When will Episode 2 be released exactly?
Hi,
i've just browsed a bit here http://www.telltalegames.com/community/blogs and read this:
*snip*
Episode 2 will be out on December 21 on GameTap. That's just three weeks away! Like last time, the episode will arrive on Telltale's site 15 days later, on January 5. At that time you'll be able to buy the episode, or get your free access to it if you've already bought the season set.
*snap*
So does that mean each Episode will be out later for those who can't buy the game from gametap?
And how is the situation for those who bought the whole season already? Will they get the game also in december or will they be artificially hold back?
Thanks,
taumel
i've just browsed a bit here http://www.telltalegames.com/community/blogs and read this:
*snip*
Episode 2 will be out on December 21 on GameTap. That's just three weeks away! Like last time, the episode will arrive on Telltale's site 15 days later, on January 5. At that time you'll be able to buy the episode, or get your free access to it if you've already bought the season set.
*snap*
So does that mean each Episode will be out later for those who can't buy the game from gametap?
And how is the situation for those who bought the whole season already? Will they get the game also in december or will they be artificially hold back?
Thanks,
taumel
Sign in to comment in this discussion.
Comments
I don't mind it though.
Well, i do mind as i would have had time during christmas. Anyway if that's the deal then that's the deal.
It's a strange feeling getting something later which you've paid in advance. This deal must be part of the Sam&Max world and somehow slipped through back into the weird reality. This for sure is episodic gaming at it's best. Pay the price but feel like a second hand customer for six times. I love it!
Regards,
taumel
Telltale isn't making us second class citizens... they just have to cater to the contract that made the game happen. If Gametap didn't give telltale a substantial sum up front, there's a good chance they wouldn't of had the funding to make the game in the first place.
If it's wait 2 weeks or not play the game at all, I'll wait 2 weeks.
Calm down, man.
The deal with buying the whole season up front is the minute they're out on Telltale's site, you can download them and don't have to mess with adding the game to your cart, etc. etc.
I don't believe in ranking customers either. I don't consider someone who bought the whole season up front to be a 'better' customer than someone who just bought one episode.
I got dibs on Brendan!
Basically, Gametap was like, "Wow, you're making a Sam and Max series? Here's enough money for you to help you nearly double your staff, and cover costs so that you can deliver everything on schedule."
I'm sure if you were willing to pay as much money as Gametap did, and as early as they did, then Telltale would be willing to give you Sam and Max 2 weeks earlier.
Two weeks in advance will be approximately half of the time an whole season update will take if ttg will be able to succeed in their update schedule next year and you'll experience this over and over again. In my opinion this is definately a bad side effect for episodic gaming. Even more if you cummulate the times of waiting for the whole game.
What's gonna be next? A exclusive level for community A? Higher resolution models for community B? A hour per week chat with the developers for community C? ...
Sorry, i just dislike such things and i also would dislike them if i would be on the other side. Kudos to those who manage to get a game out without such deals!
that's a nice run-on sentence, apignarb.
why thankyou.
Then you won't feel inferior by having to wait a measly 2 weeks.
Remember: LucasArts screwed you, not Telltale.
Because they've decided that adventures and anything else beside of StarWars isn't of interest anymore? Well, that's definately sad and i guess it also was the wrong decision from a business point of view but why should i feel better with ttg? At the moment i really don't feel like i'm in a save harbour with them.
Honestly think about it: gametap isn't available to the majority in the world. So where is the meaning behind this deal for those who can't become gametap members due to that they don't live in countries (anything else beside of usa, canada?) where gametap can offer?
Should i be motivated in becoming a citizen of the usa then? Is gametap a dummy company of the government/military? And ttg does contract work for them... ;O)
We're not talking about a delay which is due to localisation, packaging or local legislation. It's a the same content for all and it's distributed purely digital. Now is this one of the advantages internet distribution brings us?
I don't think so and according to discussions i've read in other lists i'm not the only one who's unhappy with this situation. It also doesn't seem that these people were turning into potential happy gametap users in the future, so the marketing effort at least for this group is questionable too.
If you fool me once it's your fault, if you fool me twice it's mine. Lesson learnt. I'll read the small print better next time.
How does a 15 day wait cause so much angst? Are you emo?
Is Hollywood intentionally screwing you, too, just because their contract doesn't include a worldwide release? Are you not going to watch the next big blockbuster movie because it comes out two weeks later? Probably not.
No, LucasArts screwed you because they were 90% completed with a Sam and Max sequel, and cancelled it 2 months before it was supposed to be released, and it will never see the light of day.
Again, just wait until May for the whole season if this bothers you so much.
Besides, before Episode 1 came out Telltale did tell us that the games would be released on GameTap first. And the initial trailer that came out in Spring said it was a Telltale/Gametap production. Don't be upset at Telltale because you lached on to the game the day it was released and did not look into the details the rest of us were all well aware of.
Just sit back and enjoy an amazing game anytime you get a chance to play it.
I don't feel this sorry for the LucasArts Sam&Max version as i never payed for it and it was far away from beeing advertised at least here.
Regarding the information i didn't knew that a) this would be the case for each episode and b) no matter if you payed in advance or not. Now that i know i dislike the way it's handeled. There are people who are happy with it and others who aren't.
Take your film industry as an glorious example. One of the reasons why people are downloading movies from the net is because they don't want to wait till the movie is thought to be released for their country. They want to see it now when others can do.
If you were a Bone fan--anywhere in the world--wouldn't you be happy if Telltale announced that they just got a deal with Gametap, allowing them to pay for the costs of increasing staff and other development costs, so that they could release episodes on a much faster schedule, with the caveat that you have to wait 2 weeks if you're not a Gametap subscriber?
Or would you rather have the much longer 6 month waits?
I guess people would be more accepting if Telltale said something more like, "without the support of Gametap, the release schedule would be once every 3 months rather than once a month."
I don't feel like i want to talk a lot about Bone. It's nothing i'm really interested in as already the comics were boring in my opinion...just not my thing.
In the end i would prefer a solution wich would enable all the gamers the program at the same time and this obviously as soon as possible.
By the way are there more copies sold if it's hold back for gametap?
Everyone could get it at once, but we might get a 3 hour game once every 6 months or worse.
Don't blame Telltale because you don't bother to read anything about the game or its release schedule. I knew the day they announced the timing schedule. I'll admit it put me off a bit, but if it makes games come out more frequently, I'm all for it.
And if waiting bothers you that much, why don't you just hack Gametap by using a US routing server so you can play it the absolute second it comes out?
Now this sounds like a reasonable solution to me. :O)
I suggest: Publish it in a reasonable way for all!
<end of transmission>
The exception proves the rule?! It's a great saying but has no bearing on this discussion. Just because Gametap's version of Sam and Max has not yet been cracked/pirated, that means it proves the rule that people will put a lot of effort into cracking it?
It's an analogy... you don't have to like Bone to understand an analogy that uses it as an example.
Here, let me change it for you:
And I know it's not the strictest comparison, but Telltale's past experience with self-publishing episodic games has revealed that they can do so with a 6 month wait in-between episodes.
If you were a Day of the Tentacle fan--anywhere in the world--wouldn't you be happy if Telltale announced that they just got a deal with Gametap, allowing them to pay for the costs of increasing staff and other development costs, so that they could release episodes on a much faster schedule, with the caveat that you have to wait 2 weeks if you're not a Gametap subscriber?
Or would you rather have the much longer 6 month waits?
Definitely more people play Sam and Max because of Gametap--Sam and Max has been amongst the top-played games on Gametap for the last 6 weeks, and I think no other adventure game has cracked that list so far, so it's conceivable to deduce that Gametap is introducing a lot of gamers both to adventure games and to Sam and Max.
More copies would probably be sold, yes, but that does not necessarily translate to more money for Telltale or more people playing Sam and Max. If Telltale lost 1000 sales to Gametap users, but Gametap paid Telltale $1,000,000, then the deal is a no brainer.
I know what you mean by providing additional financial resources and so enabling a speed up development but personally i still would be much more interested in a complete game instead of a episodic format and so i don't know how much i really benefit from this.
I have to wait for A Vampyre Story? Okay, i will wait and hope that it will be worth the wait.
The seperation made for the customers distracts me much more than if there would be a longer development cycle but all could enjoy the game at the same time then. Sorry, i'm old skool on this one.
Gametap is offering a additional selling platform for Sam&Max, so do all the other game portals in the net. They also often try to get exclusive deals but contrary to gametap lot's of them sell over the globe. But beside of this knowing what a better deal would have been is pure speculation as we don't know how their agreement looks like.
If gametap invested more money than they could earn by selling copies then there is either a marketing value for them or they are just a bunch of nice people.
For the first gametap will get out other values than cash. More noticed on the market, maybe establishing as an option for people who wouldn't have gone there otherwise and so on...
If it's the second then why did they stop on the half way and just didn't went the whole distance and continued beeing nice to the gamers?! I'm sure great marketing and getting gamers over to gametap could also be done in different ways than just delaying the product for the others.
It's right that you can't count a copy to a copy but as i've written there are alternative values which could make a publisher act this way.
I suspect we won't come to an agreement as i just dislike such deals and would have tried to find another solution instead or preferd a longer dev time. Let's just cut it here, okay?!
My guess is that you live in a third world country right out of the Soviet Bloc where capitalism is still a new concept.
I'm tired of trying to explain it to you.
And, nice way of saying you're willing to steal the game on a forum where your IP adress is logged.
/Last comment on the subject.
Reading some of the other posts in this thread, I fully understand why TellTale has entered into a limited exclusivity agreement with GameTap. I don't think they've "sold out" at all. More likely, they've made a smart business decision to ramp up development time on episode releases and make those products available to a broader audience. While competing against the EA's and the UbiSofts of the world, this decision makes a lot of sense to me.
As for the piracy issue raised, individuals who wish to obtain the game illegally will attempt to do so despite established release dates or exclusivity agreements. While these things may be used to provide an excuse or rationale for their actions, this does not excuse the fact that those who pirate the game are stealing, plain and simple. We're talking about games here, part of an entertainment based medium that is not vital to life or ones existence even if the hardcore tend to think so. To that degree, software piracy is completely unjustifiable and not a necessity under any circumstances. TellTale could enter into a complete exclusivity agreement with GameTap and this would not justify individuals obtaining their game illegally.
Yeah right. Soviet Block wasn´t/isn´t "the third world". Soviet Block was "the second world".
Also, you shouldn´t go into things like that kinda like claiming some people are somehow stupid just because they live in some particular place, especially in the case of people who were oppressed in the past.
And if I had to guess, you haven´t read either Smith or Marx or anyone else at all so I wish you would shut up.
???
So, are you claiming that Telltale will hunt down and maybe sue or kill the dude who lives in some former Soviet country in the freaking third world because he admitted on an internet-forum that he´d steal a game? Haha! I´m not particularly impressed by your brain capacity.
and taumel, you shouldn´t worry too much about the delay. It´s only two weeks. Just two weeks man! Nothing more. On the other hand, I don´t think you are the sharpest tool in the shed, either. No offense, though, but try to understand that the two week delay is the best for us all. If you don´t like the format, fine, but I´d suggest you at least tried.
Yeah, but how bout' that 'Lego Star Wars' eh? Pretty fun...
Since they have a record of taking something and just running with it forever (see Star Wars games), they should do the same with Legos and run with it.
I would guess the Lego game engine is simple, cheap and easy to use, and they could just recycle sound effects and voice recordings.
Lego Grim Fandango anyone?
Sorry for derailing the thread--to make this post more appropriate for the thread: I think neildittmar made a really smart and intelligent comment, and Kunkku-Antti's comments always crack me up since he said he's actually an extremely laid back, nonconfrontational guy in real life.
fuck, I forgot.
Yes Lego Star Wars looked kind of fun but to be honest the older you get the less time you have for playing and therefore it concentrates on those titles you really want to play and Lego Star Wars just doesn't fit into this category for me.