Telltale Q&A

>>Games Learning from TV: The Sam & Max Story

Yahoo! Video Games: Which came first for Telltale - the Sam & Max license, or the desire to make an episodic series of adventure games?

Brendan Ferguson: Telltale has been geared towards developing episodic games since its inception. In fact, we created two episodes in the Bone series before Sam & Max were even born. But whereas Bone tells a story with an epic sweep, Sam & Max's adventures are better suited to punchier, more frequent games. The quest to be true to Sam & Max gave us a chance to push the episodic model much further than ever before.

YVG: How long does a Sam & Max episode take to make? Did you work on one at a time, or did you have multiple episodes in various states of development simultaneously?

BF: It took a little over a year to make all six episodes of Season 1, or about two months per episode, but we don't work on them one at a time. We have a production pipeline that's divided into three main stages. First the designers come up with the story and gameplay for an episode, then one part of the team comes in to program the game and create the basic art assets, and finally the rest of the team arrives to put it all together for the final product. In the meantime, the designers have already finished designing the next episode, and the cycle continues. From start to finish, it takes about three months to complete an episode, overlapping in that style.

YVG: How does such a tight schedule impact your team? Do Telltale stress levels run higher than a team with a more normal schedule?

BF: Our stress level is probably similar to most game companies as measured in total fistfights per hour, but they're just a little more evenly distributed. Whereas other game companies likely have longer lulls and longer grinds, we need to remain pretty productive all the time. With each episode our production gets a tiny bit smoother and faster. Of course, that just means we designers push to have even more content each episode, but we hope that will make the games get better and better!

YVG: Now that Season 1 is wrapped up, how do you feel about your episodic model? Do you view it as an economic success?

BF: I haven't checked the latest sales numbers, but last I heard we'd sold about four copies for every man, woman, and child on planet Earth. Bald-faced lies aside, let's just say that we're looking into making more episodic series, because it's proven to be a successful way to make quality games consistently.

YVG: On the same note, why did you succeed with an episodic model where other developers did not?

BF: As with any new endeavor, practice makes perfect. Telltale has the benefit of having been designed to work under an episodic model, and we've had a chance to develop and perfect our processes over the last two-plus years. It's the same method we used to become champion yodelers, a skill we'll unveil on our website any day now.