Interview Tim Cain spills the beans at Edge Online

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Tim Cain

<a href="http://www.edge-online.com/features/whats-tim-cain-up-to">What's Tim Cain Up To? Edge Online asked him</a>:
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<blockquote><b>You’ve released some hardcore PC games in the past. But today, how concerned are you with accessibility and mass market appeal with this unannounced Carbine game that you're working on?</b>
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TC: We’re very concerned in making it available to the mass market and trying to design a game that would appeal to casual and hardcore players alike. I think the MMO space is big enough that you can design a game that appeals to both of those groups.
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<b>What are your impressions of what you’ve seen of Fallout 3? Do you think that they’re doing that franchise justice?</b>
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TC: I do like what I’ve seen about Fallout 3. I’ve talked to those guys at Bethesda about it and they know that it’s their IP now and they’ve gone in a certain direction that I find very intriguing. It’s not necessarily the direction I would have gone, but I can tell you I have my Fallout 3 pre-ordered. I want my life-sized Pip-Boy and I’m going to be all ready to play that at the end of the month.</blockquote>
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Appealing to two types of people is bad Timmy! Decisions like that lead to real-time and turn-based being used in Arcanum and the sucky combat system that resulted. You should be choosing your audience and targeting their nuts off.
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Timmy is currently playing Dungeons & Dragons Online and has an active WoW account.

 

[Seboss]

Déjà vu ?

 

[Volourn]

Poor, sad Timothy.

 

[MetalCraze]

Tim Cain has totally lost it.

 

[Volourn]

Another Codexian hero has fallen.

Sad too, as I enjoyed most of his games even if the hero worship he drew was patheticly over the top.

 

[thesheeep]

There is nothing wrong in trying to please both mass and hardcore market.
It's just incredibly hard to manage and I haven't seen any game succeeding in that.

But that doesn't mean it is impossible.

Better a game that tries to aim at the hardcore market than one that completely ignores it...

 

[MetalCraze]

Man, we are talking about MMO here. It appeals only to hardcore grinders that will spend months of their miserable lifes killing a bunch of pixels.

 

[Texas Red]

What's the point of interviewing a big shot developer if you know their answers will be generic PR?

 

[Jeff Graw]

Déjà vu ?

 

[PlanHex]

Déjà vu ?

 

[elander_]

"Appealing to two types of people is bad Timmy! Decisions like that lead to real-time and turn-based being used in Arcanum and the sucky combat system that resulted. You should be choosing your audience and targeting their nuts off. "

The problem with Arcanum is the same as Fallout and the reason people see TB in these games as boring. Both these games don't let you control your party members and this is 90% of what makes TB games cool, that is, being able to create combined tactics between your companions, which is hard to impossible in other games.

In Arcanum your companies are most of the time out of control and you spend your time making sure they don't throw themselves into a trap or run to the middle of an enemy party and get slaughtered instead of having fun with TB placing them in the best tactical positions.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Déjà vu ?

You'll note that one says "We'll have more shortly". This is the follow-up article.

 

[PlanHex]

Argh, you cheated me by snipping the stuff he said last time!
Curse you, DU! CURSE YOOOOOOUUUUUU

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I still like the guy. Yeah, MMO's generally are a waste of time, but still, if he can do it differently, then what the hell.

I'd be interested to find out what kind of genre he's using for the MMO he's working on. Fantasy, Post Apoc, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, what.

 

[Jason]

I'd be interested to find out what kind of genre he's using for the MMO he's working on. Fantasy, Post Apoc, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, what.

Just going by the images on their site, it looks to be a fantasy/sci-fi mix, with emphasis on the fantasy.

 

[jiujitsu]

The glory days have long been over...

 

[Drakron]

I still like the guy. Yeah, MMO's generally are a waste of time, but still, if he can do it differently, then what the hell.

The problem is in the end MMO's HAVE to be a waste of time because they survive on subscriptions and its impossible to add content at the same speed as of the players going over said content.

That is why there is the time sinks of the grind and why it making the game moving towards the social network were people pay to just log in to hang out with their online friends pays off in the end.

WoW that is the "casual" MMO still requires about 2 months of play to see the end content and developing of a social network in order to reach several of that content.

 

[Applegate's Breasts]

What's the point of interviewing a big shot developer if you know their answers will be generic PR?

Politics. So and so has gone on the record with his endorsement of so and so, blah blah.

There is nothing wrong in trying to please both mass and hardcore market.
It's just incredibly hard to manage and I haven't seen any game succeeding in that.

But that doesn't mean it is impossible.

Better a game that tries to aim at the hardcore market than one that completely ignores it...

Yeah Blizzard manages to do it.

 

[MetalCraze]

Except they don't. They are just good at making fun multiplayers that are nowhere near complex. Note how boring blizzard's singleplayers are

 

[Applegate's Breasts]

Except they don't. They are just good at making fun multiplayers that are nowhere near complex. Note how boring blizzard's singleplayers are

They are masters of polish and refinement and accessibility. True, how "complex" the mechanics in their games are is arguable and their single-player games are usually training modes for multi-players with throwaway stories.

You can take something like Diablo II which any idiot can pretty much pick up and play and contrast that casual player base with the number cruncher min/maxers who count the frames, calculate and optimize FCR breakpoints for their characters, etc. Regular Starcraft players vs. gosu e-sports pros. The playerbase for WoW for whom it's nothing but a graphical chat program vs the competitive PvP dewds or that guy who has 30 computers set up in his room to play WoW. They've somehow captured the interest of the casual and "hardcore" audience.

This is a tired example, but I've always considered MMO's nerdy, niche, and "hardcore." Not only do you have to invest a monthly fee, you have the treadmill time investment, yet Blizzard has turned WoW into a pop culture/mainstream staple that's featured on South Park and has non-gamers talking about raiding around their water coolers.

 

[Hazelnut]

So noone else thinks he might be playing the political game here then, saying the right things at the right time to the right people. Then doing good stuff behind the scenes. Just a thought.

 

[Applegate's Breasts]

The days of developers sniping each other in their .plans are gone. The glorious rockstar developer, "Going to make you his bitch!" days.

That Dead or Alive guy who calls other games pieces of shit eventually got fired didn't he (for sexual harassment)?

And if Kojima is mis-quoted about calling the PS3 shite so much trouble goes into setting the record straight. Don't want to hurt feelings (i.e. business avenues).


So now we're stuck with friendly corporate style ribbing with veiled subtexts (Bethesda saying they wish Blizzard would just innovate more). We'll let the Penny Arcades do our talking for us. Progress.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

At least Obsidian devs know what HEAVAN is...

 

[Ausir]

Except they don't. They are just good at making fun multiplayers that are nowhere near complex. Note how boring blizzard's singleplayers are

I like StarCraft's single player campaign.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, I still like the guy.