A management shakeup occurred in early 2017, with current CEO Bruner stepping down, and Pete Hawley, formerly of Zynga, brought in to fix Telltale's problems. Telltale continued to expand with new licensing deals for episodic adventure games over the next few years, including for Minecraft, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Batman, but the rate of production created a ' crunch time' culture behind the scenes, leaving poor company morale, little room for creativity to verve from the formula set by The Walking Dead or improvements on the Telltale Tool. The Walking Dead was critically praised and considered to have revitalized the adventure game genre since LucasArts' departure from it in 2004. Nearly all of Telltale's adventure games since have featured this player choice-driven approach. The Walking Dead gave the player the ability to make choices that may affect how future events in the game or its sequels play out, effectively allowing players to craft their own personalized take on the offered story. It introduced a more narrative-directed approach that diverged from the standard adventure game 'point and click' gameplay. Telltale's critical breakout game came in 2012's The Walking Dead, based on the comic book series of the same name.

Around 2010, the studio gained more lucrative licensing opportunities in more mainstream properties such as Back to the Future and Jurassic Park. Telltale's initial successes were on games using intellectual properties with small but dedicated fan bases, including Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit and Homestar Runner. Telltale established itself to focus on adventure games using a novel episodic release schedule over digital distribution, creating its own game engine, Telltale Tool, to support this. The company was founded in October 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following LucasArts' decision to leave the adventure game genre. Telltale Incorporated, doing business as Telltale Games, is an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California.

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