An Open Letter to Telltale Games
Dearest TTG;
In the most recent months, you have been my heroes, bringing back what I believe to be the most wonderful franchise in gaming history. I love what you have done with it, and wholeheartedly approve.
However, I think Michael Lands music is one of the best part of the games. The music in Curse of Monkey Island, I think, is a HUGE part of what made it feel so epic, so polished.
So please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT RELEASE THE NEXT SEASON ON THE WII. We want real music, we want recorded music. I want steel drums and accordions and violins and flutes. I want real samples of a ocean wave breaking, not MIDI sounding stuff. I know you're limited, and I can hear IN this music that the talent is there to do SO much more.
Even better, release it on XBOX if you must use a console, its more geared to your audience, it has the capabilities to handle full music-ed games (they are going to allow downloading of full 360 games soon).
HELL, I'll pay more! That's how much I like you guys but also how much I want real music. I'll pay $45 for a season, hell I'll pay $60 just like an XBOX 360 game.
Sincerely,
Me
PS: I know businesses, I know it's complicated, in reality I'm just hoping that you consider dropping the WII because its limits heavily outweigh its benefits.
In the most recent months, you have been my heroes, bringing back what I believe to be the most wonderful franchise in gaming history. I love what you have done with it, and wholeheartedly approve.
However, I think Michael Lands music is one of the best part of the games. The music in Curse of Monkey Island, I think, is a HUGE part of what made it feel so epic, so polished.
So please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT RELEASE THE NEXT SEASON ON THE WII. We want real music, we want recorded music. I want steel drums and accordions and violins and flutes. I want real samples of a ocean wave breaking, not MIDI sounding stuff. I know you're limited, and I can hear IN this music that the talent is there to do SO much more.
Even better, release it on XBOX if you must use a console, its more geared to your audience, it has the capabilities to handle full music-ed games (they are going to allow downloading of full 360 games soon).
HELL, I'll pay more! That's how much I like you guys but also how much I want real music. I'll pay $45 for a season, hell I'll pay $60 just like an XBOX 360 game.
Sincerely,
Me
PS: I know businesses, I know it's complicated, in reality I'm just hoping that you consider dropping the WII because its limits heavily outweigh its benefits.
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Comments
Why is it that open letters are never good. They're always criticizing something.
They are already actually
It's very costly to get the setup going for making console games. Once you have everything set up and your people properly know how everything works, it's a lot easier to release more stuff on that console.
Dropping the Wii would be a huge waste of invested money. No sane company would do this just for aesthetic reasons. It's not like there is any fundamental problem with the Wii. It's powerful enough for the ToMI engine and a very popular device. Dropping it would make zero business scene.
The proof of this is that TTG didn't touch OSX or the PS3 (yet). They are hesitant to make the big initial investment.
i made the horrific mistake of buying the wii version and had to delete it in dusgust and buy it AGAIN so i could play it on a proper computer instead of a 5 year old's toy.
by 'popular' i assume you mean popular with 40-somethings playing wii-fit and 5 year olds playing 'i like to ride around on my pet pony 5'.
XNA supports dual PC/xbl development.
Anyway, the economic argument still stands.
The Wii has more than enough power to play more demanding games than what Telltale have made, it's just that they are not released on WiiWare which is what Telltale do currently and is a move I feel seriously limits their potential on a console that is perfectly suited to their types of game.
XNA/C# is fine for small bedroom coders but it's just too slow (compared to C++) for commercial games development.
Everyone brings up really good points though
Tales will be on 360 soon enough
It also has done wonders for TTG, they are no longer the little game studio that could, they are now a legitimate force to be reckoned with.... Lucasarts has hired them to make a game for them.. That puts them on the map in a pretty big way.. its no longer a little experiment to see if episodic adventure games has a market its proven and proven with critic and fan approval. Releasing this on the Wii has gone a long way to help them do just that.
I don't agree with this at all, it is highly doable to write a high end game in C#. DirectX runs 98% as fast in C# as it does in C and C++ according to microsoft, of course this is to be taken with a pinch of salt, but the fact that the language cuts away a lot of the bad stuff with C++ makes it well worth using, even for major companies. There are a few C# engines out there but not to many, I'm to lazy to dig them up at the moment.
The major reason most game companies are not using C# for the games is that it's a microsoft language, it only works on windows, if you want to port your game to consoles or other OSes you pretty much screw yourself over using C# and it's relatively new compared to C or C++ which both have quite a few years behind them which means it's easy enough to find coders with the amount of expertise required to write a high end game.
They'd better!
They didn't seem to mind that cost with Sam & Max.
Good point
the wii version is good for what it is considering. can you imagine trying to get sounds,graphics and game data under 40Mb for something that isn't a 2d platformer. background music would be the first thing i would cut too or atleast reduce to a midi track ( and this could also explain the pyriot parrot too, limited space and reusing game data).
i like what ttg have done with the limited space though but in the same instance i wish they had left the wii development untill after it shipped for the pc. i think the turn around time is just a bit longer for tales than what it was for sam and max (might be wrong here). the release schedule for that was just about right if you ask me just as i got done replaying sam and max the new one would appear for tales it seems im waiting 2 weeks after replaying the game for the 3rd time.
Not remotely true. I don't know of any direct speed comparisons, but from my knowledge of managed vs unmanaged languages, I'd guess you could see a 10-20% speed difference between C# and C++, max. That's not a big hurdle to overcome with the speeds of modern computers in general being far faster than needed, especially consider the graphics card is providing so much of the horsepower these days. 3D rendering and shaders will run at exactly the same speeds under XNA as they do in C++ / DirectX SDK.
However, it IS true that very few commercial games are being developed in XNA. I think this is mainly because most development teams are used to C++ rather than due to any real speed/optimisation benefit.
If you have any statistics or case studies to back up your claim, I'd love to hear
I apologise, the statement you quoted is inaccurate, I blame sloppiness & tiredness. I know there is a speed difference between C++ & C# (because it's simply impossible for a managed language to be faster than a native language but you're right in that there's probably only about a 10% difference) but I also know it's not the main reason why it's not used for commercial games outside of XBLA. The knowledge I have is taken from use and what I've been taught over the last couple of years.
I love using C# which is why I'm going to be using it for 2 of my 5 modules for this year (would use it in all my modules if I could but don't have a choice in the other 3).
That said, full seasons at once (see Sam & Max) shouldn't be a problem.
Couldn't agree more!
My laptop runs most games but I couldn't even get the demo of MI to run this time!
I'm all for the wiiware version, otherwise there is no way on this earth (except for either buying a new laptop or paying loads to upgade) that I could play the tales of MI.
That's a silly claim. Not only is XNA fully capable of making commercial "Indie" quality games, (which is in the realm of TellTale Games, while they aren't really "Indie" they rival in quality) It's more than "fast" enough.
Furthermore, C++ is virtually the same as XNA in terms of compatibility. All PC games written in C++ are ported to xbox as vice versa by only adding in Controller Support and an Xbox compiler. They both read the same exact code, the compilers are the only different part, which is capable of compiling the same code into an xbox 360 instructed system.
From a guy that wants to be a games programmer..... this is a big oversight.
This is also a silly thing to say. I'm willing to bet that there are more people out there that have an Xbox 360 no wii, and a computer that can't play it.... who currently have no way of playing the game. So what about them? Or better yet, what about the PS3 owners? Not to mention, because you're "selfish" PC users get gimped? Makes perfect sense. Tell Tale really needs to make two versions of the game. PC version should have High Quality sound. Even the voices sound pretty bad compared to most "commercial" games. It's not right to support a platform and base the program ON that platform, and then ship it within the constraints of the "limited" ported platform. Seems to me, if they can't afford it, or don't have enough people to do it, they need to hire more people, or be more profitable before they try to do something they can't.
I still love TTG, but this stinks of bad planning/laziness.
I've previously stated I was in error with that initial statement, I do not need to repeat it here. As for the C++ being virtually the same as XNA (though technically speaking a game orientated framework is quite different from a general purpose programming language, but I get your meaning), well it is when using DirectX as the API but you have the choice of what API to use when coding in C++ which you don't get with XNA. Ok so there isn't much choice apart from DirectX & OpenGL but the choice is there.
I feel what you get with C++ is a black canvas and a wide selection of 'paintbrushes' to use on it. With XNA you get a canvas which has a border on it and has already been framed and you're given one type of brush to use. Ok you still have a lot of colours to choose from but it's still fairly rigid and while that is good for small game devs and students like myself it's not the best option for a company even the size of Telltale.
A "silly thing to say"? That's absurd. I'm just saying that, since I own a Wii, I'm glad the Wii version gives me the chance to play the game. I didn't say I was against 360 or PS3 versions, and I'm not denying that Wiiware's frustrating filesize limit has put some limits on development. I am saying that the existence of more versions has an inherent positive in that it allows the game to reach more people. That's not silly at all.