Telltale, GameTap Talk Episodic Content, Digital Distribution

In today's Gamasutra cover feature, Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors and Gametap Vice President of Marketing David Reid discuss episodic content, digital distribution, and the future of Sam & Max, in our follow-up to last week's interview with Telltale Senior Designer Dave Grossman. In the following extract, Connors responds to an inquiry about developing episodic content - such as Telltale's Bone and Sam & Max series - for major console distribution, such as on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation 3: "Figuring out this whole episodic move-over into distribution, it's something that you have to be there to learn the behavior of the audience, and what the consumers want, and start tailoring the products in that direction. So the fact that Telltale's sort of jumped in the water and learned how to swim, we're starting to see that we're in a position to work with Xbox and Sony to deliver content for their system that's right. Again, it's this broadband-friendly, higher quality product than just Bejeweled. It's either a Bejeweled / Tetris kind of thing, or whatever huge title, like…Oblivion. And there's a ton of space in-between, you know. Oblivion isn't broadband friendly, and Bejeweled is not an Xbox title. So there's this whole space that needs to be filled, and Telltale's kind of commitment two years ago to fill this role has put us in the position to be the right answer for people like Xbox and Sony." You can read the full Gamasutra feature for more, including exclusive insight into how a relatively small developer like Telltale can survive in Northern California (no registration required).