Former members of Telltale Games have come together to keep the adventure game torch burning by forming AdHoc Studio. When Telltale closed suddenly last year many good people lost their jobs, and many fans were concerned both for their favorite developers and for the steady niche in games that the studio was occupying. Four ex-Telltale employees have now gone on to keep found their own studio to help explore the new ground being broken in the world of interactive narratives.
Nick Herman, Dennis Lenart, Pierre Shorette and Michael Choung where all present at Telltale during some of their more trying days, prior to the final year of operation. The long crunch hours, the internal resistance to ambitious projects or changes. In all, it has shown them that adaptability is the key, a lesson they have taken to heart with their own studio. AdHoc has said that they're going to be exploring the concept of live-action interactive narratives, an area which until very recently has not been possible in a meaningful way.
With the recent popular release of Bandersnatch on Netflix, the space has become much more viable, and AdHoc Studio plans to capitalize on that. Nick Herman, AdHoc Studio COO had this to say:
What we want to do is to make clear that live-action interactive isn’t a novelty, it’s unexplored territory that can be both creatively and commercially viable.While they plan to be exploring live-action narrative alone at first, they have said that they hope these new advancements in storytelling could one day touch the likes of more action based games. AdHoc Studio has made it clear that they do not want to be pigeonholed to any one type of game, and that nothing in the future can be ruled out.
Are you excited by the possibility of live-action interactive narratives? What do you hope to see from AdHoc in the future? Let us know in the comments.