Telltale raises $6 million to blow up retail games model
Telltale, the San Rafael, Calif. company that makes interactive games, including Sam & Max, has raised $6 million in a second round of financing.
The three year old company is already profitable, having pursued a strategy of making games much more rapidly and cheaply than the large game producers such as Electronic Arts. Rather than trying to produce blockbusters games costing in the millions of dollars, Telltale seeks to make games in episodes (the popular Sam & Max just concluded its first season of six monthly episodes, for example), which keeps the games fresh, creating buzz on chat boards. It also forces a snappy release schedule.
Granite Ventures led the round, with IDG Ventures in San Francisco participating. Telltale raised some $800,000 in an angel round in February last year.
With Sam & Max, Telltale has already made money, chief executive Dan Connors tells VentureBeat, by selling the game through multiple channels. One is through Turner’s Gametap (see here), which is a subscription broadband service for games, costing $9.95 a month. A second is by direct downloads from Telltale’s site. Other ways, still in the works, are syndication with other Web portals (still be announced), possibly along with advertising, and as retail game in stores, aimed at consoles.
Some other companies are pushing episode strategies. Kuma War Hothead games for examples.
Next Story: Kyte.tv, the online TV widget company, receives investment from Nokia Growth Partners
Previous Story: PayPerPost, which pays bloggers to write, gets $7M more
About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
