For some at Telltale, the news was a shock. In November 2017, the company announced that it was laying off 90 developers, roughly a quarter of its staff. Soon, it would capture the attention of some of Hollywood’s most well-loved franchises, delivering spinoff games like Batman, Game of Thrones, and Guardians of the Galaxy that focused on narrative and emotional investment instead of action or bombastic set pieces.īut the studio’s meteoric rise would not last. The company began hiring at a breakneck speed, tripling its headcount over just a few years. Over the next several months, awards for The Walking Dead continued to pile up - a pivotal and defining moment for a studio that had been in a challenging financial situation just a year before. And in an industry where storytelling often takes a back seat to “fun” gameplay, the win established Telltale as a successful developer that valued storytelling and character development above all else. Shortly before two women in sparkly outfits ushered everyone offstage, Vanaman abruptly pulled the statue from Bruner’s hand in a moment that appeared unplanned and said, “We work with the most talented people on the planet.”Īt the time, Telltale was a studio of under 100 people, small by mainstream studio standards where headcounts can range from hundreds to thousands. Neither of them was named onstage for their work in creating the studio’s biggest creative success. Bruner, in turn, gestured two others onstage: Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, the project leads and co-creators of the game, thanking them for creating the game’s heroes. Kirkman accepted the large, black statue from Saldana with both hands and handed it off to Connors and Bruner. The Telltale Games team, including co-founders Kevin Bruner and Dan Connors, and The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, made their way onstage to accept the award. Its emotional, storytelling-focused take on the popular zombie franchise beat out hugely popular games like Dishonored and Mass Effect 3 that required hundreds of developers and cost tens of millions of dollars to make.
The win was a huge coup for its relatively small developer, Telltale Games. In 2012, on a light-drenched stage amid screams and cheers, Star Trek actress Zoe Saldana announced Spike Video Game Awards’ game of the year: The Walking Dead.