Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Roguey]

Core game loops


My take on them is that a fixation on them leads to games that feel very formulaic to play, The Outer Worlds being one of the victims of this. It's like the Save the Cat of game design.

 

[goregasm]

Did Cain spend the month of June letting everyone know he likes playing touch butt with men? And how that has impacted his life, career, and philosophy?

 

[0sacred]

Tim: "Oh, so you want me to change the core game loop?"

Publisher:

Tim: "Checkmate atheists!"

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about game flavor and try to define what it is and why it is so important for a game director to enforce it.

 

[0sacred]

"There are only bad games for you" has to be the gayest retcon Tim has ever done.

 

[0sacred]

Tim is really upping his production value with the snippets and music. Must feel good to be a member.

spoiler

 

[Pyrite Pachyderm]

I talk about game flavor and try to define what it is and why it is so important for a game director to enforce it.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about some do's and don'ts of negotiating contracts with publishers.

 

[0sacred]

What's the lore, was Troika fucked over by publishers or was it their own fault?

 

[Wesp5]

I would guess both. Valve gave them an unfinished version of the Source engine that they kept changing all the time, so Troika had to restart over and over again with Bloodlines. This annoyed Activision so much that they told them to stop development before they were finished and then released the game at the very same day as HL2 which was really stupid. On the other hand just judging from all the unfinished stuff I found in the game files, Troika really had feature creep going on with Bloodlines tool!

 

[Eirinjas]

One man's feature creep is another man's AAA gaming experience.

 

[Roguey]

What's the lore, was Troika fucked over by publishers or was it their own fault?

He says he was a poor businessman but learned a lot from failure.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the business issues and concerns of running a game company.

 

[0sacred]

Wonder what "people who didn't like that we started Troika" he's talking about, sounds like more juicy gossip.

 

[Abu Antar]

What's the lore, was Troika fucked over by publishers or was it their own fault?

Yes.

Jokes aside. It was a mix of both. Valve did their best to screw them over. Publisher relationship was up and down. On the other hand, they have said that their own business decisions were questionable. Buggy releases also didn't help.

It's not hard to see why the top dogs of Troika don't want to start a new studio, or have leadership roles.

When it comes to people not being happy about them forming a studio, one such person was probably Fargo. There are a few more I suspect weren't very happy, but these are all suits.

 

[mindx2]

Wonder what "people who didn't like that we started Troika" he's talking about, sounds like more juicy gossip.

Could be when he talked about Interplay suing him several times claiming he was using code he had made for them when working there.

 

[Eirinjas]

Didn't Tim admit to using Fallout code on Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil? The janky character movement is certainly the same between Fallout and Arcanum.

 

[Roguey]

Valve did their best to screw them over.

Tim's said he's never had any issues with Valve. "You can't release your game before ours" was something they were upfront about and they made the decision to use the engine anyway.

Didn't Tim admit to using Fallout code on Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil? The janky character movement is certainly the same between Fallout and Arcanum.

Exact opposite. Interplay brought a programmer over to confirm that he wasn't using any Fallout code because they were very paranoid and litigious.

 

[Wesp5]

Valve did their best to screw them over.

Tim's said he's never had any issues with Valve.

I'm pretty sure somebody said that they lost a lot of time because Valve kept changing their engine. It might have been Leonard though as Tim came on late in development and maybe by the time Troika had frozen on the alpha engine they used.

 

[Roguey]

I'm pretty sure somebody said that they lost a lot of time because Valve kept changing their engine. It might have been Leonard though as Tim came on late in development and maybe by the time Troika had frozen on the alpha engine they used.

This was something they very well knew would happen when they agreed to use it in 2001. Half-Life 2 wasn't released until three years later, of course it was far from being finished and would keep getting improvements during that time.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the issues caused by having too many gameplay options in your game.

 

[Wesp5]

I'm pretty sure somebody said that they lost a lot of time because Valve kept changing their engine. It might have been Leonard though as Tim came on late in development and maybe by the time Troika had frozen on the alpha engine they used.

This was something they very well knew would happen when they agreed to use it in 2001. Half-Life 2 wasn't released until three years later, of course it was far from being finished and would keep getting improvements during that time.

Sorry, but I'm pretty sure Valve lied about the state of the engine or their development speed when they sold it to Troika. The leak of the Half-Life 2 alpha and especially the insolence to even use that to explain the HL2 delays is proof enough!

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the development of The Temple of Elemental Evil, from January 2002 to September 2003.

 

[Roguey]

Activision wanted Tim, Leonard, and Jason to work on Bloodlines and Tim put his foot down and said they couldn't have him because he really wanted to be on Temple.

Tim says one of the reasons why he can't release the source for Arcanum and ToEE is because you could use that to remove DRM, but GOG already did that...?

One of the reasons there's no remaster for ToEE is because they'd have to license it from Tim.

Atari was late on every milestone payment.

All the dialogue was finished after nine months.

After a year, Tim was fuming about a two-month-late payment and they told him "if you're so desperate for money, get a loan." He responded by saying it looked like they were the ones desperate for money, and they paid him two days later. This came back to bite him when this was followed by Atari sending a list of things they wanted removed to make it a T-rated game (they were under the impression they were making an M rated game).

Atari didn't want to pay to test patches and Troika wasn't allowed to release unofficial patches either. Fortunately "Circle of Eight" could do it.

 

[Butter]

Remember also that Atari's testers didn't feel like playing Bard, so it just went untested and shipped with major bugs.