Telltale Games revival is aiming for a "stable, non-crunch work environment"
"We are a new company - with different ownership and management, and a different approach as to how we structure a studio"
Earlier this year, LCG Entertainment relaunched Telltale Games. And now with the reforged studio's first project -- The Wolf Among Us 2 -- out in the open, it's beginning to publicly reckon with the legacy of its predecessor.
Speaking to IGN, LCG Entertainment/Telltale CEO Jaimie Ottilie addressed the confusion between old and new Telltale. Because while the new form of Telltale has taken the name and some of the IPs of the old, but it would be inaccurate to conflate the two. LCG Entertainment is an entirely different business from former Telltale Games, and while some of Telltale's former employees have been hired back on (including The Wolf Among Us directors Nick Herman and Dennis Lenart, writer Pierre Shorette, and former VP of engineerings Zac Litton), the studio wants to make it clear that it's not trying to ride Telltale's legacy.
"We're frustrated by people who have suggested this is opportunistic or simply a money grab for the catalog of games without even giving us a chance," said Ottilie. "We have all jumped into this with the intention of standing the company back up and continuing the legacy of telling stories that people want to play. However, most of this was expected and, really, all we can do is put our heads down and focus on making great content worthy of the Telltale name."
That includes the good, and the bad. When the old Telltale crumbled in full in September of last year with mass layoffs affecting around 270, fingers pointed at (among other things) a harmful culture of crunch and risky management decisions to put all the studio's hopes on a single investor.
"We are taking a measured and methodical approach to growth in order to ensure we can provide a stable, non-crunch work environment. We are building this into our culture from the outset," Ottilie said.
"All we can do is be forthcoming; we can't control whether critics hear or believe us. The truth is we are a new company - with different ownership and management, and a different approach as to how we structure a studio in today's market."