Telltale celebrates licences

Telltale Games' Kevin Bruner believes that licensed games are great - providing you don't waste your time turning James Bond into a mass murderer or "make Star Wars games about hacking".

"We think those games sell well, despite not being very good games, because people really want to interact with those characters and experience a little bit more than what they got out of the movie," Bruner, chief technology officer at Telltale, tells GamesIndustry.biz today.

"Our games are all very story-driven, they're not action games at all. We think that that kind of treatment is what people would respond more favourably to if they were offered it. Alongside episodic gaming it's a great way to introduce people to the format cheaply and also to bring a number of new properties into the market that aren't appropriate for action games.

"Spider-Man is a big action game but you're not going to go around killing everyone in the CSI games that we make. We're really focused on not just episodic gaming but also licensed games - Bone, Sam & Max, CSI.

"Some of the new stuff we'll announce is licensed too - we've never actually done an original game," he pointed out.

Bruner says Telltale is committed to changing the way that licensed properties are handled, and points to the team's success with its past adventure titles - episodic, for the most part - as evidence of how it aims to achieve that going forward.

For more on "going forward" and who knows perhaps even "touching base", pop along to GamesIndustry.biz and read what else Bruner has to say.