Former Telltale Employees Form New Studio

The closure of Telltale Games came as a bit of a shock to the gaming world, and it has left people to wonder if a new team will rise up to sort of fill the hole Telltale left behind. Luckily, a group of four former Telltale employees have started their own studio, and they aim to carry on the same narrative adventure spirit.

Speaking with Variety, the four who now make up AdHoc Studio discussed many topics, including why they decided to begin their own studio, the influence Netflix's Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has had, and much more. AdHoc chief technology officer Dennis Lenart mentioned how the idea of not having to pitch their ideas to several others was appealing.

"Having to pitch something that ultimately fifty people need to understand and approve means a lot of the more adventurous or risky ideas often die early on for a bunch of different reasons," he said. "We liked the idea that if it was just the four of us, we'd be able to more confidently wade into unfamiliar water."

This certainly played a part when it came to the more ambitious side of things, especially when Telltale was trying to partner up with Netflix for interactive stories, which did see some success with Minecraft: Story Mode. AdHoc chief creative officer Pierre Shorette added how there's a shift in how consumers take in media. "It feels like we're at the precipice of a big shift in how we consume media where the lines between film, television and games are starting to blur," he said. Shorette believes that the time to capitalize on this is now, especially with how Bandersnatch seemed to get several peoples' attention.

AdHoc CEO Michael Choung noted that today's technology is allowing media that was once "purely audio/visual" to be expanded upon and involve touch. "That should be good news for all creators since it offers them another dimension with which to tell stories, but it should be of particular interest to game devs since it's basically what we already do," he said.

"We don't think of our audience as viewers, but as players," Choung continued. "Players with agency that can manipulate what we put in front of them. So there's a real opportunity here to be among the early innovators and we feel like with our partnership, which we'll announce in the near future, we'll be able to make real contributions to the form."

AdHoc Studio isn't quite ready to go into detail about what they are working on, but it sounds an awful lot like we'll be seeing something live-action and interactive. Either way, we can't wait to see what the former Telltale employees have in store for fans.

For more, check out the full interview right here.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe AdHoc Studio is going to be offering more of what was seen in Bandersnatch? Sound off in the comment section below, or hit me up over on Twitter @anarkE7!