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[This postmortem for Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead was originally published in the March 2013 issue of Game Developer Magazine. The original text has been restored in full, along with select visuals. To see the article in full, visit the .PDF at the GDC Vault archives.]Telltale is a bit completely different out of your typical recreation firm. We carry a few of the greatest tales from TV and movie and make episodic “story” video games from them. We do our personal licensing, design, improvement, publishing, and advertising and marketing, all below the identical roof. We additionally are likely to make product choices collectively as a studio. We’re impartial, however larger than “indie.” All of this brings a really distinctive set of challenges with it, which makes this postmortem a bit completely different as effectively. At Telltale, working with exterior companions and determining what “enjoying a narrative” means is simply as necessary as slinging DMA packets round and writing code that controls what every CPU core is doing.We wish to make video games that permit individuals immerse themselves inside an precise position in tales like they by no means have earlier than. We’ve had a good bit of success in attracting some well-known licenses, however our roots are in graphic novels, reaching all the way in which again to Sam & Max and Bone. We have been thrilled on the alternative to deal with one thing as wealthy as The Strolling Lifeless and work with Robert Kirkman. By now, our sequence has gained greater than 80 Recreation of the 12 months awards and has been widely known as a groundbreaking achievement within the business, nevertheless it definitely wasn’t an in a single day success!Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.What went rightPartnering with SkyboundIn early 2011 we reached out to The Strolling Lifeless creator Robert Kirkman and his manufacturing firm Skybound to debate adapting his award-winning comics right into a Telltale sequence. We weren’t going to pitch a recreation that was about killing zombies. As an alternative, we have been going to pitch an episodic “story recreation” that targeted on the factor we felt made his books so compelling: regular individuals adapting to not possible conditions. The sport we pitched was targeted on dialogue and character improvement, and was to be extremely cinematic and significantly emotional. We needed individuals to attach with the characters and role-play like they by no means had earlier than. There have been definitely way more apparent takes on a zombie style recreation, which made us just a little nervous. Our pitch was in all probability not what they have been anticipating. Fortunately, they have been aware of a few of our earlier work, so that they took the assembly.After we met with Robert and the opposite of us at Skybound, they have been very impressed by our imaginative and prescient of what a Strolling Lifeless recreation may very well be. They understood how such an method, if profitable, would seize a a lot deeper sense of what made the comics so profitable. Most significantly, they noticed a particular alternative and have been keen to take this threat with us.Ultimately, Robert Kirkman and everybody else at Skybound have been (and are!) wonderful companions. Whilst the tv present was changing into a runaway hit, they at all times made time to make sure we had the suggestions and assist we would have liked. Among the finest issues Robert did early on was introduce us to his pal Gary Whitta (screenwriter of E book of Eli and After Earth). Robert trusts Gary, and Gary actually understands what makes The Strolling Lifeless distinctive and particular. Consequentially, Gary joined the crew comparatively early as our story guide. As a gamer himself (he was editor-in-chief of PC Gamer for a few years), his integration was simple and his impression speedy, making beneficial contributions to the season story and design. Gary helped push us additional towards the darker and extra dramatically troublesome features of The Strolling Lifeless. When contemplating a few of the trickier or extra heart-wrenching elements of the story, resembling letting the participant select to kill Duck or not, Gary would typically be the one evangelizing the “you must let the participant go there” angle. Finally, he dove in even deeper and wrote the script for the fourth episode.Studying from previous projectsMany recreation corporations “reset” on the finish of a mission. They select to start out a brand new engine, or pursue a brand new recreation mechanic or management system, and select to deal with fully new issues. At Telltale, we deliberately evolve our processes and know-how with out resetting them. We fastidiously take what has labored prior to now and add layers to it as an alternative of reinventing it. The identical instruments used to create The Strolling Lifeless can nonetheless load and play the complete Telltale catalog.Telltale has at all times aspired to make our distinctive experiences really compete with extra conventional genres resembling FPSs and RPGs. Through the years, with every sequence, we’ve challenged ourselves to make “enjoying tales” extra compelling and push the envelope as to what it means to “play a narrative.” Along with the basic writing and design duties, every sequence has tried to deal with particular features of this bigger agenda. We’ve had some nice successes and loads of classes realized alongside the way in which.Very early on with Sam & Max, we have been merely determining the formidable challenges concerned in designing, producing, and publishing digital journey video games on an episodic schedule. Later, with a sequence like Wallace & Gromit, we challenged ourselves to maneuver previous conventional “level and click on” and embrace the console controller. Sturdy Unhealthy’s Cool Recreation For Enticing Individuals was the primary often scheduled episodic recreation ever concurrently launched on consoles and PCs. Poker Evening At The Stock had characters dynamically telling jokes and tales whereas reacting to the participant and the playing cards. It additionally launched our first on-line options with its unlockable Staff Fortress 2 gadgets. Again to the Future enabled us to look at the way to make our video games much less obtuse and extra accessible, reaching wider audiences and extra platforms. With Jurassic Park, we experimented with alternate management schemes and playable characters, and tried making fast-paced motion sequences. Most significantly, we realized methods to maintain the pacing of the story shifting alongside whereas staying interactive and preserving the participant engaged. Alongside the way in which, every sequence allowed us to refine our episodic manufacturing pipeline and instruments, and change into a way more important (and profitable!) self-publisher.We’ve by no means been content material to be a boutique recreation developer/writer. In innumerable methods, The Strolling Lifeless is the results of eight years of steady exploration and evolution. This course of not solely knowledgeable us whereas creating The Strolling Lifeless, it additionally gave us the boldness to take the much more formidable dangers you see within the completed recreation, resembling…Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.The “No Good Alternative” recreation mechanicGoing in, we knew that in The Strolling Lifeless you’d be confronted with terrible selections, not a lot time to think about these selections, after which should take care of the fallout of these selections. We did spend a while exploring integrating selection into extra conventional recreation mechanics, however issues didn’t begin to actually gel till we determined to go “all in” on selection. As a studio, we wholly embraced the concept that the sport would permit narrative alternatives in the event that they have been believable to the participant. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a simulation: We’d nonetheless be handcrafting the “backbone” of the story, and if a story choice appeared believable inside that context, we dedicated ourselves to letting the participant discover it.An amazing instance of it is a essential second within the third episode. One member of your occasion, a girl named Lilly, abruptly and intentionally shoots one other member of your occasion, ostensibly to make sure the last word security of everybody. The preliminary thought for this part of the sport was that zombies would then instantly drive the group again into their RV, which might pressure the participant to take care of Lilly’s actions in these shut, inescapable quarters. As the small print of that interplay got here into focus, it grew to become clear how strongly we felt concerning the thought of abandoning her at that second. This was a second we merely needed to permit the story to play out each methods (she stays or she goes). We felt that empowering the participant in essential moments like this was much more satisfying than giving a blanket good or evil rating.We additionally found that smaller, extra intimate particulars typically labored a lot better for us than big, sweeping, branching alternatives. As an example, it’s typically extra attention-grabbing to let the participant slight or insult NPCs than it’s to let the participant outright steal all their belongings or fully betray them.Generally there have been nice preliminary story concepts, however they included some believable selections that didn’t result in attention-grabbing locations. For instance, in episode two, we actually needed completely different characters (not simply Mark) to finish up because the St. Johns’ sufferer relying on the way you performed, however after we explored permitting him to play a extra important position, and even maybe survive, he simply wasn’t including something good to the story. He grew to become a form of vestigial story drawback in an in any other case actually good a part of the sport. In these instances, we needed to punt. Usually although, we might maintain working till we had moments the place all prospects have been compelling and producible. It was most fun after we created moments the place all prospects felt equally compelling and intriguing. These made the selection taken and the selection not taken simply as necessary to the participant.Different video games have definitely explored selection and branching narrative earlier than, although most of these video games have used participant selection as a subset of a bigger gameplay mechanic. They sometimes had slightly binary participant selections such pretty much as good or evil, mild facet or darkish facet, and many others. which in flip drove varied AI and NPC programs. We felt strongly {that a} statistics-driven AI and NPC system wouldn’t be capable of ship the form of expertise we envisioned. As an alternative, our system tracks each selection a participant makes at a really detailed degree after which makes that info accessible to designers. They use that info to create narrative-driven logic that controls the content material and subsequent selections which can be supplied to the participant. Our model of selection isn’t emergent from a system, however a fastidiously crafted bespoke expertise pushed by narrative risk. That is what we imply by “tailor-made narrative.”Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.Episode administrators make everybody a storytellerBeginning with Jurassic Park we launched the concept of particular person episode administrators. An episode director is akin to the movie director of a film. They work very carefully with the writers, designers, and manufacturing departments to craft a imaginative and prescient of how the episode will unfold for the participant. The director chooses the mixture of narrative instruments which can be used to create every second within the completed recreation. Their job is to leverage lighting, shade, music, sound results, composition, pacing, and distinction to make the very best interactive expertise they will, after which they’ve to speak and drive that imaginative and prescient by to the completion of the episode. Having somebody devoted to decoding the script and design of every episode on this means encourages everybody to method their work from a story context first. It transforms everybody within the studio right into a storyteller.On this mannequin, sound designers aren’t merely making a room atmosphere anymore; they’re contributing to a beat in a narrative at the side of their director. A modeler is creating environments for particular moments as an alternative of generic simulations. Lighting setups change over the course of the episode based mostly on narrative construction as an alternative of the straightforward ticking of a clock. The creative course of isn’t pushed by a simulation anymore, and as an alternative serves the narrative context the participant will expertise.The episode director isn’t a place at Telltale; it’s a task that’s stuffed based mostly on every episode’s distinctive circumstance, and a director must have ardour for the license, the characters, the script, and the interactivity. Now we have opened this position to anybody within the studio, from any self-discipline, as long as they’ve a transparent imaginative and prescient for what their episode will probably be, and the assist and confidence of the crew to execute it. To this point, we’ve had administrators come from writing, design, artwork, programming, and cinematics. (We haven’t but had any administrators from advertising and marketing or finance, however the door is open!)Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.Bringing gamers togetherThere are intentionally no proper or improper selections in The Strolling Lifeless. We didn’t got down to make a recreation you might win or lose. We needed to show troublesome and attention-grabbing prospects to gamers and reward them no matter they selected, whereas nonetheless leaving the alternatives not taken as a lingering risk. The trail not chosen ought to really feel as necessary because the one they did select. As an example, there is a chance to steal meals from a stranger’s automotive within the second episode. Some would possibly select to steal the meals so as to survive; others would possibly view that as a lack of one’s humanity.We needed to allow the participant to see the place they stood in comparison with the remainder of the world. So, on the finish of every episode of The Strolling Lifeless, we introduced a statistics display that reveals 5 essential choices the participant made, and the way their selections in comparison with different gamers. Exposing this to gamers reworked a single-player expertise right into a platform for social commentary, and inspired gamers to debate their motivations and experiences with one another. It additionally inspired gamers to rethink their selections and take a look at replaying the episode from a unique perspective. Though The Strolling Lifeless isn’t a multiplayer recreation within the conventional sense, it definitely evokes loads of conversations between associates and communities.Along with the 5 stats displayed on the finish of every episode, the sport additionally tracked dozens of different choices gamers made. We have been ready to make use of this to assist us perceive what varieties of choices have been most attention-grabbing to gamers and reinforce these moments in subsequent episodes. In reality, on the finish of episode 4, we added an extra statistics display exhibiting what mixture of survivors have been becoming a member of you for episode 5, and the way your group in comparison with everybody else enjoying.Making a compelling narrative “risk area” for a participant is considerably extra rewarding when gamers are in a position to see the bounds of that area and evaluate their place in that area with their household and associates.What went wrongCasting is hardCasting has at all times been tough for us, and as we maintain ratcheting up the drama in our video games, the bar for our actors retains rising as effectively. The Strolling Lifeless had significantly tough casting challenges. Our main characters have been a southern black professor and an eight-year-old woman, along with a big and numerous supporting forged. They definitely weren’t your typical online game fodder.We had so many auditions that have been extra caricature than character. Of the actors who have been ready stroll the road between too generic and overly stereotyped, there have been few voices that matched the way in which we imagined our characters. Of the few actors left that we did like, a lot of them have been unavailable, too far-off, or over our finances.We initially forged the voice of the primary character, Lee, from this compromised discipline, and proceeded to report the primary episode. After we acquired the primary group of traces again, we knew we have been in hassle. Lee simply didn’t have the vary and character that the sport demanded, and now we had a big manufacturing crew ready as an alternative of implementing. We wanted a brand new Lee, and quick.Fortunately, one among our cinematic artists instructed an actor he was a fan of: the eminently gifted Dave Fennoy. We tracked him down, and he was in a position to shortly get us an audition. As soon as we heard him, we knew he was what we would have liked. Dave is just not solely a incredible voice expertise, however an incredible actor who created a Lee that was way more nuanced and dynamic than we had hoped. Dave gave us confidence and allowed us to push the character of Lee even additional.Clementine, the eight-year-old woman who’s with you all through the sport, was additionally a casting problem. She is just not a precocious stereotyped child, however a sensible younger woman who’s desperately attempting to make sense of a world turned the wrong way up. Discovering any grownup actress to voice a younger woman is difficult, however discovering one that would painting a fancy character like Clementine was particularly troublesome. We went by one other arduous casting course of earlier than discovering the wonderful Melissa Hutchinson.The Stranger, the last word villain on the finish of the sport, was additionally significantly troublesome to forged. We wanted the character to have a form of quiet madness. As soon as once more, we forged and totally recorded what turned out to be the improper actor. Actually the evening earlier than the schedule required we begin recording, we discovered Anthony Lam—the creepy, quiet insane voice we have been on the lookout for. Fortuitously, he was in a position to report instantly the next day. These traces have been being fed into the sport as quick as they have been recorded.We have to get higher at casting. As our video games have gotten more and more extra subtle and dramatic, they’re requiring extra numerous and expert actors. Fortuitously, for The Strolling Lifeless we have been principally capable of finding the nice actors we required in time, however simply barely.The problem of defining and speaking the essence of our characters in ways in which present gifted actors the instruments they want in a recreation context has confirmed to be a frightening and troublesome activity. Our actors hardly ever get to carry out with each other—we often report their elements individually—which makes it laborious to supply them context or insights into their character’s motivation. Additionally, we’re discovering that directing the performances in the course of the precise recording periods is itself a specialised talent set that we have to enhance.Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.Remaking episode twoWhile we have been focusing intently on episode one, episode two was quietly coming to life within the background by itself.After we went “all in” on selection, it modified how episode one grew to become enjoyable and fascinating. As this stuff have been altering, we have been iterating at what appeared like mild velocity, tweaking interfaces and including options like “selection notifications,” onscreen stock, panic meters, and extra. We have been intensely essential of every thing, and we have been discovering incredible new methods to make selection compelling.After we lastly acquired episode one to place, episode two had already been written, recorded, and was partially into manufacturing. After we have been in a position to evaluate episode one and two, they felt radically completely different. Episode one had all this actually cool new stuff that wasn ’t being exploited in episode two, and episode two felt form of “previous Telltale” by comparability. So we determined we simply couldn’t transfer ahead with the model of episode two we had.We gathered a big group of writers, designers, producers, and administrators offsite at an area resort convention room and spent two days hammering out a brand new course for the episode that exploited and even superior every thing that was feeling so nice about episode one. Although some massive parts resembling places, principal characters, and story beats remained, almost all the dialogue wanted to be rewritten after which rerecorded. We have been tremendous enthused by the brand new design, however we have been already delayed, resulting in…Huge schedule compressionWith a month-to-month episodic recreation firm, the schedule is king and always looms over every thing we do. Simply think about in the event you tuned in for the final episode of The Sopranos and there was a display saying “Sorry, we didn’t get it performed. Come again later!” All of the recasting and retooling that occurred early within the sequence took much more time than we had anticipated. By the point episode one actually got here collectively, our sequence launch date was upon us, and as they are saying, the present should go on! Episode one launched with a a lot better reception than we might have dreamed.Sadly, now we have been additional delayed than we had ever been earlier than. To make issues worse, we had an enormous rewrite of episode two to finish earlier than we might restart manufacturing on it. Whereas the brand new episode two script was accomplished at breakneck velocity and recorded as shortly as attainable, we thought of what may very well be performed to get again on monitor. We ended up mainly placing almost everybody within the studio onto the mission.Now we have at all times been a multi-project studio, so we’ve by no means actually had everybody engaged on the identical recreation on the identical time, and determining the way to greatest divide manufacturing tasks amongst such a big group was tough. We broke the motion sections of the sport (such because the zombie assaults) out into their very own strike groups, whereas a unique group owned the dialogue-driven elements. All in all, the studio shortly turned out some wonderful content material, however we have been nonetheless weeks behind on episode two, and our schedule was nonetheless getting stretched out so far as it presumably might.Ultimately, episode two ended up in buyer’s arms 9 weeks after episode one was launched. Although this was an amazingly quick time given the circumstances, clients have been understandably anxious, and didn’t hesitate to tell us it. Our boards and Fb pages have been swarmed with individuals demanding their episode, and we didn’t do an sufficient job of speaking what was occurring.By preserving the entire studio targeted on The Strolling Lifeless, we have been in a position to make up more often than not. We wrapped the sequence only a few weeks wanting its initially deliberate completion date.Backend servers and DLCThe Strolling Lifeless was our first recreation during which every episode was delivered as DLC as an alternative of particular person executables. This required a brand new “in-app” retailer, new content material licensing code, and new obtain managers. That’s loads of “new,” and moreover, every platform had its personal distinctive DLC quirks and complexities. iOS even required us to implement our personal content material supply community! DLC additionally introduced a wholly new QA course of from merely staging content material on accomplice networks, putting in and uninstalling particular person episodes, and controlling the licensing standing of content material on all our check accounts. We had so much to find out about DLC.Along with DLC, the sport was additionally the primary to ship telemetry again to the Telltale servers so we might current the selection statistics on the finish of the episode. We created a brand new REST API particularly to deal with this information, which required new code each on the net servers and within the recreation engine itself. Each of those adjustments have been substantial, they usually ended up being loads of work to chunk off with an necessary title like The Strolling Lifeless, however we felt that the sport would undergo considerably with out these options.After we launched, the sport was extremely effectively obtained, and our servers have been shortly overwhelmed with the quantity of hits they have been receiving. When the servers stopped responding to the sport, it will trigger noticeable delays on the Press Begin display and at some save factors in the course of the episode. For the primary few days, we truly ended up throwing incoming information away and serving a inventory reply whereas we frantically introduced extra servers on-line.On Xbox and PlayStation, the system dealt with the obtain of recent episodes for us, however on iOS, the appliance additionally needed to obtain the content material for the person. This required a obtain supervisor, which turned out to have many extra issues in the actual world than we anticipated. Cell units are likely to have considerably extra community connection issues than PCs or consoles, and we simply weren’t in a position to simulate the big selection of real-world circumstances we might encounter. Sadly this meant that too many iOS gamers needed to undergo with us as we pored by our server logs, obtain code, and check instances to lastly get the obtain supervisor as sturdy because it wanted to be.Picture through Recreation Developer Journal, March 2013.Bugs, bugs, bugsBetween the compressed schedule, the brand new DLC mannequin, and the work required to launch on many platforms, we ended up with loads of bugs.The worst of those was associated to our save recreation “rewind” system, which allowed the person to rewind the story an earlier level within the recreation. Since many of the episodes didn’t exist when the system was applied, we didn’t have the check instances required to ferret out the sting instances that occurred in the actual world. Sadly, that meant that some gamers misplaced their save information and needed to replay the sport from the start, which is concerning the worst factor that may occur to a participant in a choicebased episodic recreation. One other bug triggered the “generate random selections” dialogue to seem when the truth is no random selections wanted to be generated, which simply made the gamers who have been anxious about dropping their save information much more frightened.As well as, every platform had its particular person listing of bugs, in addition to the standard permutations of hardware-specific PC bugs, which made it very troublesome for us to speak options to the participant. We discovered that many offended clients needed to navigate a fancy maze of knowledge to search out their resolution. Even the best-intentioned customers typically ended up advising different customers with options that labored of their context, however is likely to be disastrous in one other context. For instance, some customers would “tweak” their information to recuperate a save recreation, and different customers would possibly attempt an identical technique, however find yourself destroying their save information. Clearly the foundation of the issue is the buggy system itself, as customers ought to by no means have wanted to try any of this stuff within the first place.Although we’ve aggressively patched these points and resolved most of them, you may’t actually unring a bell. There are nonetheless small content material bugs left within the recreation, and gamers are too typically left with an impression that the sport is buggy. All we are able to do at this level is proceed to patch, and take what we’ve realized from this expertise to make sure bugs like this don’t occur sooner or later.The Strolling DevsFor the final eight years, Telltale has been manically dedicated to the concept that interacting with characters and tales may very well be a few of the greatest recreation experiences ever. We’re satisfied that tales will not be only for cutscenes—tales could be the sport themselves. The Strolling Lifeless is our instance of the state-of-the-art, however we’re assured that we are able to make enjoying a narrative much more compelling. We’ve additionally been equally dedicated to episodic video games, smaller video games, and cheaper video games. And now we’ve constructed a studio that has matured to the purpose of having the ability to create a Recreation of the 12 months whereas staying true to those targets.Fortuitously for us, it seems like we’ll have a chance to proceed exploring the area. Our recreation based mostly on DC Comics’s Fables is effectively below means, The Strolling Lifeless has a second season within the works, and plenty of new properties are in search of out Telltale in hope of working with us to make a recreation. Keep tuned!
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