Yup, it's that time again

Been fairly quiet over here on Aliens in the Desert, hasn't it? Well, it's that time again -- crunch time. So far at Telltale our crunch times haven't been nearly as drastic and terrible as some places I know of. They're more like Push Time. But they still require longer hours than usual and more stress and exhaustion. Plus less time to play casual games and report back to the burgeoning AitD community on them. As far as a way to conduct operations, making smaller games with shorter production cycles is really pretty great. Instead of getting mired in the same project for years, you get to try out new ideas all the time. Push times at Telltale may last a couple weeks, but not months, and I have only worked a weekend once. It's a pretty sweet gig, all in all. The trade offs? Well, so far our products have been exposed to a smaller market than one of the giant titles. Which means we sell less than we might if our game was in every Wallmart and GameStop. That's a pity, to be sure, but hopefully we'll get this marketing thing figured out and find clever ways to get more exposure. The other big trade-off, of course, is that you aren't going to see some gorgeous epic title come out of our little studio. Our art looks great, don't get me wrong, but we don't have the time and man-power to push the edges of visual technology. And we aren't going to create some vast amazing world that you can explore forever or a huge 100 hour storyline with endless twists and turns. But ya know, that's ok. As our CSI cases and our latest Bone game will show, we can pack an awful lot of game and story in a much shorter and more contained experience. Some day I still want to make my Final Fantasy style Bollywood inspired RPG. At Telltale, that ain't likely to happen. But what the heck? I'm perfectly happy spending more time with the Bone cousins and enjoying my push times.