Telltale: Accessibility, choices key to The Walking Dead's success

Finishing off the two days of sessions at DICE, Telltale CEO Dan Connors talked about the success of his company with the Walking Dead episodic game series,. He suggested that "changing our product to work in a new business mode" is the reason for the success of the company, after a number of years of stop and start success for the Puzzle Agent developer. For The Walking Dead, Connors believes what's important is being able to have people to discuss episodes in real time as they happen, and pushing cliffhangers at the player in real time. Although one might argue that it's the quality of The Walking Dead and the hotness of the franchise that has helped it hit the heights of success, it does seem like the episodic nature has fed into the hype. Yet more than that, the franchise is easy to play as an emotionally gripping interactive story. Accessibility is particularly key to the series' success. Connors notes that Telltale's titles deliberately work with "not somebody who's necessarily a great gamer." And the focus on high drama and emotion was shown by YouTube video extracts from playthroughs after a key character died, featuring screaming and crying YouTube-rs feeling the onscreen pain. With The Walking Dead up for multiple gongs at the DICE Awards this evening, the series is top in the mind of many gamers - and while the creative team may be better able to explain what they did to make it a success, Connors' unwavering belief over many years that episodic was indeed a viable business model appears to have paid off in spades.