The corporate culture of Telltale Games “contributed to constant overwork, toxic management and creative stagnation.” The problems in the team of creators of interactive stories were told by The Verge with reference to former employees of Telltale.
According to them, the main source of stress and discomfort was the co-founder of the company Kevin Bruner (Kevin Bruner). He is credited with creating a tense atmosphere at Telltale and conducting “rough and inflexible management” in which the initiatives and opinions of ordinary employees were not encouraged and not taken into account.
“Bruner was the Eye of Sauron, which destroyed everything that he did not like. We had the feeling that the whole company was making games personally for Bruner to please his tastes,” one of the interlocutors told The Verge.
The publication writes that the situation of Telltale Games deteriorated after the departure of the leading developers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, who left the company in 2013 and founded their own studio Campo Santo. Rodkin and Vanaman were the leaders of the creation of the interactive novel The Walking Dead based on the famous zombie franchise. The Walking Dead brought Telltale great success, so the departure of Jake and Sean was hard for the management and created a creative vacuum in the team.
Fearing new layoffs, Bruner did not want to encourage the creative ideas of his subordinates and forced them to work within the limits set by him.
Kevin Bruner reacted to the criticism of former colleagues. He rejected accusations of despotic behavior and explained his policy by the need to make operational decisions due to tight deadlines in the development of episodic games.
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