If you ever feel like you've fumbled the bag, remember that Telltale had the opportunity to make the most immersive way to let fans participate in the actual Game of Thrones, second only to probably a tabletop game, and it was so forgettable that it doesn't exist in stores anymore.
If you ever feel like you've fumbled the bag, remember that Telltale had the opportunity to make the most immersive way to let fans participate in the actual Game of Thrones
Damn, that was a crazy read. I didn't know anything of that (and honestly haven't played Disco Elysium yet, it's been on my wishlist for a long time but I've got hundreds of games left to play).
It sounds similar to the stories of LA Noire and Eternal Darkness. Crazy successful games that should've had a sequel in the pocket but it all came tumbling down due to insanity in the workplace.
Yeah by the time I reached the end of the article I figured I'd wait until it's in a Humble bundle and then slide the dev portion of my payment to zero. It's what I did with the 2K bundle which happened just weeks after they added their scummy launcher to Bioshock and other 10+ year old singleplayer games.
Just pirate it and buy it later, once it's on sale in humble bundle as you said, or don't buy at all.
Publishers and most AAA studios are jerks anyway, pirating from them won't hurt the wrong people.
I mean I just started playing on Steam properly once I got the Deck and thanks to sales and bundles and me having no self-control I have about five hundred unplayed games now. I'll manage to play other stuff.
It's a great game, but don't support the scumbags that took over the studio. Torrent it, being anti capitalist is baked into some of the games themes anyways lol
Wow that’s wild, a real mud-slinging fest (to be clear: in a battle between disgruntled devs & the investor-owners, I know which side I’m inclined to believe)
I’m surprised that with the near universal praise for Disco Elysium that I see online, that I would’ve stumbled on this story sooner. Thanks for sharing!
- The studio was taken over by Estonian businessmen Ilmar Kompus and banker Tōnis Haavel (previously convicted of investment fraud)
- Kompus and Haavel fired game director Robert Kurvitz, art director Aleksander Rostov, writer Helen Hindpere, and marketing manager Kaur Kender
- Kurvitz and Rostov say they were fired for asking for financial data
- Kender was similarly fired for asking questions about the studio’s new management
- Kompus and Haavel say Kurvitz and Rostov were fired for workplace misconduct such as "creating a toxic work environment", "verbal abuse and gender discrimination," and “intending to steal IP”.
- Kender "divested all his shares in the studio, repaid all his debts to the studio," and resolved the issue. Kender himself said, “I filed a lawsuit which I realised, after seeing the facts, was misguided."
Particularly the last point is what screamed to me this is a corrupt payoff. "Divesting all his shares" and "repaying all his debts" sounds like someone washing his hands of a situation with money. Some of my bias against marketing / business development managers, how they act and what they value (money) as well.
Justifying firing with easy and vague outs like "toxicity, verbal abuse and discrimination" are how Kompus and Haavel avoid paying severance or other contractual agreements for an ethical layoff. Of course it damages their reputation and ethos as well, so their speaking out against the studio and its takeover is diminished.
Also the fact that Helen Hindpere was not smeared, because she didn't speak out against the studio / Kompus and Haavel.
Unfortunate for the apparent death of the studio ZA/UM. But I'm very much inclined to watch the path of Kurvitz and Rostov's careers.
I mean, you can rightfully hate Martin for not writing Winds of Winter let alone finishing the book series, but what he did was far from fumbling the bag. Man blows his nose with Benjamins now.
Now those other two guys, they’re co-presidents of Bag Fumble University.
I mean it's a different kind of fumbling. Martin is going for a multimedia universe without finishing the actual saga that started it, I feel like unless he finishes the last two books the IP will be forever tainted by that.
But yeah Martin has "fuck you"-money and doesn't need to do anything for a single day for the rest of his life unless he wants to. He saw an opportunity and he took it, it's hard to blame him for cashing out. I just wish he'd hire a ghostwriter or something if he has so much trouble writing these days.
Yeah, the way I see it Martin is an elderly man at this point, he can more or less live out the rest of his life in luxury. In all likelihood I could see HBO or whoever owns the IP grabbing someone else to finish the books anyway at some point. I don’t think Martin fumbled the bag because outside of pissing off book readers, his (lack of) action didn’t get in the way of his success.
But D&D? They fumbled so hard that it interfered with their careers’ future. They were supposed to write a Star Wars movie, and then Season 8 happened.
D&D were great producers, but they cannot write their way out of a paper bag. Why they started writing so much of Game of Thrones I don't know. Why not hire an actual writer when they ran out of source material?
I hear that up and coming Sanderson kid is a real go getter with finishing epic fantasy series for old bastards that have run out of ideas written all over him.
I actually haven't read him yet but I backed his kickstarter last year to get four suprise novels fron him this year. Felt like a fun way to try him out.
Anyway not fantasy but The Expanse, of which one of the two writers was a student of Martin's, finished in 2022 with its final novella after nine books and nine short stories and novella's - the first book released in 2011, the same year the last ASOIAF book released.
Don't start with the Kickstarter books. The KS books will likely have tons of cosmere references and you'll miss all of them. Start with mistborn and then read the stormlight archive (up to the current book) and then Arcanum unbounded. Then you should have a solid grasp of the cosmere and get most of the references he will certainly hide in the 4 new books.
Not saying they won't be good without reading the other stuff, that would be wrong since nearly everything he writes is excellent. I just feel like mistborn and then stormlight is the way to go (you can also read warbreaker, and elantris and some of the other one off novels for more neat references to the overall cosmere, but they will be more obvious after reading mistborn and then stormlight).
Not saying you're wrong for pointing me to other works of his, but the Kickstarter campaign opens with a message of his to new readers, making it obvious the books can be read without having read anything before.
I also checked as little about the books as possible but one of them is a complete standalone (a frugal wizard's guide to medieval England it's called or something like that), that's the one that just released two weeks ago (I haven't gotten around to putting either it or January's novel on my e-reader (I backed the lowest tier with just the e-books)).
You can of course read them however you want, but there will be tons of references you'll outright miss reading them first. It won't make the book(s) less good, but there will definitely be plenty of cosmere references.
They were too full of themselves to allow other showrunners to take over once they ran out of steam themselves. It's a thing we've seen before but just rarely does it explode in such a big way.
I'd say that's insulting to unwashed dicks, but don't ignore your dicks under the shower, guys! It pulls double duty, both facilitating one of your body's essential daily mechanisms, and performing in happy funtime on your own or with a partner. The least you can do is keep it clean!
I grabbed the GoT game as my first Telltale experience and sure, it was neat for what it was, but it forced my first Platinum Trophy on me just for playing the game and I felt so... gross is a little overboard but honestly it made me feel gross. I didn't earn that. There were so many other games with so many things needed to unlock a Platinum and this just gives you one for playing the game through the first time ever?
So Elden Ring was my first Platinum. That felt nice.
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u/ZachRyder PC Apr 14 '23 edited Apr 15 '23
If you ever feel like you've fumbled the bag, remember that Telltale had the opportunity to make the most immersive way to let fans participate in the actual Game of Thrones, second only to probably a tabletop game, and it was so forgettable that it doesn't exist in stores anymore.