A trade name , trading name , or business name is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is fictitious business name . Registering the fictitious name with a relevant government body is often required.
158-632: Telltale Incorporated ( trade name : Telltale Games ) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California . The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following LucasArts' decision to leave the adventure game genre. Telltale established itself to focus on adventure games using a novel episodic release schedule over digital distribution , creating its own game engine ,
316-470: A Sam & Max game required both development of tools to produce the game, and the license to make it. At the time of the studio's founding, the license for Sam & Max was still held by LucasArts, who refused to negotiate a deal nor license the work on Sam & Max: Freelance Police for Telltale to complete it. Telltale waited out the licensing period until around mid-2005, after which Steve Purcell , Sam & Max ' s creator, immediately offered
474-414: A class-action lawsuit was filed by former Telltale employee Vernie Roberts, representing about a total of 275 Telltale employees, alleging that Telltale violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (WARN Act) and the more stringent requirements set by California of requiring at least 60 days notification before issuing mass layoffs. Telltale did not officially comment on
632-492: A successful series . The CD-ROM-only Star Wars game Rebel Assault became one of the biggest successes of the company and was considered a killer app for CD-ROM drives in the early 1990s. After the unprecedented success of id Software 's Doom , the PC gaming market shifted towards production of three-dimensional first person shooters . LucasArts contributed to this trend with the 1995 release of Star Wars: Dark Forces ,
790-444: A $ 20 to $ 30 million franchise. Their The Walking Dead video game presented an alteration of Telltale's approach, as rather than a traditional adventure game where players would need to solve puzzles, The Walking Dead was more focused on providing a cinematic experience but presenting choices to the player, either through dialog trees or through quick time events, that would create "determinants" that would feed into latter parts of
948-466: A 3-episode mini-season and a final 4-episode season. The Walking Dead is considered to have revitalized the waning adventure game genre due to this more emotionally driven focus. Since The Walking Dead , nearly all of Telltale's games have used a similar approach of being built around the impacts of the player's choices as determinants in later episodes and seasons. Telltale has had several other licensing details from popular works, including Tales from
1106-420: A DBA must be registered with a local or state government, or both, depending on the jurisdiction. For example, California, Texas and Virginia require a DBA to be registered with each county (or independent city in the case of Virginia) where the owner does business. Maryland and Colorado have DBAs registered with a state agency. Virginia also requires corporations and LLCs to file a copy of their registration with
1264-467: A DBA statement, though names including the first and last name of the owner may be accepted. This also reduces the possibility of two local businesses operating under the same name, although some jurisdictions do not provide exclusivity for a name, or may allow more than one party to register the same name. Note, though, that this is not a substitute for filing a trademark application. A DBA filing carries no legal weight in establishing trademark rights. In
1422-516: A businessperson writes a trade name on a contract, invoice, or cheque, they must also add the legal name of the business. Numbered companies will very often operate as something other than their legal name, which is unrecognizable to the public. In Chile , a trade name is known as a nombre de fantasía ('fantasy' or 'fiction' name), and the legal name of business is called a razón social (social name). In Ireland , businesses are legally required to register business names where these differ from
1580-468: A change replicated in the home console market as the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation , Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 dictated the nature of the majority of games produced for those platforms. The adventure genre failed to find popularity with the masses of new gamers. Despite their declining popularity, LucasArts still continued to release adventure titles. In 1997, The Curse of Monkey Island ,
1738-466: A decade, with the most noted outcome of the symbiosis being the X-Wing series . They were also responsible for LucasArts' 2003 return to the aerial battles of World War II with Secret Weapons Over Normandy , a title released on PlayStation 2 , Xbox and PC In 1996, LucasArts released Afterlife , a simulator in which players build their own Heaven and Hell , with several jokes and puns (such as
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#17327871458631896-584: A first person shooter that successfully transplanted the Doom formula to a Star Wars setting. The Dark Forces Strategy guide claims that development was well underway before Doom was released and that the game was pushed back once Doom hit shelves so that it could be polished. The game was well received and spawned a new franchise: the Jedi Knight games. This began with the sequel to Dark Forces , Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II released in 1997; this game reflected
2054-521: A game's development across all departments within Telltale, and specifically helped to reduce memory use in some scenes, which had been identified as causing bugs in some consoles' versions. In mid-June 2018, Variety reported that Telltale was moving away from the Telltale Tool and instead toward the established Unity game engine. The Stranger Things game was expected to be the first to use
2212-477: A game's overall narration, often being summarized as "choices don't matter"; players may make choices to save a character from death early in a game, but only to have that character die later for the game to have a cohesive plot and making the player's effort to save the character meaningless, for example. Former employees of Telltale Games have gone on to adapt the narrative aspects of these games into their own products. Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin , co-writers of
2370-498: A graphical front-end, was one such title. It was only released as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link , an online service for the Commodore 64 . Quantum Link could not provide the bandwidth at the time to support the game, so the full Habitat was never released outside of the beta test. However, Lucasfilm Games recouped the cost of development by releasing a sized-down version called Club Caribe in 1988. Lucasfilm later licensed
2528-472: A group of former LucasArts employees who worked on the studio's adventure games . In March 2004, LucasArts recognized that there were "current market place realities and underlying economic considerations" that made adventure games too risky to release, and canceled work on two sequels of previous adventure games, Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max: Freelance Police , as well as laying off many of those developers. Bruner, Connors and Molander were not among
2686-540: A high-definition remake of the original game with revised graphics, music and voice work, and Tales of Monkey Island , a new episodic installment in the Monkey Island series that was developed by Telltale Games . Then, on July 6, 2009, they announced that they would be rereleasing a number of their classic games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and LOOM , on Steam . The rereleases were, for
2844-438: A joint press release in 2009. The games announced were Tales of Monkey Island , which was to be developed by Telltale, and a LucasArts-developed enhanced remake of the 1990 title The Secret of Monkey Island , with the intent of bringing the old game to a new audience. According to LucasArts, this announcement was "just the start of LucasArts' new mission to revitalize its deep portfolio of beloved gaming franchises". Following
3002-493: A layoff of 25% of the company's staff in November 2017, along with an emphasis to slow down game production to improve production quality, retire the Telltale Tool for a more standard game engine, and seek other lucrative properties to develop for. This resulted in an early 2018 deal with Netflix in which Telltale would adapt its Minecraft: Story Mode into an interactive program for the streaming service, and Netflix licensing
3160-500: A license in 2011 to develop a King's Quest adventure game based on the original Sierra games, but Activision took back the rights in 2013, which were subsequently used by The Odd Gentlemen to create their 2015 episodic King's Quest game. Telltale's breakthrough success came with the licenses of the comic book series The Walking Dead and Fables in association with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in 2011. Allison anticipated that The Walking Dead series could be
3318-515: A marketing tie-in with the original trilogy D.V.D. release. Its sequel, Star Wars: Battlefront II , was released on November 1, 2005, and featured new locales such as Episode III planets Mustafar, Mygeeto, etc., in addition to space combat, playable Jedi, and new special units like Bothan spies and Imperial officers. In this same year, the second "Knights of the Old Republic" game was in production. LucasArts told Obsidian Entertainment that
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#17327871458633476-491: A month prior to release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II , LucasArts scaled down the internal development studio. The aforementioned game received a mediocre score from some media outlets such as IGN , GameSpot and GameTrailers . After release, minor adjustment in staffing resulted in even more layoffs. The successor to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords , in
3634-549: A more mature game, but eventually reworked this to a family-friendly title, while for their Guardians of the Galaxy game, the storywriters had written a story they felt more true to the humor and wit of the source material, but were told by management to make a darker story. Further, anonymous sources from Telltale stated that very few of the games were profitable, with only The Walking Dead: The First Season , Minecraft: Story Mode , and revenues from publishing 7 Days to Die turning
3792-667: A new studio in 2019, Skunkape Games, made up of himself and former Telltale employees Jake Rodkin, Randy Tudor, and Jonathan Sgro. Between 2020 and 2024, the studio released remasters of Telltale's Sam & Max games with assistance from other members of the original development team. In 2021, Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner created a new studio Dramatic Labs with more than twenty former Telltale employees, including former lead writer and creative director Andrew Grant, former lead writer Dan Martin, former creative director Kent Mudle, and former executive producer and creative director Brett Tosti. Dramatic Labs' first game, Star Trek: Resurgence ,
3950-407: A one-time " season pass " purchase for the game's season when the first episode of the season was released, with the user then entitled to all planned episodes for that season. For digital purchases, this entitlement was handled through the digital storefront. In retail, Telltale published complete seasons after the season's digital release was over, but also adopted a model where they could publish, at
4108-419: A portion of his shares in the company. Telltale stated the claims were "meritless". In its response to Bruner's lawsuit, Telltale stated that the company "is now working to turn around the decline that it experienced under [Bruner]'s stewardship". Kent Mudle, the creative director for The Walking Dead: The Final Season , stated that the new management had shown a great deal of effort to turn the studio around from
4266-663: A portrait of a publisher that is constantly releasing buggy and even outright broken games", seemingly lacking the resources to fix or even monitor most of them. Telltale moved to an improved version of their engine around early 2016, partially implemented first in The Walking Dead: Michonne and completed for the release of Batman: The Telltale Series . The updated Telltale Tool provided direct support for DirectX 11 features, including physics-based models, texture mapping and blending, and dynamic lighting and shadows. The changes also helped automate and integrate
4424-619: A prison in Hell called San Quentin Tarantino ). Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm properties before ( Labyrinth , Indiana Jones ), they did not use the Star Wars license until the early 1990s, as it had been held by Broderbund before reverting to Lucasfilm in 1992. The first in-house development was the space combat simulator X-Wing , developed by Larry Holland's independent team, which went on to spawn
4582-441: A profit. Batman: The Telltale Series , released in 2016 was said to be one of the worst commercial failures for the company. On March 15, 2017, Bruner announced he had stepped down as CEO of Telltale, though Variety reported that he had been voted out of this position by the board of directors. Bruner turned the day-to-day operations to Connors, while still remaining on the board of directors. Bruner said "The time has come to pass
4740-502: A publisher" to withholding money for 6 months and abusing the independent developer's position to withhold the full project cancellation fee—this was a major event which contributed towards Free Radical entering administration. Ward left the company in early February 2008, for personal reasons. He was replaced by Howard Roffman as interim president. Darrell Rodriguez, who came from Electronic Arts, took Roffman's place in April 2008. About
4898-520: A puzzle-solving game in collaboration with Graham Annable , was released in June 2010, while Poker Night at the Inventory , a crossover poker game featuring characters from Sam and Max , Homestar Runner , Valve's Team Fortress 2 , and the webcomic Penny Arcade , was released late in 2010. Telltale followed up Puzzle Agent with a sequel, Puzzle Agent 2 , in 2011. In 2013, Telltale continued
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5056-458: A registered legal name and a fictitious business name, or trade name, is important because fictitious business names do not always identify the entity that is legally responsible . Legal agreements (such as contracts ) are normally made using the registered legal name of the business. If a corporation fails to consistently adhere to such important legal formalities like using its registered legal name in contracts, it may be subject to piercing of
5214-804: A reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, which also comprised Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound . Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division. During this, the division had moved out of Skywalker Ranch to near-by offices in San Rafael, California . Also in 1990, LucasArts started to publish The Adventurer , their own gaming magazine where one could read about their upcoming games and interviews with
5372-515: A reputation as one of the leading developers in the genre. The original five adventure games created with SCUMM were released in a compilation titled LucasArts Classic Adventures in 1992. LucasArts was often referred to as one of the two big names in the field, competing with Sierra On-line as a developer of high quality adventures. The first half of the 1990s was the heyday for the company's adventure fame, with classic titles such as Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991, Indiana Jones and
5530-417: A resurgence in the adventure game genre, which had been languishing since about 2000. Dontnod Entertainment found the episodic approach to storytelling to be an ideal way to present Life Is Strange , and it has allowed them to release supplementary stories within the series in smaller pieces. Telltale's approach to branching stories has often been criticized, with choices ultimately having little effect on
5688-510: A second season for Sam & Max , and found additional niche intellectual property areas, including Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner , to continue the episodic adventure game format. When Darrell Rodriguez became CEO of LucasArts in 2008, he wanted to see the old LucasArts adventure properties flourish, leading to a license for Telltale to create a new game in the Monkey Island series, Tales of Monkey Island . Telltale
5846-456: A strong experience that pays homage to the original film or franchise. In a September 2017 interview, Job Stauffer called Telltale's role as "an interactive TV network and a studio", able to produce content across a wide range of genres on a regular basis. He considered their studio something between a video game developer and a cable or streaming network with production capabilities like HBO or Netflix . In general, Telltale offered its games as
6004-515: A three-hour timeframe to gather any belongings they did not manage to collect in the 30 minutes following the majority closure decision. The suddenness of the closure, along with the lack of post-layoff support for the employees, led to renewed discussions about the need for video game developers to unionize, with the Game Workers Unite grassroots movement calling the treatment of the Telltale employees "exploitative". On September 24, 2018,
6162-454: Is also sometimes used. A company typically uses a trade name to conduct business using a simpler name rather than using their formal and often lengthier name. Trade names are also used when a preferred name cannot be registered, often because it may already be registered or is too similar to a name that is already registered. Using one or more fictitious business names does not create additional separate legal entities. The distinction between
6320-638: Is called a razón social . LucasArts Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm . It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in
6478-425: Is titled The Best of LucasArts Original Soundtracks and features music from the Monkey Island series, Grim Fandango , Outlaws , and The Dig . 2003 saw the fruitful collaboration of LucasArts and BioWare on the well reviewed role-playing game , Knights of the Old Republic . Combining modern 3D graphics with high-quality storytelling and a sophisticated role-playing game system , this game reinvigorated
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6636-571: The Lucasarts era, focusing primarily on run and gun gameplay. A trilogy of games under the name of Super Star Wars for the SNES , with each game based on each of the three films from the Star Wars original trilogy : Super Star Wars (1992), Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1993) and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1994). An Indiana Jones game based on the first three films of
6794-690: The Minecraft: Story Mode project porting to Netflix. Telltale Games filed for assignment in October 2018. Many assets were later acquired by LCG Entertainment, which revived the Telltale Games name as part of its business in August 2019, retaining many of the company's previous licenses and offering former staff freelance positions. Telltale Games was founded in San Rafael, California , by Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander,
6952-680: The Pacific Theater . Battlehawks 1942 was followed by Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain in 1989, recreating the battle between the Luftwaffe and RAF for Britain's air supremacy. The trilogy ended with Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe in 1991, in which the player could choose to fly on either the American or German side. The trilogy was lauded for its historical accuracy and detailed supplementary material—Secret Weapons of
7110-400: The Star Wars franchise. Its 2004 sequel Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords continued in the same vein, but LucasArts was criticized for forcing the developer Obsidian Entertainment to release the sequel unfinished, resulting in a significant amount of cut content, a disappointing ending and numerous bugs. 2003 also saw the release of Gladius , a gladiator Tactical RPG that
7268-466: The United Kingdom , there is no filing requirement for a "business name", defined as "any name under which someone carries on business" that, for a company or limited liability partnership, "is not its registered name", but there are requirements for disclosure of the owner's true name and some restrictions on the use of certain names. A minority of U.S. states, including Washington , still use
7426-454: The eighth generation of video game consoles emerged, and while the Telltale Tool was ported to these platforms, it showed its age in graphics quality, which also diminished Telltale's products. There was also a new trend of major AAA titles focusing more on emotional story-telling, such as God of War , which Telltale would not easily be able to compete with. The company was also hobbled by working with established IP, and inconsistencies in
7584-480: The 1990s, including Maniac Mansion , the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty , Tim Schafer , Ron Gilbert , and Dave Grossman . Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in
7742-473: The 2006 E3 Convention, a LucasArts executive was asked about the return of popular franchises such as Monkey Island . The executive responded that the company was currently focusing on new franchises, and that LucasArts may return to the "classic franchises" in 2015, though it was unclear as to whether the date was put forwards as an actual projection, or hyperbole. This turned out to be hyperbole, as LucasArts and Telltale Games announced new adventure games in
7900-452: The 2017 layoffs. According to narrative designer Emily Grace Buck, management would frequently demand rewrites of materials, with most games having between 60 and 90 percent of the content reworked after executive review. Bruner and management created a "culture of fear" of demotion or firing among developers. Some of these rewrites had come days prior to an episode's submission date for certification, creating hasty rewrites that filtered through
8058-477: The Atari/Lucasfilm label, the games were delayed when Warner Communications sold the assets of the consumer division of Atari, Inc. to Jack Tramiel in July of that year, and were ultimately picked up by publisher Epyx and released by May 1985. Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon . Their first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would distribute
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#17327871458638216-705: The Borderlands based on the Borderlands series by Gearbox Software , and Game of Thrones , based on the HBO television show adaption, Minecraft: Story Mode based on the Mojang game, Minecraft , Batman from DC Comics , and Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series from Marvel Comics . On retrospective after the studio's closure, former employees of Telltale believed that
8374-614: The Borderlands in February 2021. Following negotiations with Sherwood Partners starting in February 2019, LCG Entertainment acquired several key Telltale assets and on August 28, 2019, announced that it was re-launching the company by assuming "Telltale Games" as its trade name , operating out of Malibu, California , with a satellite studio in Corte Madera, California . Under the leadership of founders Jamie Ottilie ( chief executive officer ) and Brian Waddle ( chief revenue officer ),
8532-573: The Fate of Atlantis in 1992, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road in 1993, and the 1995 titles Full Throttle and The Dig . In the latter half of the decade, the popularity of adventure games faded and the costs associated with game development increased as high-resolution art and C.D.-quality audio became standard fare. The PC market wanted titles that would show off expensive new graphics cards to best effect,
8690-638: The Future and Jurassic Park . Notably, Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game was the first game to break away from the standard adventure game format, including elements like quick time events and time-limited choices which would become a core gameplay element in their future adventure games. Telltale obtained the license from NBC Universal to develop episodic series around the Law & Order franchise in April 2011. By 2010, Telltale had proven itself successful, with yearly revenues of $ 10 million, 90% greater than
8848-488: The Future and Jurassic Park . Telltale's critical breakout game came in 2012's The Walking Dead , based on the comic book series of the same name . It introduced a more narrative-directed approach that diverged from the standard adventure game "point and click" gameplay. The Walking Dead gave the player the ability to make choices that could affect how future events in the game or its sequels played out, effectively allowing players to craft their own personalized take on
9006-437: The Galaxy , and Batman , but the rate of production created a " crunch time " culture behind the scenes, leaving poor company morale, little room for creativity to veer from the formula set by The Walking Dead or improvements on the Telltale Tool. A management shakeup occurred in early 2017, with CEO Bruner stepping down, and Pete Hawley, formerly of Zynga , brought in to fix Telltale's problems. Internal restructuring led to
9164-535: The Games Group were Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus! , developed in 1984 for the Atari 5200 console and Atari 8-bit computers . Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari had received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation over a year before the original release date. Planned to be released in the 3rd quarter of 1984 under
9322-690: The Lucasfilm Games brand as the licenser of all Lucasfilm-related properties. In 1979, George Lucas wanted to explore other areas of entertainment and created the Lucasfilm Computer Division in 1979, which included a department for computer games (the Games Group) and another for graphics. The graphics department was spun off into its own corporation in 1982, ultimately becoming Pixar . The Lucasfilm Games Group originally cooperated with Atari, Inc. , which helped fund
9480-423: The Luftwaffe, for instance, was accompanied by a 224-page historical manual. The World War II trilogy was released with cover art by illustrator Marc Ericksen, in a compilation titled Air Combat Classics in 1994. The World War II trilogy was created by a team led by Lawrence Holland , a game designer who later founded Totally Games. Totally Games would continue to develop games almost exclusively to LucasArts for
9638-606: The Old Republic , Star Wars Jedi Academy and Star Wars Galaxies . Development of some other successful Star Wars Games began during his management, like Star Wars Republic Commando and Star Wars Battlefront . In April 2000, LucasArts signed a two-year international distribution deal with Activision for over 45 territories across the world including the United Kingdom. The deal was extended in May 2003 and renewed again in March 2009. In 2002, LucasArts recognized that
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#17327871458639796-481: The Sith , a third person action game based on the film. Also in 2005, LucasArts released Star Wars: Republic Commando , and one of their few non- Star Wars games, Mercenaries , developed by Pandemic Studios . On February 16, 2006, LucasArts released Star Wars: Empire at War , a real-time strategy game developed by Petroglyph . September 12, 2006, saw the release of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy ,
9954-507: The Switch due to content, but they were focusing on their more recent, family-friendly games like Minecraft: Story Mode , Batman , and Guardians of the Galaxy only due to ease of porting these to the Switch, while older games like The Walking Dead required more effort to port. The Telltale Tool is a proprietary game engine developed by Telltale. Telltale commenced development on the engine shortly after its founding, initially referring to
10112-480: The Telltale Tool led to a perception that many of Telltale's games had an abnormally high rate of bugs and other technical flaws, pervasive enough to pose a significant risk of impeding players' ability to progress through a given game. A 2015 article by Kotaku noted that "their games, wonderful in many ways as they may be, have been accompanied by an undercurrent of fan anger" over widespread bugs and glitches. The article concluded that Telltale's support forums "paint
10270-422: The Telltale Tool, to support this. It closed in October 2018 after filing for bankruptcy protection. Telltale's initial successes were on games using intellectual properties with small but dedicated fan bases, including Sam & Max , Wallace & Gromit , Homestar Runner , and Bone . Around 2010, the studio gained more lucrative licensing opportunities in more mainstream properties such as Back to
10428-418: The U.S., trademark rights are acquired by use in commerce, but there can be substantial benefits to filing a trademark application. Sole proprietors are the most common users of DBAs. Sole proprietors are individual business owners who run their businesses themselves. Since most people in these circumstances use a business name other than their own name, it is often necessary for them to get DBAs. Generally,
10586-476: The Unity-based engine. Telltale helped other developers to publish their games. Under the moniker Telltale Publishing, Telltale entered into a publishing deal with Jackbox Games to bring the console versions of The Jackbox Party Pack to retail markets, and with The Fun Pimps to publish 7 Days to Die for consoles; according to Variety , this publishing deal was as financially successful for Telltale as
10744-521: The Xbox 360 but it was canceled by LucasArts. After Factor 5's exclusivity with Sony ended they decided to release Rogue Squadron Trilogy for the Wii, but it was eventually cancelled as well. In 2004, LucasArts released Star Wars: Battlefront , based on the same formula as the popular Battlefield series of games. It ended up becoming the best-selling Star Wars game of all time to that point, aided by
10902-530: The Year award. Escape from Monkey Island (2000), the fourth installment in the Monkey Island series, featured the same control scheme as Grim Fandango, and was generally well received. It is the last original adventure game the company has released. Two sequels to existing franchises, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels and Sam & Max: Freelance Police , were announced to be in development but these projects were cancelled, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, before
11060-617: The addition of real-time space combat. This was continued in Rage of the Wookiees , an additional expansion which added an additional planet for users to explore. Also, a new expansion, Trials of Obi-Wan was released on November 1, 2005, consisting of several new missions focusing on the Episode 3 planet, Mustafar. While Star Wars Galaxies still retained a devoted following, it also alienated many players. Star Wars Galaxies chose to ignore
11218-403: The amount of time that the creators and developers could spend on content in order to maintain a consistent flow of episodes to consumers but impacted the quality of games. There was a perpetual drive to release new episodes on a regular basis, whether they were good or not, so that the company had a continued source of income. This particularly affected the Telltale Tool, the game engine used since
11376-399: The changing face of PC gaming, being one of the first games to appreciably benefit when used in conjunction with a dedicated 3D graphics card like 3dfx 's Voodoo range. The game received an expansion pack , Mysteries of the Sith , in 1998 and a full sequel in 2002 with Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast . 2003's Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy can be seen as a spin-off from
11534-423: The company on a new course. Unfortunately, we ran out of time trying to get there. We released some of our best content this year and received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, but ultimately, that did not translate to sales. With a heavy heart, we watch our friends leave today to spread our brand of storytelling across the games industry. Those who were let go reported they were given no warning, had to leave
11692-562: The company remains in assignment as of April 2019. Various digital storefronts started removing Telltale products from their marketplaces by that November. For some of these removed games, after rights were returned, the original company was able to rerelease the titles through a new publisher; for example, Skybound republished all four seasons of The Walking Dead as one collection, The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series , in September 2019, while Gearbox Software rereleased Tales from
11850-420: The company to get past these problems. In November 2017, a restructuring of the company cut about 90 positions, about a quarter of their staff, which was not expected to affect the release of any existing projects. Hawley said that the restructuring was for "reorienting our organization with a focus on delivering fewer, better games with a smaller team". While Telltale had not stated which positions were let go in
12008-490: The company took on more projects, rushing the development schedules. Until 2016, Telltale Tool did not have a physics engine , meaning that if a scene required an object to fall, this had to be animated by hand, taking time from other more productive activities. This also prevented them from using elements like dynamic lighting, and required them to develop lighting models using 3D modeling tools like Maya , significantly extending time to develop art assets. The aged feature set of
12166-414: The company's inception, which caused numerous bugs in released episodes that Telltale became infamously noted for. The anonymous QC tester stated that their department was nearly always under crunch time, working from 48 to 60 hours a week on testing at least two-game series across multiple platforms simultaneously, and were understaffed, leading to some of the quality control issues as well. During this time,
12324-532: The company's state as "quite a mess." In 2003, LucasArts had reportedly grossed just over $ 100,000,000 according to N.P.D. , primarily from its Star Wars titles — significantly less than the grosses from the year's top single titles such as Halo . Ward produced a five-year investment plan to refit the company. Previous Star Wars games had been produced by external developers such as Raven Software , BioWare and Obsidian; Ward now prioritized making LucasArts' internal game development work effectively and adapt to
12482-401: The company. The company's initial goal was to develop a new Sam & Max game in an episodic format. Grossman said that Telltale identified that Sam & Max had a small but dedicated audience allowing them to develop a title that would be successful in reaching out to this group and not requiring them to seek out a bigger license that would have incurred more development costs. Developing
12640-484: The corporate veil . In English , trade names are generally treated as proper nouns . In Argentina , a trade name is known as a nombre de fantasía ('fantasy' or 'fiction' name), and the legal name of business is called a razón social (social name). In Brazil , a trade name is known as a nome fantasia ('fantasy' or 'fiction' name), and the legal name of business is called razão social (social name). In some Canadian jurisdictions , such as Ontario , when
12798-534: The county or city to be registered with the State Corporation Commission. DBA statements are often used in conjunction with a franchise . The franchisee will have a legal name under which it may sue and be sued, but will conduct business under the franchiser's brand name (which the public would recognize). A typical real-world example can be found in a well-known pricing mistake case, Donovan v. RRL Corp. , 26 Cal. 4th 261 (2001), where
12956-423: The developers. The final issue was published in 1996. In the same year, Lucas Learning was created as a subsidiary of LucasArts, providing educational software for classrooms. iMUSE ( Interactive MUsic Streaming Engine ) is an interactive music system used in a number of LucasArts video games . It synchronizes music with the visual action in the game, and transitions from one musical theme to another. iMUSE
13114-408: The engine as the "Telltale Engine and Toolset". A casual poker game, Telltale Texas Hold'em , was created to test their engine and distribution model, and to ensure that all major bugs were ironed out before the release of their first adventure game , Bone: Out from Boneville . The Telltale Tool has been used for every game developed by Telltale Games, and continued to receive improvements since
13272-476: The entire production process. This rush created some of the apparent "bugs" in the Telltale Tool which Buck stated were more often a result of the inability to smooth out hastily reworked animations as well as perpetuating the crunch time culture within the company. Other cases of narrative rewrites were a result of different expectations by some of the executive management. Buck stated that they had originally been driven by management to make Minecraft: Story Mode as
13430-557: The episode and into future episodes; one example would be deciding which of one of two characters to save from a zombie attack at the spur of the moment. While these decisions do not have a direct impact on the game's overall narrative and structure, it provides a more personalized story around what decisions the player had made. This format proved highly successful: the game sold one million copies in 20 days, exceeded 8.5 million episode purchases by 2013, and an estimated $ 40 million in revenue. The success led to two additional 5-episode seasons,
13588-716: The episodic format. Though initially planned for a five-episode series, Telltale only released two episodes in 2005 and 2006 and the remaining episode had been canceled. Alongside Bone , Telltale developed a series of games for Ubisoft around the CSI television series, including CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder , CSI: Hard Evidence , CSI: Deadly Intent , and CSI: Fatal Conspiracy ; though these games were also developed as episodes, they were each released in single packages. Outside of Ubisoft, few other publishers were interested in distributing Telltale's early games, forcing them to turn to their own distribution system. Once they had secured
13746-471: The evolving game industry. Star Wars: Battlefront , Star Wars: Republic Commando , and Star Wars: Episode III survived cuts that closed down other in-development games and reduced staff from about 450 to 190 employees. Ward also canceled Star Wars Rogue Squadron Trilogy which was 50% completed and it was going to be released on the Xbox in 2004. Factor 5 was going to develop a Rogue Squadron game titled Rogue Squadron: X-Wing vs Tie Fighter for
13904-683: The firm's closure called this transition "the beginning of the end" for Telltale. With Bruner's placement as CEO in January 2015, Telltale said it was developing a game based on its own intellectual property as a result of this leadership change. In February 2015, Lionsgate announced an investment within Telltale Games to produce a number of "Super Shows", a hybrid interactive work combining television and video game elements, which would be distributed through non-traditional channels such as through streaming services. The first Super Show planned
14062-406: The first The Walking Dead season. On August 18, 2016, Telltale published Mr. Robot:1.51exfiltrati0n by Night School Studio . During the company's restructuring in 2017, the publishing branch of Telltale had been put on hiatus but was expected to be reused once the company regained its financial stability. The release of the first season of The Walking Dead in 2012 is considered to have created
14220-466: The first game. Former employees of the original Telltale were skeptical of LCG's approach to the relaunch of Telltale, considering that offering only freelance work while in San Francisco, which has one of the highest costs-of-living in the country, is risky. Others have urged LCG to pay off its existing Telltale debt to its former employees, while others have called for a boycott of any game from
14378-416: The first of which were the naval simulations PHM Pegasus in 1986 and Strike Fleet in 1987. These two titles were published by Electronic Arts for a variety of computer platforms, including IBM PC compatibles , Commodore 64 and Apple II . In 1988, Battlehawks 1942 launched a trilogy of World War II air combat simulations, giving the player a chance to fly as an American or Japanese pilot in
14536-444: The first season of The Walking Dead , decided to leave to pursue independent game development , founding Campo Santo in 2013 and releasing Firewatch , a critically praised narrative-driven exploration game. Adam Hines , a writer for Telltale, co-founded Night School Studio in 2014, subsequently releasing Oxenfree which heavily used a " walk and talk " mechanic as part of its gameplay. Four former employees who had left before
14694-555: The first time, native versions built for Microsoft Windows . This was the first time in many years that the studio had offered any support for its classic adventure titles. The second game in the Monkey Island series also received a high-definition remake, entitled Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition in 2010. Both Monkey Island special edition games were released in a compilation, Monkey Island Special Edition Collection , exclusively in Europe in 2011. The release of
14852-623: The form of the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic , was announced on October 21, 2008, at an invitation-only press event. developed by BioWare . It was released in December 2011. They also published Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes in 2009 for all current systems. The game is a tie-in to The Clone Wars television series and was released on October 6, 2009, receiving generally negative reviews. During television network G4 's coverage of
15010-443: The franchise titled Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures (1994) was developed alongside Factor 5 , the first of many joint collaborations between the two studios. They also released some games not based on their existing IPs. Zombies Ate My Neighbors (1993) and its sequel Ghoul Patrol (1994) were overhead run and gun side-scrollers inspired by classic 1950s Horror B-movies . A spiritual successor called Herc's Adventures
15168-555: The games were finished. When the rights to the Sam & Max franchise expired in 2005, the creator of Sam & Max, Steve Purcell , regained ownership. He then licensed Sam & Max to Telltale Games to be developed into an episodic game . Telltale Games was made up primarily of former LucasArts employees who had worked on the Sam & Max sequel and were let go after the project was canceled. LucasArts halted adventure game development for
15326-405: The games. Atari published their games for Atari systems, Activision and Epyx would do their computer publishing. Maniac Mansion was the first game to be published and developed by Lucasfilm Games. The early charter of Lucasfilm Games was to make experimental, innovative, and technologically advanced video games. Habitat , an early online role-playing game and one of the first to support
15484-408: The initial version, such as compatibility to new systems and better graphics capabilities. The only third-party game to use the Telltale Tool, Hector: Badge of Carnage , was developed by Straandlooper and also published by Telltale Games. While the Telltale Tool has been updated over the years to support newer consoles and computers, it lacked features that made it more difficult to develop for as
15642-416: The last LucasArts adventure game to retain traditional two-dimensional graphics and point-and-click interface, was released. This was followed by Grim Fandango in 1998, LucasArts' first attempt to convert a 2D adventure to a 3D environment. The highly stylised visuals, outstanding soundtrack , superb voice acting and sophisticated writing earned Grim Fandango many plaudits, including GameSpot's Game of
15800-450: The last two episodes of The Final Season through their Skybound Games division and with the original development team from Telltale. On October 4, 2018, narrative designer Rachel Noel stated that her team within the skeleton crew was also laid off, and that there were "not many" people left at the company. Telltale saw assignment proceedings begin on October 11, 2018, working through Sherwood Partners to liquidate all remaining assets;
15958-519: The late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre. Lucasfilm was wholly acquired by The Walt Disney Company in December 2012, and by April 2013, Disney had announced the shuttering of LucasArts in all but name, keeping the division around to handle licensing of Lucasfilm properties to third-party developers, primarily Electronic Arts , and having any in-house development transferred to Disney Interactive Studios . Disney has, since 2021, revitalized
16116-402: The law is to protect the public from fraud, by compelling the business owner to first file or register his fictitious business name with the county clerk, and then making a further public record of it by publishing it in a newspaper. Several other states, such as Illinois , require print notices as well. In Uruguay , a trade name is known as a nombre fantasía , and the legal name of business
16274-490: The layoffs, but felt that the change of direction at LucasArts was not favorable, and departed the company later that year to found Telltale Games July 2004. The studio opening was announced on October 4. The name "Telltale" was selected by Bruner as the three envisioned themselves creating more adventure games but de-emphasizing puzzle elements in favor of narrative aspects, telling a tale to the user. Technology attorney Ira P. Rothken negotiated publishing and licensing deals for
16432-540: The let-go developers over finishing the game. Two anonymous sources speaking to Ethan Gach of Kotaku clarified that Telltale was trying to convince potential development partners to hire the staff Telltale had laid off, so that the staff could remotely finish the two remaining episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season . During the 2018 New York Comic Con , Robert Kirkman , the creator of The Walking Dead comic, stated that his production company Skybound Entertainment had completed negotiations with Telltale to finish
16590-423: The license to Telltale. Until they could get to that point, the studio developed other games to bring in revenue and keep the studio afloat. On February 11, 2005, the company released their first game, Telltale Texas Hold'em , a poker card game simulator which was intended primarily to test the Telltale Tool, their in-house game engine. They used the license around Jeff Smith 's Bone comic book series to test
16748-507: The license. Telltale relocated to a larger space and expanded from 125 to 160 in mid-2013. Around 2015, the company had grown to 200 to 250 employees. The company continued to grow, at its peak having about 400 employees in mid-2017. In the midst of this growth, in 2014–2015, the management of Telltale recognized the need to restructure to handle more projects and more staff. This led to original chief executive officer (CEO) Dan Connors resigning and being replaced by co-founder Kevin Bruner, who
16906-461: The named defendant, RRL Corporation, was a Lexus car dealership doing business as " Lexus of Westminster ", but remaining a separate legal entity from Lexus, a division of Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. . In California , filing a DBA statement also requires that a notice of the fictitious name be published in local newspapers for some set period of time to inform the public of the owner's intent to operate under an assumed name . The intention of
17064-422: The new Telltale is set to re-release the old Telltale's back-catalog, as well as work on new games based on Telltale-affiliated properties. While licenses for games and planned games like The Walking Dead and Stranger Things have since reverted to their original owners, the new Telltale retains licenses for The Wolf Among Us and Batman , as well as the intellectual property for Puzzle Agent . The new Telltale
17222-422: The new Telltale. As of 2022, roughly 50 percent of the company's staff is made up of former Telltale employees. Telltale Games released video games in episodic installments . It is seen by production studios and other content producers to take a more realistic approach to movie tie-in games rather than the difficult "see the movie, play the game" model, and also collaborates with studios and screenwriters to create
17380-451: The newly involved parties had previously worked with the old Telltale. The first game under this new company was a re-release of Batman: The Telltale Series , adding in a new noir-style shader among other fixes, which was released in December 2019. The company also announced The Wolf Among Us 2 at The Game Awards 2019 . The sequel is being made in partnership with Ad hoc Studios, a company composed of former Telltale employees who worked on
17538-464: The next five years, focusing instead on their Star Wars games. They remained silent and did not rerelease their old games on digital distribution platforms, as other studios were doing at the time. However, in 2002, the company pledged that at least 50% of its releases would have nothing to do with Star Wars . It was not until 2009 that they returned to the genre. On June 1, 2009, LucasArts announced both The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition ,
17696-555: The number one new children's IP in 2006. Fracture was released on October 7, 2008, to average reviews. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was released on January 11, 2005, to critical and commercial success which led to a sequel, Mercenaries 2: World in Flames . Thrillville was released on November 21, 2006, and Thrillville: Off the Rails was released on October 16, 2007. On September 16, 2008, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
17854-436: The offered story. Nearly all of Telltale's adventure games afterwards featured this player choice-driven approach. The Walking Dead was critically praised and considered to have revitalized the adventure game genre since LucasArts' departure from it in 2004. Telltale continued to expand with new licensing deals for episodic adventure games over the next few years, including for Minecraft , Game of Thrones , Guardians of
18012-481: The office building within 30 minutes of the company's decision, received no severance , and only had a limited amount of time on their health care benefits. Melissa Hutchison , the voice actor for Clementine in The Walking Dead games, said that the news came in the middle of a recording session which they had to immediately end. On September 24, the former staff were allowed to return to the office within
18170-924: The only classic developer-publisher relationship was with Ubisoft for the CSI video game franchise . They have struck financial arrangements with GameTap for the first two seasons of the rebooted Sam & Max games, but their publishing arrangements have been chiefly made after the games were already completed and had already been sold via digital distribution. Telltale aimed to present itself on as many digital platforms and avenues as possible. It has released games through GameTap; on Microsoft Windows and OS X , through Steam and similar services, plus its own online store, on Wii via WiiWare and disc, on Xbox 360 , via Xbox Live Arcade and disc, on PlayStation 3 through PlayStation Network and disc, on iPhone and iPad through iTunes , on PlayStation Vita , and on Kindle Fire HDX . Though Telltale normally port their own games to other systems, CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder
18328-429: The over-reliance on Star Wars was reducing the quality of its output, and announced that future releases would be at least 50% non-Star Wars-related. However, many of the original titles were either unsuccessful or even cancelled before release, and since then LucasArts again had mainly Star Wars titles in production. Also in 2002, LucasArts released a compilation CD filled with music from their past games. The album
18486-632: The previous uses, with the executives staying more hands-off and reducing the amount of micromanagement of the creative teams. In June 2018, Telltale announced a partnership with Netflix for the streaming service to provide its games to subscribers, with the first planned game being Minecraft: Story Mode . Alongside this, Telltale announced that they were working on a yet-untitled game based on Netflix's original property, Stranger Things . According to Variety , there had been suggestions of teaming with Netflix for collaboration shortly after Stranger Things first aired in mid-2016, but Telltale's management at
18644-507: The previous year. Part of this was attributed to Back to the Future: The Game , which Steve Allison, the senior vice-president (VP) of marketing, called in 2011 their "most successful franchise to date". Allison stated that for most of their games, they only need to sell 100,000 copies to break even, but many of their recent releases have seen twice that number or more. The studio expanded from 90 to 140 employees. They had obtained
18802-509: The project needed to be finished by that year's holiday season. Obsidian was forced to cut huge amounts of content from the game, resulting in a rushed, unfinished Knights of the Old Republic II. In March 2005, LucasArts published Lego Star Wars: The Video Game , the first game in the popular Lego video game franchise by Traveller's Tales . It was based on the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In May 2005, LucasArts released Revenge of
18960-452: The reins to someone that can better drive Telltale to the next level and realize all the potential that is here." Pete Hawley, the former VP for Games at Zynga , was announced as the new CEO, with Connors remaining on its Board and acting in an advisory role. Rather than other corporate "fixers" who take control of a company for a temporary period to help it regain its financial footing, Hawley had committed to staying with Telltale after helping
19118-481: The remaining two were released that December. Telltale released the second of four planned episodes of The Walking Dead: The Final Season as scheduled on September 25, 2018, and stated that it had been contacted by "multiple potential partners" to help bring the last two episodes of the series to completion in some manner. While some fans of the series were happy about the news, others, including Cory Barlog , suggested that Telltale should prioritize finding ways to pay
19276-573: The restructuring, sources speaking to USgamer stated that most were part of the management structure that led to these problems; coupled with Hawley's appointment as CEO, this was expected to be a turning point to help revitalize Telltale. In June 2018, Bruner filed a lawsuit against Telltale in relation to his departure, citing financial damages as he had been seemingly removed from the Board of Directors, and thus could not gain information related to Telltale's financial status in anticipation of selling off
19434-453: The reviewing process with management that led to last-minute reworking of some episodes. The Verge also found some of the employees they spoke to had stated that top-level executives, including Bruner, had become fixated on the format that The Walking Dead presented, making decisions that prevented developers from looking at alternative formats or variations from this formula, stifling creativity and leading to several staff departures prior to
19592-417: The rights to The Walking Dead television series, and Smilegate , a Korean mobile games publisher, were looking to invest in Telltale, but both pulled out the day before Telltale's closure announcement. Dan Murray, president of Skybound Interactive which was working with Telltale for The Walking Dead games, said "We knew some of the challenges Telltale was facing, but when the news hits so suddenly everyone
19750-529: The rights to Sam & Max , Telltale set about to making this game with an episodic approach, with episodes planned to be released on a tight monthly basis through their partner, GameTap. Sam & Max: Season One was considered a success for the company, and considered one of the first successful demonstration of an episodic release in video games. The success led to additional funding through two rounds of angel investment , including Matthew Le Merle and members of angel group Keiretsu Forum . The studio created
19908-466: The rights to Telltale for an adventure game based on its show Stranger Things . In the midst of releasing The Walking Dead: The Final Season , the company was forced to initiate a "majority studio closure" after their last investor had pulled out of funding. Telltale announced on September 21, 2018, that it had let go of all but 25 of its staff as part of this closure, with the remaining skeleton crew completing specific obligations, such as finishing
20066-669: The same time as the digital release, a retail disc that contains the first episode. The disc included a "season pass" entitlement to the remaining episodes to be digitally downloaded, tied to the disc itself rather than the user. This allowed for trading or resale of the retail product that can be played by others, which according to Stauffer, makes for a "nice in-between" market model that satisfies players, retailers, and themselves. For some of their games, Telltale developed additional downloadable content , such as 400 Days for The Walking Dead , or three additional episodes for Minecraft: Story Mode Season 1, which must be purchased separately from
20224-400: The season pass. With Batman: The Telltale Series and most of their subsequently released episodic adventure games, Telltale added a "Crowd Play" feature that can be used by those that stream their playthroughs on services like Twitch . Through Crowd Play, viewers can vote for an option for the streamer to select. While mainly a developer, Telltale also verified its self-publishing ethos;
20382-617: The sequel to the popular Lego Star Wars: The Video Game . Lego Star Wars II , once again developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts, follows the same basic format as the first game, but, as the name indicates, covers the original Star Wars trilogy. A game titled Traxion was announced. Traxion was a rhythm game which was under development for the PlayStation Portable by British developer Kuju Entertainment , scheduled to be released in Q4 2006 by LucasArts, but
20540-593: The series with Poker Night 2 . The Walking Dead started out as a pilot program game that was known internally as the "zombie prototype". In general, few of these games brought in large revenues, and until 2010, the founders feared that investors would suddenly pull out of the company and would force its closure. Having established themselves as working with comedy franchises, Telltale chose to work with dramatic franchises as well as comedy series. In June 2010, Telltale announced that they had secured licenses with NBC Universal to develop two episodic series based on Back to
20698-617: The series, but was less well received by reviewers, who complained that the franchise was becoming formulaic. Apart from Star Wars -themed 3D shooters, LucasArts also created the western-themed game Outlaws in 1997 and Armed and Dangerous (in collaboration with Planet Moon Studios ) in 2003. In 2000, Simon Jeffery became the LucasArts president. He was president of LucasArts until 2003 and some successful Star Wars games released during his management like Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast , Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 , Knights of
20856-462: The software to Fujitsu , who released it in Japan as Fujitsu Habitat in 1990. Fujitsu later licensed Habitat for world-wide distribution, and released an updated version called WorldsAway in 1995. The latest iteration of Habitat is still called WorldsAway , which can be found at MetroWorlds. Initially, the Games Group worked from Lucas' Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California . In 1990, in
21014-678: The status of its in-progress games, including The Wolf Among Us: Season Two , Game of Thrones: Season Two , and the untitled Stranger Things project, but laid-off employees alleged that teams working on these games had all been let go. On September 24, Netflix announced that it is "in the process of evaluating other options for bringing the Stranger Things universe to life in an interactive medium." It also confirmed that it plans to go ahead with releasing Minecraft: Story Mode as planned. The first three episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode were subsequently released on Netflix on November 27, and
21172-539: The studio had been ready to close another round of financing when their last major investor pulled out. The company executives had to make the decision to end all production as soon as possible without this investment. While Connors did not specify which investor pulled out, Variety suggested that this may have been Lionsgate , which had contacted Telltale's board the previous week about its intent to pull out of funding Telltale in order to return to its core film business. Variety also reported that AMC Networks , which owns
21330-453: The studio in 2016 and 2017, according to Variety . By 2016, Bruner said that the Telltale studio had established an environment to be able to work on four major titles simultaneously with room for various side projects. However, this approach to development had created a perpetual state of " crunch time " within Telltale, according to several current and former staff speaking to USgamer , The Verge , and Variety in 2017. This limited
21488-440: The studio's closure—Michael Choung (who had briefly spent time at Night School Studio), Dennis Lenart, Nick Herman, and Pierre Shorette—formed AdHoc Studio with the intent to develop live-action interactive video games, following in Telltale's footsteps. AdHoc has since become involved with the new Telltale Games by LCG to help with the narrative and cinematic elements of The Wolf Among Us 2 . Telltale co-founder Dan Connors created
21646-431: The studio's expansion into all these additional licensed properties were trying to replicate the success of The Walking Dead , moving the company from a risk-taker to seeking risk aversion strategies. This was also propagated by the weight of the licensed properties: they had taken more conservative approaches to deliver a game that mirrored The Walking Dead , a well-known product, rather than take risks and potentially lose
21804-448: The studio's sudden closure. On September 21, 2018, CEO Pete Hawley announced that Telltale was undergoing a "majority studio closure", with around 90% of its present workforce (225 to 250 employees) let go that day. A core team of about 25 employees remained to "fulfill the company's obligations to its board and partners", which includes completing the Minecraft: Story Mode interactive media project for Netflix . According to Dan Connors,
21962-459: The surname(s) of the sole trader or partners, or the legal name of a company. The Companies Registration Office publishes a searchable register of such business names. In Japan , the word yagō ( 屋号 ) is used. In Colonial Nigeria , certain tribes had members that used a variety of trading names to conduct business with the Europeans. Two examples were King Perekule VII of Bonny , who
22120-469: The term trade name to refer to "doing business as" (DBA) names. In most U.S. states now, however, DBAs are officially referred to using other terms. Almost half of the states, including New York and Oregon , use the terms assumed business name or assumed name ; nearly as many, including Pennsylvania , use the term fictitious name . For consumer protection purposes, many U.S. jurisdictions require businesses operating with fictitious names to file
22278-519: The time, including Bruner, rejected the idea. The Netflix partnership solidified after Hawley took over as CEO. The Stranger Things game would have been used to bridge the show's story between its second and third season. In addition to this game, Telltale had started working with Night School Studio in 2017 for them to make a first-person, narrative driven game that would have led into Telltale's game. However, Night School reported difficulty in cooperating with Telltale over 2018 and were also surprised by
22436-441: The timeline established in the original films, during which the game is set, and also allowed players to play as Jedi characters. The game also underwent several major redesigns, which were received with mixed reactions by players. In April 2004, Jim Ward, V.P. of marketing, online and global distributions at Lucasfilm, was appointed president of LucasArts. Ward performed a top-to-bottom audit of LucasArts infrastructure, describing
22594-419: The unofficial SCUMM virtual machine , ScummVM , has led to something of a resurgence for LucasArts adventure games among present-day gamers. Using ScummVM, legacy adventure titles can easily be run on modern computers and even more unusual platforms such as video game consoles, mobile phones and PDAs . In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lucasfilm Games developed a series of military vehicle simulation games ,
22752-552: The video game group's founding, to produce video games. Though the group had spun out of Lucasfilm, the video game development license for Lucasfilm's Star Wars was held by Atari at the time, forcing the group to start with original concepts; Ron Gilbert, one of the group's first employees, believed that if the Lucasfilm Games Group had the rights for Star Wars from the start, they would have never branched into any new intellectual property. The first products from
22910-640: Was Labyrinth in 1986, based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name. The 1987 title Maniac Mansion introduced SCUMM , the scripting language behind most of the company's later adventure offerings. The adventures released in the following years, such as Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders in 1988, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure in 1989, and the 1990 titles Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island helped Lucasfilm Games build
23068-430: Was also able to expand their release platforms beyond personal computers, with releases of these games on various consoles at the time. To supplement their normal episodic games, Telltale created a pilot program in early 2010 to explore one-off games that would explore other gameplay and storytelling approaches that could eventually be incorporated into their episodic games. The first game, Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent ,
23226-566: Was also the firm's president. Connors noted that with the studio's continued growth, it had begun experiencing growth-specific challenges. Connors stated that Bruner's ascension to CEO would best enable Telltale Games to act on future expansion opportunities. Connors remained on the board of directors , and also served as a creative consultant . Internally, there were concerns about this transition and Brunner's influence on it; an anonymous quality control (QC) employee writing in Gamasutra after
23384-421: Was an original intellectual property (IP) developed by Telltale that would be able to take advantage of this format. Telltale also announced that Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer and Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello joined Telltale's board of directors. Alongside this, Lionsgate had invested US$ 40 million into Telltale. The "Super Show" concept never got out of pre-production, due to issues that arose with
23542-643: Was developed in the early 1990s by composers Michael Land and Peter McConnell while working at LucasArts. The iMUSE system is patented by LucasArts, and was added to the SCUMM game engine in 1991. The first game to use iMUSE was Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and it has been used in all LucasArts adventure games since. It has also been used for some non-adventure LucasArts titles, including Star Wars: X-Wing (DOS version), Star Wars: TIE Fighter (DOS version), and Star Wars: Dark Forces . Lucasfilm Games also released several side-scrollers during
23700-426: Was expected to start small for the first six months to regain distribution channels, and the company has offered former staff of the old Telltale freelance roles within the company with the potential for full-time positions at a later point in time. Partners in the new Telltale include publisher Athlon Games , which will handle distribution, and financial contributors Chris Kingsley, Lyle Hall and Tobias Sjögren. None of
23858-443: Was instead cancelled in January 2007. The game was to feature a number of minigames , and would support imported songs from the player's own mp3 library as well as the game's bundled collection. In May 2007, LucasArts announced Fracture and stated that "new intellectual properties serve a vital role to the growth of LucasArts". Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was labelled the number one new IP in 2005 and Thrillville
24016-553: Was known as Captain Pepple in trade matters, and King Jubo Jubogha of Opobo , who bore the pseudonym Captain Jaja . Both Pepple and Jaja would bequeath their trade names to their royal descendants as official surnames upon their deaths. In Singapore , there is no filing requirement for a "trading as" name, but there are requirements for disclosure of the underlying business or company's registered name and unique entity number. In
24174-560: Was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Ubisoft Sofia , and Bone: Out from Boneville was ported to Mac OS by Vanbrio. Telltale was one of the companies who Sony confirmed pledged PlayStation 4 third-party support at the PlayStation Meeting 2013. Telltale had also committed to developing and re-releasing seasons for the Nintendo Switch . Stauffer stated that there were no restrictions on what games they can bring to
24332-478: Was positively received but sold poorly and was even rated as one of the "best Xbox games most people never played" by Official Xbox Magazine . In 2003, LucasArts and the Star Wars franchise also branched out in a new direction—the world of the MMORPG , with the creation of Star Wars Galaxies . After a successful launch, the first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed , was released in 2004. The new expansion featured
24490-418: Was released in 1997 and was inspired by Greek mythology . Metal Warriors (1995), a side-scroller inspired by mecha anime, and Big Sky Trooper were also developed using the same engine as Zombies Ate My Neighbors . Though these games sold poorly, they later garnered a cult following and are now considered to be Cult Classics from the 16-Bit era. The first adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games
24648-532: Was released in May 2023. Trade name In a number of countries, the phrase " trading as " (abbreviated to t/a ) is used to designate a trade name. In the United States , the phrase " doing business as " (abbreviated to DBA , dba , d.b.a. , or d/b/a ) is used, among others, such as assumed business name or fictitious business name . In Canada , " operating as " (abbreviated to o/a ) and " trading as " are used, although " doing business as "
24806-518: Was released to mixed reviews, though it quickly became the fastest-selling Star Wars game of all time. The rapid scaling down of internal projects at LucasArts was also reflected in its handling of games developed by external developers. During the tenure of Ward, Free Radical was contracted to produce Star Wars: Battlefront III , which had been in production for 2 years. Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis described how working with LucasArts evolved from being "the best relationship we'd ever had with
24964-478: Was taken off guard", while anonymous Telltale employees stated to The Verge that they had known the company was in financial trouble in the months leading up to the closure and was further hurt by leaks of news related to the Netflix deal, which management wanted to use as a lure for speculative investors. In a press release, Hawley stated: It's been an incredibly difficult year for Telltale as we worked to set
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