When Telltale announced they were shutting down in September last year, the news left the games industry stunned. The story behind the studio’s shuttering is one worth learning about. With Telltale gone, there are few studios creating games pushing narrative adventure stories.
As per Variety, four former Telltale members founded a new studio – AdHoc Studio to create new narrative adventure games. The founding members include AdHoc CEO Michael Choung, COO Nick Herman, CTO Dennis Lenart, and CCO Pierre Shorette. Three members of AdHoc were at Telltale until February 2017 before leaving to join Ubisoft. Choung was at another studio before creating AdHoc.
While the four developers share experience crafting intricate and engaging stories, recent releases like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch are paving the way in a form of new interactive media, something AdHoc wants to look at.
“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,” Shorette, AdHoc’s chief creative officer, says. “With streaming platforms in our homes and cell phones in our pockets, we’re in this unique time where the barrier to entry to interaction is gone. So as a group of people whose expertise and experience has come from making Interactive Narrative that sits in that space between, we feel now is the perfect time to form a studio that focuses on creating content for a new space.”
Thus, AdHoc wants to engage that audience and create worlds for those viewers. It’s the evolution of the genre and something exciting to think about.
