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Essays 18 May 2022, 13:36

author: Marek Jura

Great Games That Sold Poorly (at Least Initially)

It's no news that artistic success doesn't have to go hand in hand with commercial one. However, sometimes it's hard to believe that the titles which are successful and popular to this day were complete commercial flops in their first years.

Table of Contents

Tales from the Borderlands

  1. Release date: 2014
  2. Genre: Adventure
  3. Greatest advantages: Graphics, plot

You can love or hate Telltale Games, but it's impossible not to admit that these developers managed to create a thriving studio offering compelling interactive movies. This helps them save time, which would otherwise have to be devoted to reworking the physics of objects and characters – meanwhile, the movement mechanics are almost the same in every game. Minor changes take place only in the graphics, but it's always drawn with thick lines and focusing on expressive colors. This was also the case with Tales from the Borderlands.

That's despite the fact that those who played this production from Telltale Games, in the vast majority assessed it very well, and the critics even awarded it several awards, the developers considered the story-oriented part of Borderlands a complete failure. As Nick Herman, TftB's screenwriter, admitted in 2017, the sales were so weak that the chances of a new installment seemed very slim. Mainly due to the tight schedule of the studio and (which hardly anyone knew at the time) its progressing insolvency. Recently, however, it's been revealed that works on a sequel are in progress.

In 2018, we witnessed the bankruptcy of a company that everyone thought was doing great, tackling a few large projects every year.If Tales from the Borderlands had sold better, would the studio's fate be different? I don't think so. Any success could only prolong the agony of Telltale Games by a year or two. Though admittedly, if a continuation of the otherwise sensational Game of Thrones would be successfully delivered, not be many people would complain about such a lesser evil.

  1. Tales from the Borderlands in our encyclopedia

Marek Jura

Marek Jura

In 2016, he graduated in philology at UAM. Since then, he has been reviewing prose, poetry, movies, series, and video games for GRYOnline.pl. He took his first steps in the journalism industry as a newsman in a local tabloid. He ran his own company - he designed, created, tested, and sold board games. He published several short stories and is also preparing his debut volume of poetry. Trains martial arts. A feminist, vegan, fan of pineapple on pizza, cat lover, dislikes Bethesda and Amazon, likes Lovecraft, Agents of SHIELD, P:T, Beksiński, Hollow Knight, performance, abstract art, game mods and dumplings.

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