Telltale Games is known for its unusual episodic model of game development and distribution, but its process also hinges on a specific attitude to authorship: assigning and crediting each of its episodes to a single overall writer and designer.
That allows the company to say each of its episodes is "by" a particular person, an increasingly uncommon practice in today's era of ever-ballooning development teams.
Designer Sean Vanaman, a Disney creative development veteran who wrote the third episode of Telltale's Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures as well as an upcoming episode of the recently-begun Tales of Monkey Island has strong feelings on the role of authorship in games. During Comic-Con 2009, Gamasutra caught up with Vanaman to hear why he thinks it's so important.
Dan McKenney – Back in the day, LucasArts's Monkey Island games were distinctly known for their charm, wit, and graphics. When the genre began to slow down and its popularity decreased, so did the production of Monkey Island games, with the latest entry in the series being released back in 2000. However, with Telltale's recent revival of the point-and-click adventure games, LucasArts has decided that perhaps it's time to bring back Monkey Island, and give Telltale the reigns to create a five-episode Monkey Island adventure series. So, will playing Episode One be like finding buried treasure, or should Telltale walk the plank? Read on to find out.
Get some classic point and click action for super cheap thanks to pirates and silly sales.
El33tonline writes:
"Tales of Monkey Island is divided into five chapters, each continuing the story from the previous chapter and each perfect to play in one sitting of between two to four hours. The first episode is titled ‘The Launch of the Screaming Narwhal’ and sees Guybrush Threepwood, the famous Mighty Pirate, facing his arch nemesis, the evil demon pirate Le Chuck, once again. Threepwood is seeking to rid the world of Le Chuck for good and save his wife Elaine, who has become Le Chuck’s hostage."
