Telltale loves "unrelenting" demands of episodic Sam & Max

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 June, 2007

Talks about pricing, design.

Telltale Games' Kevin Bruner admits that the schedule for Sam & Max episodes was "unrelenting", but says he wouldn't have it any other way.

Telltale recently confirmed that it plans to "air" a second season of Sam & Max, and co-founder and chief technology officer Bruner told our sister site GamesIndustry.biz that the developer is "very committed" to the episodic format.

"Once you get over the production challenges of making a game a month then it's a really attractive model," Bruner said in an interview published today.

"I've made a lot of traditional games and I much prefer to work this way than spending two years making one game and when it comes out, if you've screwed something up then you don't get a chance to fix it."

A lot of the challenges Telltale faces are unique to the burgeoning episodic format, of which it's seen as something of a pioneer. Bruner mentions that because of tight scheduling, the fourth Sam & Max episode was the first opportunity for Telltale to "course-correct" and respond to feedback in design terms.

Another challenge was safeguarding the series' integrity by pricing it competitively - the difficulty being what to compare itself to in pricing terms. "We believe that games are too expensive right now so we sell each episode at USD 9 each or you can buy the whole season, which is the equivalent of a retail product, for USD 35," Bruner explains. "We think that our games are priced correctly but a lot of episodic games and games in general are priced too highly."

For more of Bruner's views, read the full Kevin Bruner interview on GamesIndustry.biz.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • kissthestick #1 5 years ago

    they need to put this on the 360 :(

  • neuroniky #2 5 years ago

    I've got the first episode, but while I found it brilliant, for some reasons I never found the time to finish it.

    The fact that when my PC lights up WoW seems to start by itself could be part of this problem...

  • PlugMonkey #3 5 years ago

    Still waiting on a Wii version...

  • woodnotes #4 5 years ago

    Beats waiting 5 years for each HL2 episode.

  • ZeroAX #5 5 years ago

    and being bitched into paying 50 euro to buy it with the game you allready have or give them your credit card info for all eternity(or until steam is hacked once more and you get charged to the credit card's limit)

  • lennon #6 5 years ago

    360 version and its a given I will buy this. Until then I will continue to wait slightly impatiently.

  • space_ace #7 5 years ago

    interesting, did they make any money out of season 1?

  • ZeroAX #8 5 years ago

    um probably.

  • smelly #9 5 years ago

    Cant see myself bothering with any other seasons after this one.

    1st one was so hit and miss.

    Oh, and for the record I dont reacon a 360 version would be commercially viable. That said, seems that 360 owners only want to play pc games.. so maybe it would.. hmm. Dunno.

  • yagisencho #10 5 years ago

    I appreciate that Telltale is ambitious enough to even attempt a monthly release cycle. There's something to be said though for spacing things out a bit more in order to incorporate more feedback. Valve has taken it to the opposite extreme with the HL2 episodes, but it's also worked to help build hype for each episode.

    Personally, I think one Sam & Max episode every 6-8 weeks sounds like a decent balance, if they hope to improve with each episode. Otherwise, just make them longer and release fewer of them.

    (I'm partway through episode 4.)

  • escalinci #11 5 years ago

    The demo for the first one definitely whetted my appetite, but PC gaming simply isn't practical for me. Wii for me too.

  • Meho #12 5 years ago

    Totally unexpectedly I loved the first season very much and this did a lot to dispel my fears of 'episodic gaming'. Let's see if any other devs/ pubishers can follow suit...