It's a formula that turned the series into Telltale's first breakout hit. The Walking Dead was named game of the year by numerous outlets — including our sister site Polygon — and has put the studio in a totally new position. "It’s given us some credibility with bigger license holders," says Bruner, and Telltale is putting that to great use. In addition to a second season of The Walking Dead, expected to debut later this month, the studio also kicked off a brand new series in October with The Wolf Among Us, a gritty crime drama based on the comic series Fables. And last weekend, at Spike TV's video game awards ceremony, it announced two more series: one based on Game of Thrones, and the other a story-heavy take on the sci-fi shooter series Borderlands. Telltale's line-up of games is starting to resemble that of a premium cable channel.





Part of what makes Telltale's more recent games so compelling is the way they make you feel invested in the story. You may not be able to influence the the final outcome, but your decisions greatly change the way events unfold. And the studio uses that information to inform how later episodes are designed, altering things based on player feedback, which can often be drastically different than what the developers were expecting.

Season two writer and designer Mark Darin explains one such example with a character that players just wouldn't stop complaining about in season one — some even sent Telltale messages saying they would let the character die if they had the chance. But when that opportunity was presented, few actually took it. In fact, in that same episode many players even gave him some of their extra food despite their professed hatred. "These are the kinds of surprises that are fun," says Darin. And sometimes changes are made to upcoming episodes based on this feedback. "It lets you know that people are playing the game as people," adds Lenart. "They’re role-playing it as they themselves would do, and not playing it like a video game where there’s no consequences. That’s really exciting."

The studio will be facing perhaps its biggest challenge so far with the release of The Walking Dead's second season starting later this month. Season one put you in the role of Lee, a man who soon found himself the unofficial guardian of Clementine, a young girl orphaned from her parents. Clementine served as the series's moral compass, making you think extra hard about some of the game's more difficult decisions. Season two takes things a step further by making her the playable lead character. It was an idea the studio had tossed around for some time. "When we started to think about what would it be like to be a little girl in the zombie world," says Bruner, "then it became really rich. There’s some crazy stuff we can do."