Games will "shape the future of pop culture", says Telltale boss

Games are "not mass market huge" but gamers are "first-class media consumers", according to Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner.

"Games are huge, right? But they’re not mass market huge, where all the great stories and the great storytellers work."

It's a really exciting time to be in games, Bruner said in a new interview with Digital Trends.

Describing gamers as “first-class media consumers", Bruner said coming home to play video games rather than watch TV after work is "not weird anymore".

"That’s becoming normal. It’s not so ostracized to be a gamer anymore,” he said.

"I think it’s going to happen really, really fast, where people just don’t categorize themselves as much. They’re just media consumers, whatever that means.”

“It’s a beautiful time for gamers, because we really get to shape the future of pop culture."

Bruner expressed his respect for storytellers in film, TV and literature, but said gaming is "where all the action is".

"Films and novels and television [aren’t] going away, but all the good stuff’s gonna be happening on your game console, on your tablet. That’s where the awesome stuff is going to be," he said.

We're not there yet, of course.

“Games are huge, right? But they’re not mass market huge, where all the great stories and the great storytellers work,” Bruner said.

If you take ten people at random on the street and mention Game of Thrones, he explained, they will likely all know what you mean. But only one in ten will have heard of recent game releases.

“So the games industry is huge and video games are huge, but storytelling at large – television, films, novels — is way bigger than games," he said.

"And that was a big thing of moving to these [non-console/PC] platforms, places where people are consuming stories.

“Tablets are real interesting because there’s a lot of people who would never say that they’re gamers, but they stream Netflix on their smart TV and they’ll play Tiger Woods golf on their tablet. But they’re not gamers. They’re not techies. They would never go out and buy a game console.”

So in Bruner's future, we're all gamers but we don't call ourselves gamers? Sure, why not.

At present Telltale has two ongoing series (Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands) and two known projects on the go (Minecraft: Story Mode and an original IP). It also has an enormous back catalogue.