Telltale NOW
TelltaleGames
Former Telltale Staff
When we first started working with UbiSoft on CSI, they brought us a lot of presents. A few games, some CSI related materials, and some Beyond Good & Evil themed disposable cameras. Three cameras to be precise. Over the course of a year or so, we filled up these cameras with photos which were recently developed by the disposable camera fairy and placed in a spiffy album by the spiffy album fairy. It's been amusing to look back through these pictures and reminisce about the good ol days...
Once, we were a young, raw company, a handful of starry eyed and underfed developers crammed into a tiny office space like so many sardines (if sardines worked in offices). You would have to squirm your way through the slim walkway between desks to get to the single bathroom -- only to be forced to wait while the jerk who sat closer to the bathroom zipped in right before you got there. The space turned into an oven in the summer, the ceiling leaked strange colored liquids, the power would cut out if you tried to be humane and vacuum and the bullet holes in the windows were the "least of your problems"�. We were terribly creative in those days. Every time I thought we had no more space for further desks, we'd find a way to sneak in yet another one for some poor new sucker willing to cramp themselves into our sardine-can like home.
Man, those were the days.
Now, with four titles under our belts, the Sam & Max license firmly in grasp, twice as many employees and a lovely office that we almost all fit comfortably in, we're getting fat and lazy. Now most people in the office only have one job instead of four. The days of flying by the seats of our pants have been replaced with scheduling and trying to make stuff actually happen by certain dates. Things like having power consistently are now sadly predictable. People spend more time working and less time playing carpet hockey. Our tools get easier and easier to use all the time. Our office has homey things like art on the walls and plants (even though one of them looks kinda sad) and sea monkeys and mysterious stains on the rug. In fact, someone else comes to take away the trash and vacuum; we don't even have to do THAT! It's gotten downright cushy around here, and as a result life is less exciting and dramatic, people are more placid, and things are all around more dull.
But this may be changing...why just last Friday had us scrambling to find a location in which we could place a desk for our newest in-coming animator. The mysterious bulge in the carpet behind Kim's desk has created an offspring carpet bulge and the bulge army is threatening to take over that whole corner. We are starting to occasionally get into brawls over who gets to use the conference room and no one has seen any donuts in weeks. Oh yeah, and there's that plant...
Of course, we are still stuck with our rapidly improving tools and our larger selection of office supplies and interns. But soon we will have to take a sledge hammer to the wall that was built over the blue line or else risk returning to our sardine fish ways. Honestly, I ask my co-workers, would this be so bad? To go back to our roots? To exercise our resourcefulness and lose some of these extra pounds of opulence and become our leaner, meaner selves? After all, adversity has been known to breed creative genius.
Though, on the other hand, so has hot coffee, personal space and donuts.
Once, we were a young, raw company, a handful of starry eyed and underfed developers crammed into a tiny office space like so many sardines (if sardines worked in offices). You would have to squirm your way through the slim walkway between desks to get to the single bathroom -- only to be forced to wait while the jerk who sat closer to the bathroom zipped in right before you got there. The space turned into an oven in the summer, the ceiling leaked strange colored liquids, the power would cut out if you tried to be humane and vacuum and the bullet holes in the windows were the "least of your problems"�. We were terribly creative in those days. Every time I thought we had no more space for further desks, we'd find a way to sneak in yet another one for some poor new sucker willing to cramp themselves into our sardine-can like home.
Man, those were the days.
Now, with four titles under our belts, the Sam & Max license firmly in grasp, twice as many employees and a lovely office that we almost all fit comfortably in, we're getting fat and lazy. Now most people in the office only have one job instead of four. The days of flying by the seats of our pants have been replaced with scheduling and trying to make stuff actually happen by certain dates. Things like having power consistently are now sadly predictable. People spend more time working and less time playing carpet hockey. Our tools get easier and easier to use all the time. Our office has homey things like art on the walls and plants (even though one of them looks kinda sad) and sea monkeys and mysterious stains on the rug. In fact, someone else comes to take away the trash and vacuum; we don't even have to do THAT! It's gotten downright cushy around here, and as a result life is less exciting and dramatic, people are more placid, and things are all around more dull. But this may be changing...why just last Friday had us scrambling to find a location in which we could place a desk for our newest in-coming animator. The mysterious bulge in the carpet behind Kim's desk has created an offspring carpet bulge and the bulge army is threatening to take over that whole corner. We are starting to occasionally get into brawls over who gets to use the conference room and no one has seen any donuts in weeks. Oh yeah, and there's that plant...
Of course, we are still stuck with our rapidly improving tools and our larger selection of office supplies and interns. But soon we will have to take a sledge hammer to the wall that was built over the blue line or else risk returning to our sardine fish ways. Honestly, I ask my co-workers, would this be so bad? To go back to our roots? To exercise our resourcefulness and lose some of these extra pounds of opulence and become our leaner, meaner selves? After all, adversity has been known to breed creative genius.
Though, on the other hand, so has hot coffee, personal space and donuts.
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