short teaser clip of Bone, Bone appears to be following the cursor around. Do you plan to create interactivity between the characters and the player? (breaking the 4th wall so to speak).

- How has Telltale Texas Hold Em' performed in contrast to your expectations?

[anonima]

I recommend at trying at least a bit to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no," unless it's a really important cool question. You can come up with one-part questions that yield a lot of information if you're careful.

[jp-30]

Also a good number of these questions have already been answerd in various online interviews. So before the final question cull those answers should be collated from the various sources, posted here, and the questions removed from pool.

[anonima]

So before the final question cull those answers should be collated from the various sources, posted here, and the questions removed from pool.

Maybe someone should just put together an ultimate FAQ thread or webpage somewhere. Probably not the best thing to clog this thread with ¬ ¬

[Alucard]

thats a pretty good idea. Anyone really up to date on the interviews on the other sites? or know some questions that should get the ax right away? I imagine we're somewhere near 20 by now.

[jp-30]

Maybe someone should just put together an ultimate FAQ thread or webpage somewhere. Probably not the best thing to clog this thread with ? ?

Is that telltaled (http://telltaled.vze.com/) fan-site still running? (edit: no, by the looks - they've not even updated with the Bone announcement)

thats a pretty good idea. Anyone really up to date on the interviews on the other sites? or know some questions that should get the ax right away? I imagine we're somewhere near 20 by now.

Yeah, Im pretty up with the play as far as the interviews go - when I get a chance (leter today I hope) I'll see which questions already have substantial answers elsewhere and post it all (in a new thread in the Bone Pre-Game forum, I guess).

[anonima]

I imagine we're somewhere near 20 by now.
35 actually

I've made a list of all the questions in the order they were posted.

1. What does it take to start a company like Telltale? -Burn
2. Does Bone have a release date been set? -Alucard
3. Can we expect to see a Bone demo in the near future? -Alucard
4. Will Bone be released in Retail stores? -Alucard
5. Will the 3D engine you have developed/ are developing ever be licensed for use by a 3rd party developer? -JP
6. What are your potential distribution and marketing channels for bone outside the internet? -JP
7.How do you propose to market the Bone games to Bone/comic fans, rather than adventure games? -JP
8. Anything about the deceased Sam and Max Freelance Police you can share? -Udvarnorky
9. Were there any other franchises besides Sam and Max you were considering? -Burn
10. Were does Telltale go when they are looking for voices or other aspects like that? -misanthrope
11. Would someone, meaning I, be able to audition for a Telltale game? -misanthrope
12. Are you going to produce translated versions of your games? -Diduz
13. Is the game engine full real time 3D or simply classic 2D/3D hybrid? -Diduz
14. Is Blades of Stenchtar going to be a real game? -ThreeHeadedMonkey
15. Whatever happened to the whole in Brendan's closet? -ThreeHeadedMonkey
16. Was Dank always going to be a comic? -Burn
17. What sort of developement tools are you using to create the game? -Vark
18. What games are your major influences on the design of Bone? -Vark
19. How do you plan to market Bone?
20. In the short teaser clip of Bone, Bone appears to be following the cursor around. Do you plan to create interactivity between the characters and player? -Vark
21. How has Telltale Texas Hold Em' performed in contrast to your expectations? -Vark
22. What is the most difficult part for working at Telltale? -Burn
23. Are you going to cater to the still significant part of the gaming community (especially outside of the USA) who are not broadband enabled and for whom a 15 MB download is offputting? -JP
24. How often will the episodes of Bone be released? -spf1978
25. How much will the episodes cost? -spf1978
26. Will the Bone games include the infamous "cut-scenes" that many other adventure games employ as a story-telling device?
27. What are your future plans for the characters from TT Texas Holdem? -spf1978
28. How did you get to be so cool? -spf1978
29. Whats the pay structure for those at tell tale? -Alucard
30. What does an entry level position make vs a lead? -Alucard
31. What are the hours like?(hopefully not as evil as EA =P) -Alucard
32. Will there be a physical medium avialable for BONE? In otherwords a CD. -smileyfaceman
33. Will the supporting characters have some kind of AI or will they just have set dialogue paths like previous adventure games? -smileyfaceman
34. Will there be multiple player-controlled characters per title? -smileyfaceman
35. How would someone go about getting an entry level position at TellTale if they have little to no industry experiance? -smileyfaceman
36. You were mentioning in an early interview that you were planning to have a schedule eventually for episodic releases of several game-series, is that something you're still planning to do, or is Bone the main focus for now?- Apignarb
37. Are you planning to exclusively distribute all your games electronically, or are you considering other options aswell? -Apignarb
38. What can we expect from the game-engine, how is it shaping up? -Apignarb
39. Being that many of you were on the Sam&Max team, and founding TellTale was in part inspired by the cancellation of that project, do you have any juicy tidbits to share with us about the game, or the making of the game? -Apignarb
40. Don't you think it's a bit of a risky move to exclusively distributed your games digitally, seeing as most companies who have walked that road before you, has failed? -Apignarb
41. How will you succeed, where others have failed? -Apignarb
42. Describe a typical workday at TellTale. -Apignarb
43. Do you have any plans for any other games than Bone yet, maybe even working on other ideas during the development of Bone? -Apignarb
44. Who killed Brendan? -Apignarb


Few, done. I think that is enough.

[anonima]

you could even reword my questions into one to make it an even 20.

How would someone go about auditioning for voice talent for your games?

[Alucard]

do you have any voice samples ?

[anonima]

If I were to take a random bet I'd say that I don't think they've done the voice casting for Bone yet

[anonima]

Maybe someone should just put together an ultimate FAQ thread or webpage somewhere.


Okay, we should just use this as a rough draft at the moment. Then when we have all the questions ,( Maybe aim for a good selection of questions around 30-40), we can start another thread where we start eliminating questions.

Heres more of my questions.

What is the most difficult part for working at Telltale?

[jp-30]

Here's another from me;

Are you going to cater to the still significant part of the gaming community (especially outside of the USA) who are not broadband enabled and for whom a 15 MB download is offputting?

[Steve2000]

My questions:

How often will the episodes of Bone be released?
How much will the episodes cost?
Will the Bone games include the infamous "cut-scenes" that many other adventure games employ as a story-telling device?
What are your future plans for the characters from TT Texas Holdem?
How did you get to be so cool?

[Alucard]

oh here is another ( though it's going to be very multipartish so it will have to be reworked)

Whats the pay structure for those at tell tale? What does an entry level position make vs a lead? What are the hours like?(hopefully not as evil as EA =P)

[anonima]

unfortunately i dont have any samples ready at this point, but soon i will. i like speaking in accents and i'm pretty good at impressions off the top of my head.

[anonima]

As usual I come in late.
Most of my questions are taken already, but...

-Will there be a physical medium avialable for BONE? In otherwords a CD.

-Will the supporting characters have some kind of AI or will they just have set dialogue paths like previous adventure games?

-Will there be multiple player-controlled characters per title?

(And off of Alucard's question...)
-How would someone go about getting an entry level position at TellTale if they have little to no industry experiance? :((

That's all for now.

[anonima]

Great that's 35. Let's start up round 2. The elimination. Last minute entries will be excepted.

[apignarb]

I have some additions, if I may. Some are rephrasings of some topics that are touched upon by others.

You were mentioning in an early interview that you were planning to have a schedule eventually for episodic releases of several game-series, is that something you're still planning to do, or is Bone the main focus for now?

Are you planning to exclusively distribute all your games electronically, or are you considering other options aswell?

What can we expect from the game-engine, how is it shaping up?

Being that many of you were on the Sam&Max team, and founding TellTale was in part inspired by the cancellation of that project, do you have any juicy tidbits to share with us about the game, or the making of the game?

Don't you think it's a bit of a risky move to exclusively distributed your games digitally, seeing as most companies who have walked that road before you, has failed? How will you succeed, where others have failed?

Describe a typical workday at TellTale.

Do you have any plans for any other games than Bone yet, maybe even working on other ideas during the development of Bone?

Who killed Brendan?

i guess that will do.

[anonima]

I've added yours Apignarb, but I don't think we can take anymore. As it is we will have to cut half of the questions away.

[anonima]

who's brendan?

[anonima]

I have a question for Kevin Bruner:

-Will we see "buttless ice chaps" in any of Telltale's games?

[apignarb]

Quality before quantity my friend. Anyways, alot of the questions touch upon the same topics.