It's similar to how (in general) an industry-wide theme is that episodic titles have significant sales drop-off in later episodes. Sequels do too, albeit less so and less consistently. This is part of why companies selling episodic games (telltale included) try to sell you a whole season up front.

A big notable example is Square Enix's Final Fantasy 13 trilogy (3 games, FF13, FF13-2, and Lightning Returns), where IIRC sales basically halved on each release - so Lightning Returns sold about 0.25x what FF13 did [1]. (FF13 sold well, so this is at least not completely dire).

You can often make this up by spending less money to develop later episodes & sequels, which was true for both Telltale and the FF13 trilogy - but eventually it's not sustainable anymore.

1: http://www.siliconera.com/2013/11/27/lightning-returns-lowes...

I can't help but think there's some truth to all the talk about people growing tired of the same mechanics being used in essentially every Telltale game after the first series of The Walking Dead. Going from personal experience, it was a hell of a ride the first outing but it grew pretty samey even when new settings and stories were applied to it.

It's not just the physical mechanics. The story arcs and puzzles on their games also started feeling formulaic after a while too. Like, if you played one Telltale game, you'd played them all.

Which makes sense, now that I'm hearing how the company was managed - coming up with really original ideas, and making sure they work, takes time and breathing room. You get that out of people that have time to put their feet on the desk and daydream, not people that live on perpetual crunch time.

It wasn't just the gameplay for me, but the episodic format. I grew tired of that, and I would wait until all episodes were released to buy. By then, I might have either forgotten about the game, or could get it for a substantial discount.

Agreed. I tired of the gameplay very quickly after the first game. Felt too contrived and transparent. Couldn’t even force myself to finish the free first chapters of some of their later games. Oh well, it was a nice brief ride.