Minecraft: Story Mode was supposed to be T-Rated and GotG was made unfunnier because of executives
So what went wrong? Buck believes that one of the biggest problems was a "fundamental misunderstanding of who our audience was" among most, though not all, of the executive leadership.
Both Minecraft: Story Mode, and Guardians of the Galaxy were games where this misunderstanding were apparent, said Buck. The first two episodes of Minecraft: Story Mode were originally M-rated, and had to be rewritten; in this case, Buck said, it was fortunate as it was clearly misaligned with the younger target demographic of Minecraft.
With Guardians of the Galaxy, however, it was almost the exact opposite. Much like the source material, which the creative team studied extensively in order to try and capture the tone and feel of the universe, the original draft of the game was funnier and more "goofy", but that was all stripped out to lean into a darker, grittier feel, that was tonally off from the franchise.
"Our executive team insisted that what was popular about Guardians of the Galaxy, was darkness and violence, and sadness," said Buck. "And that people did not associate humour with that brand... So we redid the first two episodes to be less funny and more dark and more violent and more sad, and that's the game that shipped. And one of the biggest comments in editorial, was that it felt very off-tone for Guardians of the Galaxy and wasn't very funny. And we were like 'we know'."
https://gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-18-a-post-mortem-of-telltale-games
What the fuck.
EDIT:
Comments
re: GOTG
All the sudden I dislike the executives of Telltale much more. GOTG was way too dark and was rarely funny.
An adult swim, black comedy Minecraft game would've been amazing you're right what the fuck
oh and gotg being stripped of humor is pretty unfortunate I guess
Both decisions just perfectly showed, why Telltale died.
Jesus. An R-Rated Minecraft game? A dark and unfunny GotG game?
What is wrong with the executives?
I really hate the idea of a M rated minecraft game. That already sounds like a bullet dodged. The guardians approach I sorta understand too, since Telltale does like to grapple with darker material, but Tales didn't get dark until the finale if we're being honest so a bizarre decision indeed. It does seem like Buck is being a little too blunt saying shit like "we know" like okay so the writers didn't even try? Cause that sounds like what she's implying which is far from the truth. She's really starting to get on my nerves.
An update from Emily about Minecraft's rating.
That lines up waaaay more with Jesse's T rated swears and goonies vibe. Wouldn't have minded that as much.
The writers obviously tried, but there's only so much you can do with all those unrealistical deadlines. The reason why things are badly written in Telltale's games is most commonly because of the lack of time. They just simply COULDN'T do more.
I fully understand Emily and her way of describing how things went at Telltale and with these decisions made by the executives and all the other bullshit they've pulled, which did have an insane impact on the lives of a lot of people, I'm surprised she stays this cool.
As the forums' self-proclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy Game Expert™, this news has me pretty pissed.
You're looking at the guy who saw GOTG Vol.2 4 times because he loved the humour in it (and used bringing his friends to see it as an excuse). This cinematic version of the group is not "darkness and violence". Those are hardly the first three words I'd use when describing the films.
Sometimes I wonder where executives get their dumb flawed facts from. How is it that so many of them in the entertainment industry "know" the exact opposite of what the general public's actual interest is?
While I love the game dearly, and there's a lot that I think it does right with what it has, I agree that it was too dark and didn't really embrace the goofy side of the Marvel Cosmic Universe. There were hints, but the aesthetic of the game (literally) was too dark.
We visit the same temple twice in the first two episodes, and a different second one at the end of Ep2. We visit another, bigger ancient temple in Episode 3. Episode 4 has the Guardians exploring some dark caves under said ancient temple.
Like... where's the Marvel Universe? Where are the aliens?
The comic based off the game is exactly how the original game should have turned out. Goofy, funny, with out-of-this-world locations... You've got Sakaar: The weird Gladitorial planet. Stakar (Sylvester Stallone in the films) has a running gag of always ending words with the suffix "ass" as an insult. Howard the Duck physically shows up in the comic. Cosmo the telepathic Space Dog appears and manages to bargain with Thanos to spare the Guardians.
It's just one big fun ride through the universe, and I'd even say that it uses the Marvel license better than the game.
Well, they did try, as evidenced by Minecraft's precarious, more mature written dialogue and references to films older than 12yrs.
Guardians is the same. They still managed to include a lot of humour (though it was hit or miss) and the characters aren't dark and moody messes, but a lot of the players' criticisms was that it was pretty bland and uninspired. It also didn't go full-blown goofy like the movies which probably hurt it's likability a lot.
As it's written in the article just after the OP here:
This is why guardians failed and Batman did not. Batman is already dark and gritty and Telltale likes working with that. Jokes are always the priority in a Marvel movie. Why the hell would you change the formula that makes Marvel and especially GOTG populair in the first place, And then make it darker? Most people are fans of Marvel cause their movies are fun popcorn rides. Telltale should have gone the same route with guardians as they did with TFTB. Mostly funny, but there is still some drama. It only gets a little dark in episode 5 with Handsome Jack but no to much. Man just thinking about it makes me feel really sad and dissappointed
I'd be pissed about this, but honestly, none of that really surprises me in the slightest. I believe The Verge article discussing Telltale's toxic management under Bruner also made a similar point in that, due to executive meddling in their projects, the company was no longer making games that the fans wanted, but the ones the executives wanted. The developers probably have the deepest understanding of the source material, and while executives notes and guidance can be fruitful and important in certain aspects, it was clear they were way too involved in areas that they shouldn't have been. And when someone even slightly stepped out of line, they were either taken off the project or outright fired because they were always right. Using fear and intimidation to bully people into getting what you want is not how you run a business.
No surprise that when Pete Hawley comes in, fired a good chunk of the former executives and replaced them with people from his old company, that a more hands off approach was taken where creators had much more freedom, and you see that in both The Enemy Within and TFS (the latter of which, when compared to ANF, shows the drastic change thanks to these styles). If GOTG had been put off for another year and released under Hawley's guidance (and had Telltale not shut down), we probably could have gotten the original vision the developers had, a more wacky and fun GOTG, and it would have been a better game.
It pains me to think that Hawley is going to get all of the blame for Telltale's downfall and employee treatment by a lot of uninformed gamers. We've seen it from people like Stauffer who have relentlessly gone after him (which is out of petty revenge because he was one of the people let go in the original layoffs), but there are others who see headlines of Telltale closing and will put the blame on him, when he did everything he could to save the company. He didn't fix all the problems and some things should have been handled differently, but he came onto a sinking ship and did his damnedest to plug the hole.
Have any of the former employees (aside from Stauffer) commented on Peter Hawley at all? Usually it's just them saying upper management did this and that but not directly referencing him.
Buck has been pretty general in her comments lambasting upper management, but I think some of them can be directed at Hawley, even though most are in regards to Bruner. For the most part, it's been some articles and commenters.
From what I can tell most former staff seemed to like Hawley a lot more with the only real issue being letting everyone go all of a sudden due to the deal not going through. Which is understandable, but at the same time we all know the only reason that situation happened was because of Bruner.
Seriously though, how could anyone think an M rated Minecraft would be a good idea? (although I feel if it was M/T it would have blown up just because memes of a Minecraft game with these type of themes)
Also for GOTG. Jesus Christ. Silver Lining is that we now know for a fact thats why the writing and tone of GOTG was so bad. I feel like this 100% applies to ANF as well (which we already kinda knew, but I feel this 100% confirms the higher ups were why ANF sucked so much)
Makes me wish even more that we could see what the original plan was for ANF. I know there are some videos that discuss all the deleted content that give us an idea, but the original concept seems so much better and superior to what we got, like some actual effort was put into it. I feel as if it was those executives that told them to rewrite it into the story we got, not a creative choice by the actual team (hence why TFS has been so good despite many of ANF's writers/designers working on both games).
Jup. It starts to make sense now. The more I hear about the bullshit behind the scenes, the more I'm glad that those executives were let go, even if to late.
It's just shitty that the actual devs were also fired because of the pure incompetence of the executives.