Interestingly enough, their first game wasn't an episodic one at all. In 2005 they released Telltale Texas Hold'em. As the title states, it was a poker simulator and was mostly used as a way to test their in-house engine. Telltale went on to make several CSI games for Ubisoft that were composed of several episodes, but released exclusively as a complete retail game. There were also two games based on Jeff Smith's Bone series and more were planned, but the project was eventually canceled. The only other non-episodic title was the Poker Night at the Inventory released on November 22, 2010.
In 2005 Telltale then attempted to buy the rights to Sam and Max: Freelance Police from LucasArts but failed. Instead they went to creator Steve Purcell and received permission to develop new games using the series' characters. They went on to release Sam and Max: Season One in 2006 on a monthly schedule, popularizing episodic gaming. This method proved very successful for them financially and the series went on to produce two more seasons thus far, Sam and Max: Beyond Time and Space in 2007 and Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse in 2010.
Telltale then released the very popular Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People based on the well known Homestar Runner license. It was originally released on the Wii and PC, but was recently released on the PlayStation 3 on December 21, 2010. Telltale continued to develop titles built on popular licenses. In early 2009 they released Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventure, and they remade the Tales of Monkey Island series right after.
In 2010 Telltale created the Pilot Games Program as a way to test new ways of storytelling and gameplay without having to incorporate episodic content. So far only two games have been released under this program: Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent - a "dark and twisted puzzler" - and Poker Night at the Inventory, a tie-in game with multiple characters from various popular franchises such as Team Fortress 2 and Penny Arcade.
In mid June Telltale announced that they had partnered with Universal to release games based on the Back to the Future and Jurassic Park series. So far only the first episode of the BTTF series has been released. Just recently Telltale also announced a deal to develop games based on The Walking Dead, Fables, and King's Quest franchises.
Telltale is seen by many as the one developer who knows how to do episodic gaming correctly. They're also seen by movie studios as a way to create proper movie tie-ins, citing close relationships with screenwriters and franchise creators as their way of creating a worthy experience.
While mostly a developer, Telltale also publishes their games. For the most part they release them digital download services such as Steam and Direct2Drive, only partnering with mainstream publishers down the road for a retail release.
According to the company itself, many of their games are extremely profitable. For most games they only need to sell one hundred thousand to break even and most of their games sell at least twice that. Steve Allison, the Senior Vice President of Marketing is quoted as saying the Back to the Future is their "most successful franchise to date". They anticipate that the new Fables and The Walking Dead series will be even more popular when released and that the company will grow as a result.
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