Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Luka-boy]

Ignoring the Poor Little White Guy vibes of the photo, he seems like a sweet guy.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Who's the husband? There are two guys on the right. One of them looks like a fag, but at the same time looks too young for Tim.

 

[0sacred]

Who's the husband? There are two guys on the right. One of them looks like a fag, but at the same time looks too young for Tim.

next best thing to a twink Tim could get

 

[Late Bloomer]

His "husband" looks like an ugly lesbian. Discount Tyson Fury brought a little masculinity to the room at least. Oh who am I kidding, he is most likely just a silly little goose too.
Edit. It looks as if the discount Tyson Fury is the husband. Go Tim.

 

[Roguey]

Cringe in the comments:

Oof that coeraive pregnancy anecdote is pretty rough in retrospect. Thank God for ttrpg safety tools now.
Would you ever want to roleplay again, Tim? I'd happily run something. FO1 and 2 were games I played everyday in the same era when I first discovered D&D, and a lot of those early lessons informed much of how I write and design TTRPGs now.

Yeah, that pregnancy thing was weird even then. I never liked romances in RPGs, tabletop or computer, so that whole storyline came from a comment another player made about Catherine's druid agreeing to marry the Dirk the anti-paladin to save the party. That player said that she hoped that the druid and anti-paladin didn't consummate their marriage, so Catherine and I agreed to roll a die to see if she was pregnant. She was.

Later the party found a cursed belt that changed the wearer's gender, and it started a LONG uncomfortable discussion about what would happen if the pregnant druid put it on.

Romance in TTRPGs is fine, as long as the players agree that's the kind of game they want to play. Plenty of indie TTRPGs have that as a design focus. It's the lack of consent in the forced marriage and pregnancy that becomes an issue.

Agreed. I should point out that the druid initiated the conversation with the anti-paladin, who was just going to attack the party, and suggested sacrificing herself so the party could live. I rolled a really high reaction roll from the anti-paladin, even before adding the druid's 18 charisma bonus, so he agreed. None of this was planned, and the players directed this interaction as much as I did.

Still, these things make me uncomfortable because you can never tell if everyone at the table is perceiving this situation the same way. I mean, here I was planning on a big battle in dark castle between the anti-paladin (and his men-at-arms) and the player party, and I ended up with the druid discussing which room in the castle to use as a nursery.

It was a weird night. But if anything, it underscores my point that the DM never knows what the players are going to do.

*woman initiates sex-for-favors roleplaying*

"Noooooooooo we need safety tools to deal with this!"

Who's the husband? There are two guys on the right. One of them looks like a fag, but at the same time looks too young for Tim.

The beardo with the nose ring. Tim is into fellow bears.

 

[0sacred]

The beardo with the nose ring. Tim is into fellow bears.

Spoiler

 

[Butter]

NGL everyone in that photo minus Leonard looks like they do butt stuff. How many of them showed up to the chocolate meeting and got hoodwinked by the confectionery?

 

[Maldoror]

That one guy has a Dr. Who shirt of one of the doctors after Peter Davison. Disgusting.

 

[d1nolore]

You have to admit he seems like a really nice guy, even when people are being trolls.

 

[Lord_Potato]

They'd obviously have called the sequel Vault 14.

Or Vault 76.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about how Fallout was never a high-status project at Interplay until very shortly before it shipped.

 

[Terra]

It's interesting given this video and his previous one on getting into/ahead in the industry that gets at the actual reality of the situation. This Fred guy and the recommended promotion he never got, the group of people that were on Tim's project that were quiet but really solid, competent workers but don't blow their own horn all the time. I feel these are more like the realities of game dev; you could have X solo games under your belt but if you're up against a silver tongued blagger with the "right" personality (who knows/hangs with the right people), they'll win every time. Heck, just in general, I'd be hard-pressed to find a advert for an open position anywhere (in any industry) that doesn't sport generic "we're looking for go-getter with a can-do attitude" when the reality is that typically has fuck all to do with a candidate's competency in a job, but the whole system is setup to benefit extroverts (and lately soc jus cultists), who are often blaggers in my experience. I'm sure one such person probably took credit for whatever Fred did after Tim's departure.

You take Tim's group of non-conformists here, fast forward what 25 years and add in the requisite additional HR layers of agenda pushing nonsense & other drivel that have seeped into the hiring/promotion process over the years and outside of small indie studios, what's the reality of the confluence of factors that led to Fallout ever reoccuring again. Pretty damn slim with modern hiring practices imo, whole thing is insanely nepotistic nowadays with actual talent being seemingly the last thing that is considered.

Interesting stories nonetheless.

 

[Diggfinger]

One of the best videos so far!

Candid info of how Fallout was considered a B-project within Interplay, until just months before it shipped where marketing and others finally saw its promise.
(Fargo liked it after playing a late build in April 1997, which pushed it along).

This we've heard before (at the GDC talk), but Cain goes further to say how:
- it frustrated him how marketing suddenly wanted to interfere
- How he was assigned to be lead on Fallout 2 (despite saying he didnt want to do a sequel), and how Interplay then decided a completely separate team should develop F2
- Personal story of how Cain set Fred Hatch up for promotion (and to lead F2), which was overlooked by Interplay. They even told Hatch that Cain had never sent in his performance-review papers

Makes me wonder if part Cain's channel is him getting stuff of his chest, reflecting on bad experiences he has had

Very candid and interesting!

 

[Roguey]

Too bad Chris was too much of a sadsack at the time to tell Ed about all the fights that happened during Descent to Undermountain.

Cain talked about the Fred situation in the Gamers at Work book https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/fallout-2-is-way-worse-than-i-remember-it.140038/post-7924252

 

[Goral]

I explain why I left Fallout 2 early in its development. TLDW: exhaustion, interference, lack of motivation.

What I find interesting in all this is that Brian Fargo was (and is) a true gamer and he actually played (and enjoyed) the games that he published. The rest of managment (most likely including Faergus) preferred Excel.

Edit:
Brian Fargo was clearly Tim's fan and he insisted that Tim would work on Fallout 2. When Tim complained that some woman was making decisions on F2, Brian Fargo asked if he wants her fired :D. Tim also talks about how a simple "for >=" loop broke Fallout and forced them to delay a game by a couple of months.

Edit 2:
lol at Brian Fargo for cutting Tim Cain's bonus for not telling whose bug (for >=) it was.

 

[whocares]

I will not eat the bugs. I will not live in a pod. I will not use 2FA.

 

[Infinitron]

All right, now's the time to ask about this mystery again: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/van-buren-by-tim-cain.96084/

 

[Diggfinger]

I explain why I left Fallout 2 early in its development. TLDW: exhaustion, interference, lack of motivation.

What I find interesting in all this is that Brian Fargo was (and is) a true gamer and he actually played (and enjoyed) the games that he published. The rest of managment (most likely including Faergus) preferred Excel.

Edit:
Brian Fargo was clearly Tim's fan and he insisted that Tim would work on Fallout 2. When Tim complained that some woman was making decisions on F2, Brian Fargo asked if he wants her fired :D. Tim also talks about how a simple "for >=" loop broke Fallout and forced them to delay a game by a couple of months.

Edit 2:
lol at Brian Fargo for cutting Tim Cain's bonus for not telling whose bug (for >=) it was.

That was...intense.

Fargo must've been under alot of pressure at the time, but you really get a sense that he was almost mean-spirited in his management-style back then.
Wow. That sounds so shitty...

reminds me of a boss I had while working at Sony, bless his heart

 

[Roguey]

I don't see why Timmy was so upset over his smaller bonus. A bonus is just that, you're not entitled to one. It was his decision to take responsibility for the delay-causing crash bug and that means accepting the punishment for it. Fargo did nothing wrong there.

 

[agris]

I explain why I left Fallout 2 early in its development. TLDW: exhaustion, interference, lack of motivation.

Feargus btfo once again, his incompetent management of divisions alienates Cain. Exactly as discussed before.

 

[0sacred]

imagine believing in Fallout from the "very beginning"

 

[Morgoth]

Oh Fargo, you scummy bastard.

 

[agris]

What's so interesting is that through sheer force of will, Cain's stubborn mindedness resulted in a big financial success for Interplay, likely with an even more impressive ROI given how under-resourced they were.

While Brian's expensive, shiny pet projects resulted in huge financial losses for the firm (Stonekeep, Descent to Undermountain, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy). Cain's work directly injects cash into the business, Fargo is lighting cash on fire and can't manage the studio well enough to keep him.

It's a perfect encapsulation of why Fargo's newest studio, inXile, produces middling garbage. He's not a leader that inspires greatness. He has family money to invest in businesses and licenses/acquisitions. He gets lucky sometimes, but his luck appears random due to who he surrounds himself with. When he took an active role in games, it resulted in squandering of ~$10 musd in 2023 dollars and the efforts of over 200 hundred people (Stonekeep). He promoted Feargus to Black Isle's director, the same guy who passed on Battleground Infinity when it was first pitched to him (the then-name of Baldur's Gate), and couldn't manage Black Isle's well enough such that when Fargo told him that Cain should be involved in all the business decisions for Fallout 2 (like choosing the box art), it never happens.

Absolute clownshow, and really makes sense in light of inXile's and Obsidian's catalogue of games to this day.

edit: before getting accused of having a hate boner for Urquhart, you have to understand that his name is conspicuously absent from all of this. I think this is professional kindness Tim is showing him as they recently worked together, while Fargo is a distant memory.

 

[ds]

I don't see why Timmy was so upset over his smaller bonus. A bonus is just that, you're not entitled to one. It was his decision to take responsibility for the delay-causing crash bug and that means accepting the punishment for it. Fargo did nothing wrong there.

Trying to punish an individual developer for a single bug (an off by one error which is one of the most mundane of programming mistakes) is pretty insane management. And the impact of the bug (i.e., delay of the release) is not a programming issue at all but a an issue with management for setting too tight deadlines in the first place. But of course management never wants to take any responsibility for that... so instead they lost two star employees.

 

[Alienman]

Well, we know the bug wasn't the disappearing car at least