^^ This is why I despise pre-ordering episodic game series... which I suppose is why I have yet to purchase a single game made by TellTale Games on their website when it first comes out. Sure we got a good idea that they will finish the Back to the Future season... but the fact remains they are charging $24.95 for the entire season (five episodes) while only giving us access to the first episode up front. They get their money now and the customers that purchase are forced to play a waiting game.DeadPoolX wrote:I imagine he feels that way because pre-ordering an episodic game series is potentially dangerous. Sure, it's unlikely TellTale wouldn't finish the series (or something worse), but the fact remains you're paying ahead of time based on the promise that future episodes will be released.
My main issue is I hate waiting for future releases. If I buy it as a complete series, I have it all right then and there. I'd rather wait and get everything at once rather than get bits and pieces over time.
I hate owing people anything and I especially hate it when people owe me something. That's the biggest problem with TellTale's business/distribution model in my opinion. Their entire business is run on the concept of buy now -> receive later.
It works great for Phoenix Online Studios and TSL because they aren't charging anything for the TSL episodes. But of course, TellTale has operating costs, development costs, advertising overhead, etc. They can't afford to release their products for free like POS does... nor should they be expected to. However, their business model is predicated on a degree of trust. As long as they continue to deliver to the people who have bought into their business model, everything is fine and dandy. But on the other side of the coin, if they should ever not deliver, they run the risk of loosing a good portion of their customer base and alienating potential customers.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Let's say Back to the Future doesn't do as well as it's projected to sales-wise by around Episode 3. Let's go a step further and say that Universal revokes the use of the license due to the game's lackluster performance (from their point of view, they could justify such action as maintaining the integrity of the brand). That leaves TellTale in a very bad spot. They will have already sold the entire season set to customers, but are no longer able to deliver the remaining two episodes. So they issue a partial refund for the two missing episodes to their customers and call it a day.
If such a thing happened, their business model would suffer tremendously, because their customers will most likely view the failure to deliver the remaining two episodes as a breach of trust. Never mind the fact that TellTale will have issued a partial refund... the people who purchased the game purchased it under the assumed promise that they would be getting the entire season. They will have invested money and time into the game... and while a portion of the money can be refunded, customers would still be left with an incomplete story and would have to write off whatever time they spent with the game as a loss.
That would be highly detrimental to TellTale when it comes to future projects, as people would remember the above example.
Of course, there's people like me who are immediately distrustful right from the getgo and would rather wait until all five episodes are complete and available for purchase. By waiting until that time, people like me are able to purchase the game in it's entirety without having to worry about playing Russian Roulette on a business model that has way too many variables in it.
