Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Infinitron]

Did you intentionally do the same thing with The Outer Worlds timeline? It's set far enough after colonization that you won't meet anybody in Halcyon who was born on Earth and arrived on the Groundbreaker (although I suppose there might be space travelers moving through the system who are from Earth).

Yes, that kind of reasoning went into TOW's timeline as well.

 

[NecroLord]

Tim answered a question of mine in the comments.

I have a related question - is there a particular reason why Aradesh speaks with an accent but Tandi doesn't? Wondering what the thought process was here, even if the explanation is just as simple as inconsistent voice direction.

I think it's just an oversight, just like the "date" of Shady Sands foundation.
The way I explained that date issue to myself was that it wasn't Shady Sands initially. So it can be both true that Aradesh's ancestor founded it according to the game and that Shady Sands was founded only 20 years before the events of the game according to the "bible".

I have no notes about Aradesh and I didn't write him, but @zhulikkulik's explanation makes sense. One of the starting characters for Fallout was a woman with a Russian name who was the daughter of a Russian consulate who made it into a Vault when the war broke out. Would she speak with a Russian accent like her parents? Maybe.

I have never known a second-generation immigrant to have an accent like their parents. My siblings and I are second-gen ourselves (you only need one parent to qualify ), we speak like the people around us (and this changed over time; it started out thick and southern like my grandparents and then became more neutral like the people on tv). It seems unlikely to me that Aradesh would have the accent he does unless everyone around him spoke like that, and Tandi speaking the way she does and all the future NCR people speaking the way they do shows that they do not. This is further supporting evidence that Fallout is a middlebrow game made by people with good tastes, not the work of intellectuals. Barring a more in-depth explanation from the fellow who wrote Aradesh, I conclude that he has an accent simply because he thought it would be cool for him to have one. That's all right, but there's a fine line between Black Isle/Troika middlebrow cool and Bethesda lowbrow cool.

Josh Sawyer would have gotten it more-nearly-accurate, this is within his field of expertise.

Sawyer would've put in some more r*cemixing a la Icewind Dale 2, negros like in Fallout 2 and semi w0ke stuff.
Also Aradesh is a pajeet (pajeet-american more than likely).

 

[Roguey]

Sawyer would've put in some more r*cemixing a la Icewind Dale 2 and semi w0ke stuff.

Shady Sands was deliberately multicultural as well.

Also Aradesh is a pajeet.

That makes no difference. I knew an Indian girl throughout elementary school, she talked like everyone else.

 

[NecroLord]

Sawyer would've put in some more r*cemixing a la Icewind Dale 2 and semi w0ke stuff.

Shady Sands was deliberately multicultural as well.

Also Aradesh is a pajeet.

That makes no difference. I knew an Indian girl throughout elementary school, she talked like everyone else.

How was it multicultural?
It was just some small and humble settlement and pretty much every one of the npcs is white.
Vault 13, by comparison, had a few crimers.
Vault 13 even had redheads, though you cannot choose to play as one. Fallout 2 with the Restoration Patch allows you to, but the model itself is pretty ugly and nothing like the original one.

 

[Roguey]

How was it multicultural?
It was just some small and humble settlement and pretty much everyone of the npcs is white.

The way an NPC looks isn't necessarily how they are. The way Ian is described is quite different from his character model.

Aradesh was the town leader. The cows are called brahmin. His religion, all that stuff about dharma, is the religion; Katrina and Seth both give thanks to dharma.

The Khans were also from Vault 15; they were based off the Mongols Motorcycle Club, a group of Latino California bikers who were seething because the Hells Angels only allowed white men (funnily enough the Mongols have a "no blacks" policy themselves ). It'd certainly be unusual for a group of Euro-Americans to model themselves after a foreign culture (not so much for racial minorities within that culture though).

Additionally straight from Tim Cain and Chris Avellone

All documented known Vaults and their experiments - this list was compiled by Tim Cain, I believe. Tim, that creaky old fogey, doesn't quite remember himself.

Vault 15 Intended to stay closed for 50 years and include people of radically diverse ideologies. Gathered from what you hear from Aradesh in Fallout 1, he has quite a bit of multi-cultural flavoring to his speech.

 

[NecroLord]

How was it multicultural?
It was just some small and humble settlement and pretty much everyone of the npcs is white.

The way an NPC looks isn't necessarily how they are. The way Ian is described is quite different from his character model.

Aradesh was the town leader. The cows are called brahmin. His religion, all that stuff about dharma, is the religion; Katrina and Seth both give thanks to dharma.

The Khans were also from Vault 15; they were based off the Mongols Motorcycle Club, a group of Latino California bikers who were seething because the Hells Angels only allowed white men (funnily enough the Mongols have a "no blacks" policy themselves ). It'd certainly be unusual for a group of Euro-Americans to model themselves after a foreign culture (not so much for racial minorities within that culture though).

Additionally straight from Tim Cain and Chris Avellone

All documented known Vaults and their experiments - this list was compiled by Tim Cain, I believe. Tim, that creaky old fogey, doesn't quite remember himself.

Vault 15 Intended to stay closed for 50 years and include people of radically diverse ideologies. Gathered from what you hear from Aradesh in Fallout 1, he has quite a bit of multi-cultural flavoring to his speech.

Yeah, I know about Vault 15.
Including people of radically diverse ideologies and expecting everything to go smoothly while locked inside a Vault?
Recipe for disaster.

 

[Redshirt #42]

Did we finally get a honorable mention from Tim?

there are a lot of toxic forums out there. Not gonna name them. I'm sure you know where they are, I'm sure you've experienced these. [...] people who are going to be super negative, all the time. [...] people who don't make anything. They've never made a game. They're not even trying to make games. [...] their opinion is objective truth? Please flee that forum!

You've been warned!

 

[NecroLord]

So exactly when did Tim stop hanging around and ultimately leave the Codex?

 

[Roguey]

Codex does have a handful of garage devs.

My own experience with my small RPG Maker projects reinforced my belief that too many devs try to do too much.

 

[Alienman]

Codex isn't even that bad, considering. Sure, it has its few nutbags, but when someone complains like this, the only thing I get is that they can't handle opinions different from their own. So, they flee and complain, or they go all out and demand censorship. Also, if it's Codex he means, it's a blatant lie, like Roguey points out. We got plenty of devs here.

 

[Old Hans]

Did we finally get a honorable mention from Tim?

there are a lot of toxic forums out there. Not gonna name them. I'm sure you know where they are, I'm sure you've experienced these. [...] people who are going to be super negative, all the time. [...] people who don't make anything. They've never made a game. They're not even trying to make games. [...] their opinion is objective truth? Please flee that forum!

You've been warned!

No Mutants Allowed, obviously

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about grind: what is it, why is it in games, and can you make a game without it.

 

[Infinitron]

Tim Cain's Cainiest video yet:

I talk about my fragrance collection...and some lessons I learned that also apply to games.

 

[0sacred]

I'm starting to think this Cain fellow might be a bit on the queer side

 

[0sacred]

I talk about influences of different D&D editions on my work, and one case of my work influencing D&D.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/f...ey-didnt-sell-well-you-should-have-bought-it/

Fallout co-creator Tim Cain hasn't made sequels to his other cult classic RPGs because they didn't sell well: 'You should have bought it'​

"Sometimes gamers need to put their money where their mouth is."

Tim Cain's storied career includes a bunch of what are likely some of your favourite RPGs, including the first two Fallouts and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Some of the games he worked on became huge mainstream successes, while others—particularly the games developed by his RPG studio, Troika—became cult classics. And people are always asking him why he never made follow-ups to the latter.

"People regularly tell me, 'Why don't you make another game like Bloodlines,' or, 'Why don't you make a sequel to Arcanum?'" he says. "They're like, 'You made a cult classic.' And I'm like, 'The problem is the cult part.' They didn't sell well enough for a publisher to go, 'Oh yeah, we definitely gotta jump on a sequel to that.' So it's weird to hear people say to me, in some cases decades later, 'You should have done another one.' It's like, 'You should have bought it.'"

Because of the enduring love for Bloodlines, it's easy to forget what a disaster it was. It ultimately resulted in the death of Troika, which Cain co-founded with Jason Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky in 1998. Of the three games released by Troika between '98 and '05, when it closed its doors, Bloodlines was the least successful. The three founders had no choice but to end the studio, having let go of every employee by December '04. It just wasn't able to secure any deals with publishers.

This was long before the huge indie game development boom and Kickstarter, and Troika's elaborate RPGs needed the funding publishers provided. And it was just a risky proposition. Its games often reviewed well and got a passionate following, but uneven sales and a reputation for releasing games that featured a lack of polish and lots of bugs must have given the major publishers of the time some doubts.

"I hate to put things so mechanically," Cain continues, "but sometimes gamers need to put their money where their mouth is. If they don't like a game, they shouldn't buy it. If they love a game, they should buy it, and then they're going to get more of what they want." He's adamant that he's not blaming gamers, though. "I just think the only way to get more of what you want is to buy the things you want and not buy the things you don't want. Because ultimately, that's all that people are hearing. If a game comes out and sells a million copies, it'll probably get a sequel. If a game comes out and sells 50,000 copies, it's not getting a sequel."

It's a miracle that Bloodlines 2 eventually did turn into a tangible project—albeit over a decade later, and without the involvement of the former Troika team. But publisher Paradox largely seems to be regretting taking the risk. It's seen a slew of delays since it was first given a release window of 2021, is on its second developer, and has pretty much inspired the publisher to never make an RPG ever again.

Publishers love funding sequels, so when a game doesn't get one, there's usually a good reason for it, and normally it's simply because the original wasn't popular enough—even if, as was the case with both Arcanum and Bloodlines, they were brilliant.

 

[0sacred]

Maybe there just aren't enough people with good taste?

Personally I think BG3 is a shit game but that aside, a lot of people with shit taste definitely bought it. Tim only has himself to blame for not appealing to them more.

 

[Tyranicon]

Codex isn't even that bad, considering.

I'm personally convinced there's a lot of devs here incognito because codex is really the only game in town. In 2024, there are basically no other places active enough or with a base standard of taste to match this forum.

 

[Roguey]

I talk about influences of different D&D editions on my work, and one case of my work influencing D&D.

Tim laments that Wizards is no longer interested in doing straight-forward tales of good and evil with D&D.

There's always Solasta. 5e rules, bad guys are evil lizardmen.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

There's always Solasta. 5e rules, bad guys are evil lizardmen.

Evil draconians, really, even having the shape-shifting ability that was possessed by the sivak variety of draconian, but the company making Solasta lacked the license for the Dragonlance setting.

 

[Alienman]

Sorak lives matter.

 

[Sweeper]

Codex isn't even that bad, considering.

I'm personally convinced there's a lot of devs here incognito because codex is really the only game in town. In 2024, there are basically no other places active enough or with a base standard of taste to match this forum.

>implying devs give a shit

 

[NecroLord]

Did we finally get a honorable mention from Tim?

there are a lot of toxic forums out there. Not gonna name them. I'm sure you know where they are, I'm sure you've experienced these. [...] people who are going to be super negative, all the time. [...] people who don't make anything. They've never made a game. They're not even trying to make games. [...] their opinion is objective truth? Please flee that forum!

You've been warned!

No Mutants Allowed, obviously

Lightweight compared to the Codex.
Still alright as far as gaming forums go.
You can find some good Interplay Fallout mods there.

 

[NecroLord]

Codex isn't even that bad, considering.

I'm personally convinced there's a lot of devs here incognito because codex is really the only game in town. In 2024, there are basically no other places active enough or with a base standard of taste to match this forum.

Chris Avellone is here somewhere.
C'mon, don't tell me he is not hanging around?
Besides, I do not think many forums will be willing to take him in after the lawsuit business...
Out here he is a local legend.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the issues you will encounter in making a new game based on someone else's game IP.