The Making of Poker Night?

[Irishmile]

Originally Posted by Tjibbbe

Ah, the lost Thumbcast. This is why we need a Telltale podcast, people. If Double Fine can do it, so can you guys! Don't let Schafer win this one.

I would love to hear more about those "crazy pie in the sky" features.

Yeah point a camera at Grossman that guy always cracks me up in interviews.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Tjibbbe

I would love to hear more about those "crazy pie in the sky" features.

Intricate currency system involving a bunch of non-essential non-unlockable items all with monetary values so you could bet and pass around items in combination of / in lieu of cash. "Second pass" at the bluffing system, where characters would show you their hands and laugh at you if they bluffed you out, with more intricate tells. Picture in picture for the hole card cam, like televised poker tournaments. Full first person free-look in the opening cutscene (probably the most gratuitous wishlist feature). There are a lot more. We tried a lot of super crazy stuff, like everyone does, but eventually drilled down to just a few core things that we liked/needed the most.

[RAnthonyMahan]

Interesting stuff.

I also heard you discussed in-jokes behind some of the dialogue. Care to explain a little of that?

Also, with Poker Night involving four different licenses, I have to wonder if there's some interesting stories. How familiar were the licensors with the other properties featured beforehand? (Did The Brothers Chaps know about Team Fortress 2? Was Jerry Holkins a fan of Sam and Max? You get the idea.) Was there anything Steve/Chaps/Valve/Jerry requested in the game? Or anything you wanted to include that they rejected? In one of the Penny Arcade blog posts Tycho mentioned writing some lines for other characters. Which ones?

Sorry for all the stupid questions, but it can't hurt to ask.

[Jake]

I think most all the franchises knew of each other to some degree. The Chaps wrote a lot of Strong Bad's dialog (like they did on SBCG4AP), and Jerry's feedback on Tycho was mostly making it even dirtier and weirder than we had it, but by and large the biggest feedback we got was that we were doing it right with the dialog, which was a huge relief!

As for the in-jokes behind the dialog, we talked about Paws Hogg: Poker Pro, and the Morale Moose, both of whom were fictional unlockable characters one of the programmers made up, based on weird shit floating around the office (we briefly came into the possession of a full size taxedermied moose, which was too big to fit up the stairs or the elevator, so he lived under the tree outside the office for a day, until someone picked him up off of our Craigslist ad, for instance).

[Gman5852]

Originally Posted by Bloody Eugene

80 days to make a videogame????
I know you are starving for dollars, but why you decided to publish such an "unmitigated disaster"? Working at Telltale means this?
The artistic direction of Poker Night is beautiful, but with this "incident" you lost a lot of reputation about givin' a stable and bug free release. Again.
This kind of logic is the real threat for a company like yours.

No more 80-days games, please. Or, at least, give them for free 'cause my money wasn't broken when I gave you!

Oh so the game was rushed. That makes sense on WHY there are a lot of bugs, but still. Really? Granted it is $5 but a delayed game is good eventually, a rushed game is bad forever and the game wasnt bad, it was fun and funny(the look on my friends face when he got both the giraffe line then the hedgedog line in a row is worth more than $5) but come on.