Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Yosharian]

TOW was Obsidian trying to be apolitical

 

[0sacred]

Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

Sawyer was excited about Deadfire, he got burned out because Feargus demanded full voice acting in the middle.

Was he excited to work on IWD II? Was he excited to work on all those Fallout DLC? Maybe he just fucking loves more of the same? I doubt it. And even if he did, that would still explain why Tim has more impressive titles under his belt.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

TOW was Obsidian trying to be apolitical

It's not even the politics themselves that are the issue imho, but the cartoonish ways in which they're portrayed. You can have cyberpunk style settings without saturday morning cartoon villains. Although in the case of TOW that's further exacerbated by piss poor worldbuilding.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

that link says nothing I can see in support of your statement

The link inform the one I replied to, to what the TOW developer actually said.

Pong

Everything is political, because Pong does not exists in vacuum. It has cultural impact, thus political. What started from just moving shadow on the wall, evolved as Artistic medium.

I am sorry that your 2 brain cells are struggling to fathom this simple notion.

If you are disturbed/triggered/discomforted by the notion that a creation of a creator will inevitably imparted with its creator's ideas - I recommend you to just play shadow puppet. You need only a candle, a dim room and your two hands.

 

[Roguey]

I misremembering or didn't Tim said just before Outer Worlds released that games should be apolitical?

That was Avellone. Leonard Boyarsky said that Outer Worlds wasn't anti-capitalist (and it wasn't) and that he personally loved money. A number of devs on twitter seethed about that and retweeted one of the artists saying that a project director's views don't reflect those of the team's.

Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

Sawyer was excited about Deadfire, he got burned out because Feargus demanded full voice acting in the middle.

Was he excited to work on IWD II? Was he excited to work on all those Fallout DLC? Maybe he just fucking loves more of the same? I doubt it. And even if he did, that would still explain why Tim has more impressive titles under his belt.

Yes. IWD2 brought 3rd edition rules to the Infinity Engine. He loved being able to do Honest Hearts because he wanted to do an RPG with real religious themes. He was also the one who asked Bethesda to do Gun Runners' Arsenal, to prove that one could make weapon pack dlcs that had good value.

All of those have something new, much like what Cain prefers.

 

[0sacred]

All of those have something new, much like what Cain prefers.

Didn't Cain need several new things to get his creative juices flowing? Of course there's always something new with a sequel.

 

[Yosharian]

> Leonard Boyarsky said that Outer Worlds wasn't anti-capitalist (and it wasn't) and that he personally loved money. A number of devs on twitter seethed about that and retweeted one of the artists saying that a project director's views don't reflect those of the team's.

TOW's development woes in a nutshell

 

[Infinitron]

Hmmm!

I talk about how you can write interesting and memorable NPCs without falling into the same old overused tropes.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Pong

Everything is political, because Pong does not exists in vacuum. It has cultural impact, thus political. What started from just moving shadow on the wall, evolved as Artistic medium.

I am sorry that your 2 brain cells are struggling to fathom this simple notion.

If you are disturbed/triggered/discomforted by the notion that a creation of a creator will inevitably imparted with its creator's ideas - I recommend you to just play shadow puppet. You need only a candle, a dim room and your two hands.

Right right, of course, so now we play motte and bailey with your argument where what started as a hardline 'all art is political. even being apolitical is still political' position morphs into 'yeah, ok, but surely a teeeny tiiiny bit of the creators' politics is being transmitted, right?' when presented with the slumdunk counter-example that pong hasn't got shit to do with politics in any meaningful sense.

You might as well say that "everything is energy displacement" or "everything is entropy" or "everything is relative" or "everything is a thing, dude. even nothing is sort of a thing". It's stoner logic. Saying that 'everything is political' meaning that some tiny, imperceptible part of the creators worldview made it through into the final product is as close to a valueless statement as you can probably get. It is the perfect motte to retreat to.

 

[Infinitron]

Gib monies:

I talk about channel memberships, what levels are available, and why I am adding them.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Gib monies:

It's his reputation to ruin at this point. He honestly lost me months ago.

 

[Infinitron]

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

 

[0sacred]

Tim: hates sarcastic NPC's

Also Tim: let's give the PC in Arcanum lots of snarky shit to say

 

[ds]

"Master" tier??‽ As a programmer Tim should know that context doesn't matter anymore and it needs to be called the "main" tier now unless you are a racist nazi.

 

[Roguey]

Can't really fault him, every video he uploads gets over 100 comments. Imagine making a thread every day that gets hundreds of replies. It's not like here where each video gets a handful of posts in response.

 

[Tyranicon]

Can't really fault him, every video he uploads gets over 100 comments. Imagine making a thread every day that gets hundreds of replies. It's not like here where each video gets a handful of posts in response.

TBF you can't really compare YouTube to some niche RPG forum. Didn't YouTube send him a plaque a while back?

I tried to watch a few of his videos because I respect Tim's legacy, but most of his videos seem unscripted and are just staring at his face as he meanders around the point.

I don't really get why people love watching people talk. It must be that parasocial thing everybody keeps talking about.

 

[Melcar]

Can't really fault him, every video he uploads gets over 100 comments. Imagine making a thread every day that gets hundreds of replies. It's not like here where each video gets a handful of posts in response.

TBF you can't really compare YouTube to some niche RPG forum. Didn't YouTube send him a plaque a while back?

I tried to watch a few of his videos because I respect Tim's legacy, but most of his videos seem unscripted and are just staring at his face as he meanders around the point.

I don't really get why people love watching people talk. It must be that parasocial thing everybody keeps talking about.

I bet most of his core viewers are just old fans from the Interplay days, and they just watch because of nostalgia and for interesting anecdotes. Nothing wrong with that and I doubt you need a script.

 

[0sacred]

I watch Tim's videos because he's an interesting case of someone who used to be respected for seemingly good reasons and whose career took a nosedive later on. It's the same as with other early RPG developers, and the question of wether they were genuinely gifted or if their success was happenstance (due to less competition etc.).

Also Tim embarasses himself regularly in these and that makes it fun to watch. Like a drunk gay uncle at Christmas who feels like he has a lot of wisdom to share.

 

[Butter]

I watch Tim's videos because he's an interesting case of someone who used to be respected for seemingly good reasons and whose career took a nosedive later on. It's the same as with other early RPG developers, and the question of wether they were genuinely gifted or if their success was happenstance (due to less competition etc.).

Also Tim embarasses himself regularly in these and that makes it fun to watch. Like a drunk gay uncle at Christmas who feels like he has a lot of wisdom to share.

Most creative people lose touch with reality as they get older. Metallica thought their fans wanted to hear southern rock in the 90s. Tim thought his fans wanted to play with triangles in the 10s.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Reminder that the man probably forgot more about making games than most devs ever learned in their lifetimes.
Tim Cain casts a long shadow. When in doubt, sometimes listening to the wisdom of the Elders is good advice. Who knows, he might have some insight you need.
Plus, the man has been through a lot.

I need to remind myself to go through all his videos one day.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

slumdunk

LMAO. Hardly.

Like I said, you can comfort yourself by calling it whatever you want. Create your own safe space to retreat to.

Pong has an impact. It's undeniable.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

I don't really get why people love watching people talk. It must be that parasocial thing everybody keeps talking about.

Sharing history orally is the longest human tradition.

When you said "parasocial" are you sure you're not staring at the mirror bibanicon?

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about some old (early 2000s) ideas I had for a fantasy game. These ideas that are not detailed enough to form an IP, but they would be useful to explore in a brainstorming session.

 

[Nano]

The political message of Pong is if you don't have quick reflexes, you'll die.

 

[0sacred]

Tim is stealing ideas from Lionheart - Legacy of the Crusader (killing monsters gives souls which power mana). Or wait, wasn't that Diablo?

Crafting from souls, let alone different types of souls, sounds horrible.

More Diablo crap like item sets and bad ideas like set related quests.

Areas closed off until quests are done was in Arcanum (Shrouded Hills bridge, Elven settlement).

Can't resist the urge to go to Castle Evil if you're evil?

tl;dr all his ideas are terrible. We need transcripts of actual Troika brainstorming sessions to see who came up with which ideas.