Q&A: Telltale's Connors On Episodic Gaming's FutureQ&A: Telltale's Connors On Episodic Gaming's Future

Author: by Tom Kim, Staff

While at GDC this year, Gamasutra caught up with Dan Connors, co-founder of episodic adventure game studio Telltale Games, the studio formed by LucasArts veterans whose most recent work includes CSI, Bone, and, of course, PC episodic gaming title Sam & Max: Season 1. In the course of the conversation, which was previously published in podcast form via our Gamasutra Podcast, we discuss Telltale's faith and success in its model of episodic gaming in light of Epic Games' Mark Rein's comments that episodic gaming was a "broken business," its partnership with online service GameTap, and the company's plans in bringing its lineup to Xbox Live and the Wii. Telltale's probably best known for doing the episodic release of the Sam & Max games. In light of Epic Games' VP Mark Rein's opinion that episodic gaming is a "broken business," how has the experiment been? What would you say to counter this argument? Dan Connors: First I'd say that the business is just getting started, so it's a little early in the process to declare it as "broken." From what we've seen so far, the opportunities that we have to make revenue across multiple ways of releasing the product and delivering the product shows to us that there is profit to be made there, and there's great content to be made there as well. The key for us is to build products that take advantage of the fact that we're doing it episodically and build a product that people can enjoy because it's episodic. That's our big goal for this year. Some might say that's not much different from the existing model. You have a core technology and you make content for it, iterate on it, and release. In some ways, people are skeptical of the episodic model because there is a ramp-up to getting your core technology in place before you start production. There's a certain amount of momentum that's built up and a return on investment that you need to ensure before you can make the content. How did you get past that initial hill of production in technology? DC: We started on the technology immediately, with a vision for what we would make the technology capable of, which was making it possible for a production team of ten to twelve people to release a game every month. Way back with our Texas Hold 'Em and Bone games, we were building out the systems required to execute what we've done. What we did was we were actually receiving revenue on the development on the engine as we were going, so it wasn't like we had to build everything out before we realized any revenue on it. That may be unique to Telltale. I'd say if it is about building out core technologies, then it's a matter of how much are you investing versus the return on that. Certainly, if you could pump out 24 pieces of content in 24 months and bring it all to market, you're going to make up on that investment. It's just a matter of how many units you need to put together to recoup your investment. Was doing an episodic release schedule something you had in mind when you were developing that technology, or did you just kind of happen upon that model because you had a technology that was in place that you could use to do that? DC: We definitely started the company with episodic development in mind. It was an idea that we could keep a steady stream of content in the marketplace and keep it fresh in peoples' minds every month. The company was built from the ground up for episodic delivery through digital distribution. So you're four episodes in, right now. How successful has your experiment been? DC: It's been a huge success for us. The team is happy on every level -- the level of quality of the product, the ability to deliver on the Sam & Max flavor has been great, and we're really happy with the response from the audience. We continue to have people get introduced to Sam & Max on a daily basis. There's always new fans coming over because the games are so accessible. GameTap's distribution has introduced us to a whole new level of people who are outside of the game world and might not have heard of Sam & Max before. We even saw a commercial for Sam & Max on The Colbert Report one night, so it's getting good exposure on that level. From a financial standpoint, it's definitely a profitable endeavor for us, and what more can you ask for than that, really? How is your partnership with GameTap structured? Right now it seems like Sam & Max and Myst Online: Uru Live are doing interesting things with Gametap. It was initially perceived as this kind of portal for media and casual games, but with your offering and the Myst guys' offering, it seems to be converting GameTap into something that feels more like a publisher or digital distribution channel. Are you exclusive to GameTap, or are you considering other portals for the distribution of your content? What are the costs and benefits of this? DC: The big cost for us has been sharing the audience. The Sam & Max audience has been dedicated to us, so breaking it up into two groups was a tough choice to make. But with GameTap pushing out for new consumers, it weighs as a balance. Right now there is exclusivity around the deal, so you don't see Sam & Max on a lot of other channels, aside from Gametap and Telltale Games. We actually think that's a good thing, because that allows us to keep the value in the product. It doesn't make it everywhere and cheapen it. We will be moving out to other partners, though, and that is allowed in the deal. So you will see us from some other distribution channels, but we're being very careful about where we distribute from, and we want to be sure that those partners have audiences that understand what we're doing, and that they're making an effort to educate their audience on what we're doing. We want people to want Sam & Max to be on their site because it's attractive to people and because it brings traffic. That should be beneficial to us. I think from GameTap's standpoint, that's what they want, too. They want to put a piece of content out there that's a full product, so that it brings people in and introduces them to the rest of their offerings. That's really what Sam & Max and Uru are providing for them. They're shifting a little bit to attract more people to their site, but I think it's a good strategy. I've noticed a post on your job entry for an Xbox systems programmer. That would seem to imply certain things. There was also a recent posting on the Telltale blog about Sam & Max on the Wii. Do you care to comment on either of those little tidbits of information? DC: We definitely do hire programmers into our studio, and we want to build out the studio and start getting the engine over onto every console, especially with Xbox Live Arcade having so much traction. And with Virtual Console, there's a lot of people interested in getting content downloaded, and that's what we specialize in. We want to be in on those channels without a doubt, and that's something we're working on at the studio to get done. Obviously, a lot goes into these things from a business perspective before it happens, and that's just something that we're working on and trying to get clarity on. How do you score the pricing model for episodic content? Right now you've got a lot of different ways for consumers to acquire your games. You've got a per-episode rate, a four-episode package, and subscription-based content on GameTap. Do you think this fragmentation might confuse consumers? DC: As far as the pricing model is concerned, Telltale really worked hard to put together a proposition that was fair to consumers, and made them feel good about the amount of content that was being delivered. The pricing issue around episodic games and download distribution has been a topic of conversation for the last two or three years. A lot of people looked at the casual market and said, "OK, it's $19.99 and that's what you should pay for a downloadable product," but that casual audience and the audience that downloads Telltale games are definitely different. Any person who has any experience with a retail product views pricing as hours played versus cost per hour. We've worked into tailoring the right pricing model to make everyone satisfied at the end of the day with the amount of content they're getting. We launched Bone at $19.99, and it took a lot of punches for that. We've tweaked it since then to be something that is good for consumers, and as far as giving consumers choice, I think that's a great thing. The industry needs to figure out what it is that people want from episodic games and from downloadable games, and then deliver that for them. Price is a big part of the equation, and web pricing in general is different from retail pricing, there's really no doubt about it. We've really got to keep massaging that, and I think Telltale is as close as anybody. You mentioned that the measure was hours played versus cost. It might be said that it's also quality versus cost. Some people have said that they don't care about time with Sam & Max -- they only care about a high-quality product that is faithful to the franchise. In light of that, did you approach the product with any trepidation, in dealing with such a beloved property? DC: Not really, because a lot of people at Telltale are from LucasArts. Star Wars and Indiana Jones were big, beloved franchises, and then we moved on to start our company with CSI and Bone. We don't look at licenses and think of how many licensing eyeballs it's going to get us, how big the marketing span is, or whether it's going to be seen at McDonald's at the time of launch. We look it at from the perspective that a license is great because its creator has done a great job at developing the license, and we want to build on that. From our standpoint, we would only select beloved licenses because we want the quality of the content. We want the quality writing. We want the quality character design. We want all the good things about the license that are creative. I think that's something that's unique to Telltale. There's a lot of times where people will just stamp a license on something, but we want to create the interactive version of the license and keep the integrity of the license. Sam & Max is somewhat niche, and one of the first things you worked with -- the Bone franchise -- was also somewhat niche. In the short history of your episodic releases, arguably you have a winner in Sam & Max and what some would call a "loser" in Bone. You mentioned some of the criticism that was leveled at Bone -- would you like to talk about what you've learned from that, and if you have more plans with working with that franchise? DC: Everyone at the studio loves Bone, and loves working with that story. It's still a great story, and Jeff Smith still did a great job with it. The best parts are about to come, and that's the most exciting thing for us. The big difference between Bone and Sam & Max, from a difficulty of execution standpoint, is that Sam & Max is a random comic book. They can be anywhere at any time, and people don't really care as long as it follows a Sam & Max-ian twisted logic. Bone is a story that takes place over thirteen books, and you need to carry that drama across and execute that character development, and breaking it up into smaller chunks is a little less attractive, though that is how Jeff wrote it. I think that as we get our chops up, revisiting it and adding those dramatic threads and executing on the storytelling is what we're looking to do with that. There's a lot of challenge in telling an epic story, whereasSam & Max gives us a lot more freedom to take chances and create something new, fresh, and unique. Speaking of freedom and taking chances, it seems like you're taking a bunch of chances with your business model and your business itself. Would you care to talk about Telltale and how it's structured? You seem to cover a gamut of content and investment in several different areas. You've got Sam & Max, the CSI title, and Texas Hold 'Em. You've also got other properties that you're distributing through your website -- Law & Order, Ankh, Al Emmo, and Samorost, for example -- things that you didn't develop, but you're distributing for the people. You've got a bunch of different eggs in different baskets here. DC: We want to be more than just a developer. We go out and license product, build with that product with our internal studio, have a distribution channel, and we publish into other distribution channels online. We want to own our audience. We want to be the guys that have the distribution channel, so we can build product for it, and that's where the value in the company really is. Trying to find games that work inside that distribution channel just makes sense for us. It's stuff we think our fans would like or be interested in, and the more we can bring content to that audience to keep them fed, the longer they'll stay around, and the more beneficial it'll be for us, our partners, and our fanbase. We're working together to tailor this experience for everybody in a way that works. I think that's the beauty of being an online portal. It's a really tight feedback loop with the audience, and we're able to refine things over time to match the audience. At the same time, we're using that to grow and introduce new people, and have a community that's fun to be involved with. It seems that by not exclusively being a developer, it gives you a little more flexibility with your funding options. You have funding from a variety of different sources. Are you pursuing a publishing partnership with Sam & Max, or are you going to do that on your own? DC: We will be working with a publisher for the Season 1 retail version. We've come in with the license and the built product, and we funded the product, so it's really more of a distribution type of relationship. It's exciting for us to be a part of it. It's a good way of getting it in front of even more eyeballs, while continuing to build the audience. How do you feel that diversity affects your attractiveness as a company to be funded by investors and partnered with? DC: The more you can own, and the more rights that you have, the better. The more ways you can get those rights out, and the more ways you can maintain those rights and move them across different channels to your audience, the better off you'll be. That's what people are investing in. No investor in the world will give you five or ten million bucks and think you'll compete against the retail channel and the publishers, or think you'll build a great company working just with publishers without having any control over what you do. They're investing in you, what you can control, and how you can monetize what you control. That's firmly evidenced by your choice of genre you've put forth in your product offerings. Do you have any plans to support any other genres of gameplay other than what you're doing right now with your current technology? DC: We're really interested in character interaction. We feel like we present characters in a way that hasn't been done before, so even though it feels like an old genre because of the gameplay mechanic, the experience is pretty unique in the amount of camera cuts there are, the amount of emotion being expressed by the characters, and the timing on the jokes. It really is an interactive cartoon. Right now, we're thinking about ways to focus on improving some of our interactive systems to make it a little easier to choose what you're going to say, and focus more on personality to make characters more expressive and responsive to user feedback. Our focus is on proving what we're doing. We believe that the mechanic we're using creates an easily accessible interactive experience built around some puzzling and interacting with characters. It has a shot to get out there and make it into the mass audience. That's the goal for what we're doing, and now we just want to improve the mechanics to make it more accessible to even more people. There was a postmortem feature for Sam & Max in the latest issue of Game Developer Magazine. How exactly does one do a postmortem on an episodic title? DC: "We're not dead yet!" We've learned a lot in the first three games -- you can see that in the fourth. Just getting the thing off the ground had pains, so hopefully it'll go on forever, and we can do a postmortem at the end of the season as well that talks about the thing holistically. Even at this point, though, with Telltale pulling off four episodes in five months, there's enough meat there for people to say, "Hey, how the heck did you do that? How did you get there?" Then if we just finish up episodes five and six, there will probably be more information, but I think you'll get the bulk of our problems noted by the fourth, and we'll be recalibrated for five and six. There might be a couple of new ones, but I think most of the bad things have already happened.