On this sunny Sunday, one of my fellow national studios announced they quit the "industry" (well in Belgium there is none in fact ^o^). So, "Tale Of Tales" was a studio specialized in short arty games since 2002. Their most "famous" games were The Graveyard, The Path, Bientôt l'été and the recent Sunset. Sunset was their big project where they hired a lot of contractors and pushed the marketing. In fact, I looked at their last annual report and the game costs far exceeded their funds (I won't disclose the reports but if you're Belgian, you know where to look). Only 4.000 copies have been shipped (kikstarter backers included) so that's quite a flop and they're now quite indebted and bitter. So they announced their quitting the "game industry" with refocus on other projects (and maybe some much smaller arty "games").

I guess lots of people don't care because they don't know the studio or their games but I think it's really interesting as it gives a "backstage" view of the much criticized "arty games" (ot the "this is not a game!" category ^o^) and that even a lot of marketing and media publications can't help this kind of game to reach a wider audience (thus making "Gone Home" an outlier) and also most importantly, how much of a budget would be allowed for future arty games productions (coz that's what sinked them). So, I guess the articles about it in the next days (kotaku, polygon, rps, gamasutra, etc.) will be quite interesting if they ask: "are arty games commercially relevant?"

Here's a copy of the original letter written by the studio. I will just warn you that the couple is quite the "arty" type and doesn't cater to gaming audience so you might feel offended by the tone of it:
https://gist.github.com/fasterthanlime/d13340525c61de1a3d95

Some gameplay of Sunset:
https://youtu.be/9GBrnxtGyg0

Can't say I'm surprised, even though I've heard of the games (except for Sunset) I've never heard of the studio.
And you almost can't really call them games, interactive experiences would be a better term.
The warning of the tone turned out to be unnecessary I think, except for the usual slightly douchey tone of art type people it's fairly lackadaisical.

Well, I mixed things up a bit, let's say that their recent tweets are harsher than the article ;)

I don't see any harsh tweets, but than again I had to stop reading after several tweets.
Their 'fans' are awful.. seriously, many of my favorite games wouldn't exist without the trailblazing effort of Tale of Tales?

Didn't you know that Art (yeah, with a capital A) was invented before the wheell? ;o)

For the tweets, I was particuralrly thinking of the "It's the others, those not here, who are EVIL and WRONG.". But hey I see the same thing when shop owners have to close down (putting angry messages on their storefront, etc...)

It's not that their games didn't "reach a wider audience." They were on Steam. I've been aware of them. But I haven't bought any of them, because they didn't look good to me.

I'm not sure this is a case of Art being ignored, but perhaps the audience has spoken on the subject of quality.

Oh.. I watched a LP of The Path some time ago and I liked it, despite the simple interactivity.
I would have bought it here on GOG, that's a pity.
Anyway, I must say that focusing only on "artsy" games was an obvious recipe for failure..

Not sure if it's the same announcement, but I read a similar one by them in the Steam forum for Sunset.

I actually really liked this studio, yes they did have some material that was questionable (in terms of releasing a game and asking money for it) such as The Graveyard, but The Path is an all time favorite of mine, I can't praise it enough. Along with loving The Path I was excited for Sunset but haven't been able to pick it up yet.

I've heard a lot of people call them and their games pretentious but I never got that feeling from them. Sure they speak and spoke with a definite artist's voice, but they always seemed really authentic and genuine in what they were doing and what they hoped to achieve. Their games could be experimental (which is often considered pretentious) but they just went about things a bit differently than traditional games. The Path is a shining example of that, it has very very little in the way of written story and dialogue but yet it has a full story that leaves you thinking and allows you to make your own interpretation of what you experience.

Maybe this is a temporary thing, developers do leave and come back just like actors and musicians who "quit" the industry and return after a while. I really do hope it is just a temporary thing.

Either way I'm honestly a bit saddened by this...

I got "The Path" on Desura as it was DRM-free (backupped on an external HD)

For Sunset, they submitted the game to GOG a while ago

Sunset is still up discounted at 10$ DRM-free for 2 hours and half ont itch.io:
http://taleoftales.itch.io/sunset

For the come-back, they'll have to do some contract work first for a while I think because they have to recover the game costs and the company funds look more like their personal savings.

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BTW, concerning The Path, there was a pretty lenghty and insightful article about it on Grospixels which is the French Hardcoregaming101:
http://grospixels.com/site/path1.php
(Frech only obviously)

Studio sustained for a reasonably long time, with niche titles and dedicated fans. Decides they want a wider audience and spend a ton of money on one game, with heavy marketing. Then they are surprised when it turns out that the wider audience is doing other things and care not about attempts to be reached. Why is it that artsy devs and AAA publishers act the same way?

That said, I'll give them credit for (apparently) not having abandoned their original audience. AAA studios typically both don't reach the wider audience and annoy the old fans, these guys still have their old ones with them.

I read that as "We made this game to help enlighten you and you're just too dumb to realize it."

Gee, thanks?



"In its 12 year existence Tale of Tales has always teetered on the edge of sustainability, combining art grants and commercial revenue to fund..."

"The drying up of funding for artistic videogames in Belgium..."

"Compared to the ambitions we had for the game, the extra $40,000 seemed like a relatively small sum."

Uhh, you admit your games were never commercially viable on their own and your company relied on grants / gov't funding for any measure of sustainability, then that funding went away, and then you amped up your budget in the hopes that more of the same would somehow crack the formula for the art-game genre?


Said it before, and I'll repeat it as long as this crap keeps happening: Just because people know how to make games, it doesn't mean they know a damn thing about running a successful business. Blaming the customer base and "the economic system" doesn't hide the fact that it was a bad idea.

A lot of people won't visit Github and the Jim sterling video so it might be good to copy and paste some more information instead.

Something should probably be mentioned about the fact the lead designer for Gone Home was also the lead designer for Bioshock 2. This idea that indie games need to follow this model for success is a bit shaky given that the lead designer was also a lead designer for Irrational/2K games. In other words, how "indie" is a new studio founded by veteran designers from inside the industry?

He has the ties and credentials which allows him more promotional opportunities than small indie dev can even dream about...

Aye, unfortunately I don't have a budget for games at the moment regardless of whether they cost $1 or $10, otherwise I would've picked it up already.

I could imagine them making a comeback but you're right, they've got a lot of work ahead of them, I just hope they consider it eventually.

I'll check that article out, thanks!

Actually they were talking about how they DID change their formula by introducing much more traditional gameplay and story elements in Sunset in an attempt to make it more commercially viable, as well as marketing it to a broader audience than they had due to that. At least that's how I read it.