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Tales from the Borderlands sales weren't great


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Tales from the Borderlands is easily one of my favourite TellTale games ever. It is right up there with Wolf Among Us in my opinion. It's packed with humour, action, excellent music and takes place in the Borderlands universe? What more could you ask for?

 

Well, more sales apparently...

 

According to the games director, Nick Herman, sales for Tales from the Borderlands weren't that great and failed to meet expectations. He also revealed that the game was completed by a skeleton crew who volunteered to work late nights in order to get it finished. Herman says "Sales for Tales from the Borderlands weren't great. They were decent, it's not like we were losing money, but compared to something like the Walking Dead, it wasn't on the same level. The mentality was, we've got to wrap this season up quick, because we need to move on to other things, and we're holding on to staff, and it didn't? - I couldn't let it go, and let the season just end either abruptly, or not pay off the things we were setting up."

 

TellTale have recently announced sequels to games such as Walking Dead, Batman, and the Wolf Among Us but there doesn't appear to be any sign of a TftB sequel. Given the disappointing sales, I probably wouldn't hold out hope for one either.

 

What are your thoughts on this news?

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Unpopular opinion here but I didn't rate Season 1 so I won't lose sleep over it not returning for a season 2 but I know it's beloved here so it's a little disappointing in that sense. There was seemingly no hope of a Wolf Among us season 2 at one point though so I doubt it can be totally written off yet

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tbh i'm shocked, this game was really good and many others had that opinion too so if it was finished by a skeleton crew then they did a good job, did they really expect it to sell as much as the Borderlands series has sold. 

 

Though i'd like to know what other things they had planned for this game

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If you liked TftB and know someone who likes this kind of thing but hasn't played it yet, then buy them a copy. It's a fairly cheap gift, and will maybe convince TT to do more TftB

 

Having said that, I am not surprised that the game didn't do that well commercially. The main series Borderlands games sold respectfully well, but didn't set the world on fire. Then you're asking fans of those games, who might be more FPS fan than they are Borderlands fans, to come and play an interactive story game... Yeah, the cross over between those two market segments might not be all that big. 

 

Whereas with a series like TWD, where most people are fans of the TV show. TT games are quite simple to control so I'm not surprised that they'd go for an interactive story set in that world. 

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17 minutes ago, StrickenBiged said:

If you liked TftB and know someone who likes this kind of thing but hasn't played it yet, then buy them a copy. It's a fairly cheap gift, and will maybe convince TT to do more TftB

 

Having said that, I am not surprised that the game didn't do that well commercially. The main series Borderlands games sold respectfully well, but didn't set the world on fire. Then you're asking fans of those games, who might be more FPS fan than they are Borderlands fans, to come and play an interactive story game... Yeah, the cross over between those two market segments might not be all that big. 

 

Whereas with a series like TWD, where most people are fans of the TV show. TT games are quite simple to control so I'm not surprised that they'd go for an interactive story set in that world. 

 

Yeah that was my thinking as well. Minecraft story mode is the only other one that is radically different from its source material but it's minecraft, the user base on Minecraft will utterly dwarf that of Borderlands.

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I wouldn't write off a continuation of Tales just yet. Batman, Minecraft, Walking Dead New Frontier and Game of Thrones had far worse sales than the Tales game (at least on steam http://steamspy.com/dev/Telltale+Games). I don't imagine the console sales differing much in that regard, although there's the ps+/GwG factor I guess.

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23 minutes ago, StrickenBiged said:

If you liked TftB and know someone who likes this kind of thing but hasn't played it yet, then buy them a copy. It's a fairly cheap gift, and will maybe convince TT to do more TftB

 

Actually that is some sound advice. When I buy a game digitally, I tend to also purchase the game physically if I find a cheap second hand copy somewhere. I found the physical copy of TftB to be really cheap on Amazon (something like £7 I think( and I've been meaning to buy it. I think I have an incentive to make that purchase now.

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4 hours ago, Miles_Warren said:

Tales from the Borderlands is easily one of my favourite TellTale games ever. It is right up there with Wolf Among Us in my opinion. It's packed with humour, action, excellent music and takes place in the Borderlands universe? What more could you ask for?

 

Well, more sales apparently...

 

According to the games director, Nick Herman, sales for Tales from the Borderlands weren't that great and failed to meet expectations. He also revealed that the game was completed by a skeleton crew who volunteered to work late nights in order to get it finished. Herman says "Sales for Tales from the Borderlands weren't great. They were decent, it's not like we were losing money, but compared to something like the Walking Dead, it wasn't on the same level. The mentality was, we've got to wrap this season up quick, because we need to move on to other things, and we're holding on to staff, and it didn't? - I couldn't let it go, and let the season just end either abruptly, or not pay off the things we were setting up."

 

TellTale have recently announced sequels to games such as Walking Dead, Batman, and the Wolf Among Us but there doesn't appear to be any sign of a TftB sequel. Given the disappointing sales, I probably wouldn't hold out hope for one either.

 

What are your thoughts on this news?


my honest opinion is telltale can suck a fat one. the only time i play their games now is if they are free or on a flash sale. for 2 reasons. the first one is its really not even a game, its more like a movie you watch. if you put the controller down in almost all there games except i think maybe the first walking dead and a little of the other walking dead the game literally plays itself which is whack.

the biggest problem with telltale is they are liars and are running their company all screwed up and now they are milking this type of gameplay so hard that people are just sick of it.

when the very first walking dead came out they screwed up on it bigtime because of money issues. they put that first episode out and said buy the season pass and we will release each new episode every month. well that didnt happen which pretty much ruined the total experience for that game. i remember waiting like 4 months for episode 2 or 3 to come out. it wasnt until almost the next year that i could finally finish the game. they said the game was complete when they were trying to sell the pass, well 3 months later turns out the game wasnt even finished at all and they were using money they made off the passes to pay to make the game basically. so by the time you got the next episode, it was so long since you played it that you had no clue what decisions you made or what was even really going on. it really made a good game BAD. the only people who lucke dout were the people who played it a year after it was made. 

so it seems like they are throwing out the same old lame excuses and making crap up like they did day1. screw them.

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4 minutes ago, voodoo_eyes said:

I wouldn't write off a continuation of Tales just yet. Batman, Minecraft, Walking Dead New Frontier and Game of Thrones had far worse sales than the Tales game (at least on steam http://steamspy.com/dev/Telltale+Games). I don't imagine the console sales differing much in that regard, although there's the ps+/GwG factor I guess.

 

The director does seem to be comparing sales of the game to the Walking Dead, which is TellTale's juggernaut title. Other than maybe Minecraft: Story Mode, I don't think any other TT game compares to the Walking Dead in terms of sales and popularity.

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1 hour ago, Miles_Warren said:

Actually that is some sound advice.

 

*shrug* It's just encouraging people to vote with their wallets. There's no guarantee it would work either, so I wouldn't call it sound... 

 

It's not just the eventual amount of money that the game makes that matters to developers but the rate of income or cashflow along the way too. Why would we make a game which will make us $n million profit over 3 years when we could make a game which would make us the same amount over 3 months?

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I liked the game but I am not surprised. It took them a year to release all the epsiodes. Same as Game of Thrones. What's so hard about finishing the game and releasing one episode a week? Oh wait.. money ?

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Even though this was my favorite game from them, I can't say I'm surprised. I started playing their games way back when they started with Sam and Max Save the World, and I always liked the humor in their early games. Walking Dead took the world by storm, but from their they just dove into the super bleak, heavy stuff. This all culminated in Game of Thrones, which somehow turned out even darker than the show.

 

Dark is fine, but I need some humor now and again, and I was so glad to get that in the form of Tales From the Borderlands. I'm not even a Borderlands fan; I played the first game and got sick of its gameplay formula, so I never made it far in the sequel. But I like Tales just because it was so good at its humor.

 

I certainly hope we get a sequel someday but I'm not holding my breath. I haven't started Guardians of the Galaxy yet (I always wait until the season is complete), but I hope that is at least half as funny as Tales.

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5 minutes ago, GlennRhee said:

Unpopular opinion, but I don't want a Season 2.

 

Actually, based on comments in this thread, I don't think it is that unpopular an opinion at all.

 

Spoiler

I'm sure they wouldn't have done that without Gearbox's approval in the first place. I imagine if TT didn't create TftB in the first place, Gearbox would've killed Scooter off in the next game anyway just so they could introduce his son.

 

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3 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

Then you're asking fans of those games, who might be more FPS fans than they are Borderlands fans, to come and play an interactive story game... Yeah, the cross over between those two market segments might not be all that big. 

 

Whereas with a series like TWD, where most people are fans of the TV show. TT games are quite simple to control so I'm not surprised that they'd go for an interactive story set in that world. 


You're completely right and it also works both ways. Fans of TellTale's games may not be Borderlands fans or particularly familiar with the franchise so might have skipped it. I have a copy through PS Plus, but have yet to touch it because I don't want any possible spoilers for Borderlands 2 or the Pre-Sequel, and I want to understand everything that goes on. I thought the first game was okay but not enough to make me think I gotta know what happens in TftB.

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32 minutes ago, Miles_Warren said:

 

Actually, based on comments in this thread, I don't think it is that unpopular an opinion at all.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm sure they wouldn't have done that without Gearbox's approval in the first place. I imagine if TT didn't create TftB in the first place, Gearbox would've killed Scooter off in the next game anyway just so they could introduce his son.

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I'm sure he would have died in BL3. :c It was just one more thing I didn't like about the game, though. I didn't like that you were kind of forced into a romance with Sasha and had to actively fight to stay out of it (as opposed to TWD where you could choose whether to begin one in the first place), and I didn't like being forced to side against Jack despite playing a loyal Rhys up to that point. I know that's par for the course in TTG, but it felt especially jarring in TftB for some reason. I'm a huge fan of the source material so I'm probably being a little too harsh, but I also hate romance (except for Chloe & Max), so having to really fight to stay off that path in a CYOA game was a big gaming sin imo.

 

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23 minutes ago, LeetWolf2 said:

I don't want any possible spoilers for Borderlands 2 or the Pre-Sequel

 I can't speak to the Pre-Sequel, but I don't recall any spoilers for Borderlands 2. I mean, the fact that the person who is the bad-guy of 2 is the bad-guy of 2 might be considered spoilery if you're very sensitive to that kind of thing, but it's also kinda obvious if you know anything about the game.

 

It's a fairly stand alone story, IMO. I wouldn't worry about it. 

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43 minutes ago, StrickenBiged said:

 I can't speak to the Pre-Sequel, but I don't recall any spoilers for Borderlands 2. I mean, the fact that the person who is the bad-guy of 2 is the bad-guy of 2 might be considered spoilery if you're very sensitive to that kind of thing, but it's also kinda obvious if you know anything about the game.

 

It's a fairly stand alone story, IMO. I wouldn't worry about it. 


No recurring themes or characters or locations or anything like that? I've played the intro to Borderlands 2, so I know who the villain is. Like you said, that much is pretty obvious.

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16 minutes ago, LeetWolf2 said:

No recurring themes or characters or locations or anything like that?

 

A couple of nods to other characters and locations but nothing which cuts across or spoils the other stories. More like just a token mention so you sit up and say "oh, cool!" and then the story moves on. 

 

Well, there is one of the Heroes from 2 is an NPC in TftB but it's not spoilery for the other games in any way. It's just that this is another adventure he went on sort of thing. 

 

It's like if you read comic books and read 2 story arcs out of order. Unless something major happens like the death of Gwen Stacy or something, the stories are quite distinct and isolated and can generally be enjoyed in any order. 

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I'm not really surprised by this. I mean there isn't a whole lot of crossover between people who are into shooters like Borderlands and people who are into the "interactive movie" games which Telltale make. I think there were a lot of people who assumed TftB wasn't going to be very good because of the source material; myself included. 

 

As someone who isn't a big fan of Borderlands, I enjoyed TftB far more than I was expecting to. Even so, I would be okay with them deciding not to continue the series, even if it does end on a cliffhanger. I'm happy with what we got.

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