Telltale Games' Minecraft: Story Mode Was Originally M-Rated
By Zac Cameron ·
It looks as though Telltale Games originally aimed for a much older audience than traditional Minecraft marketing would target.
Telltale Games’ Minecraft: Story Mode was originally aiming for an M rating, according to a former employee. Former narrative designer at Telltale, Emily Grace Buck, spoke about several topics at the Sweden Game Conference, including the apparently much higher original rating the company was looking for with their Minecraft property.
In her talk at the Sweden Game Conference, Buck spoke at length about the constant “crunch time” style or working conditions, including large amounts of re-writes that the games would need to undergo. Both episodes of Minecraft Story Mode, as well as other games such as the Guardians of the Galaxy game, would need to undergo rewriting of approximately 60% to 90%, in order to better align the games with their source material.
This apparent misunderstanding of both the source material and the intended audience is what Buck believes to be a large part of the problems that Telltale Games faced, and why they suddenly closed shop earlier this year. In her talk, Buck said that the executive team at Telltale seemed to misunderstand their own audience, and that they demonstrated an “Unwillingness to listen.” Additionally, she said that staff members that fought too hard would be dismissed from the company, pointing to a culture that was not capable of change quickly.