Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[skylar1146]

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Hopefully he ugprades that mic setup tho lol

 

[Harthwain]

TBH character building in BG1/2 is pretty barebones compared to Pathfinder.

Just the nature of the different systems, but still.

Maybe so, but it still gives me that BG/IWD vibe.

 

[Butter]

Wherein Tim grapples with the uselessness of Charisma.

 

[NecroLord]

Wherein Tim grapples with the uselessness of Charisma.

Charisma got fixed in Fallout 2, thankfully.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I love how Tim thought it was a good idea to have intelligence decrease the time it takes to read a book. Such a small thing, he may be totally right that no one ever has noticed it (I didn't), but it tells so much about where Tim heart lies.

 

[Geomancer86]

He mentioned not repeating the same shirt twice on his videos being a goal, I'm pretty sure he does read the forum haha.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the systemic effects of each of the eight attributes in Arcanum.

 

[Roguey]

Tim talking about the wrinkles on his shirt as if anyone straight's gonna notice.

That being said he should have washed that before putting it on. If you have dust allergies, you're going to feel it.

At the end Tim realized that it's possible for him to go back to the old system where you had to spend more points in the later ranks. If he gets around to that, ideally he'll find that it's comparatively bad, and he should have figured out a third option.

 

[Goral]

I would like to play Arcanum at least once with Tim's points idea so I hope he will do it. It was rather easy to reach maximum level in Arcanum so that way it might be more challenging and more fun. It's a shame he won't release the source code though, I'm pretty sure that we would get some awesome mods that way.

Edit:
Oh, and this comment takes the cake:

No imagination is necessary. We had no time for a game balance pass before Arcanum shipped. Crash bugs and game slow downs had priority in QA.

Leon and I joke these days that The Outer Worlds was the first (and only) game we ever made together that didn't ship in its alpha state.

And yet it's by far the worst of them all.

Edit 2:
He also said that if you've had 20 CHA you could steal followers from other players in multiplayer so I've asked:

What if both players had 20 CHA? I assume it would cancel out and followers would remain where they were.

to which he said:

The game would probably crash. Seriously, looking at the code, it doesn't check the other player's CHA, so they could probably steal the follower back and forth forever, like some kind of follower ping pong match.

:D :D :D

 

[flyingjohn]

We had no time for a game balance pass before Arcanum shipped

The Outer Worlds was the first (and only) game we ever made together that didn't ship in its alpha state.

I wonder if those two things are connected to how Outer Wilds turned out?

 

[Butter]

Todd getting btfo.

 

[Roguey]

Tim's been won over by Sawyer's thoughts on attribute balance and making systems that don't require metaknowledge or digging into a wiki before you even start playing, but he's not in favor of getting rid of them altogether unless there's a strong perks, traits, and flaws system to replace it.

(I believe PoE could have done fine without attributes or at least a smaller number of them)

He's also concerned about Fallout 5 given how Beth has been slowly chipping away at Fallout's systems (first traits in 3 [which Josh added back in New Vegas] then merging skills into perks in 4).

 

[Butter]

SPECIAL is probably too iconic to remove. I can imagine a hypothetical system where you increase one of your SPECIALs every level and that automatically improves your weapon crafting/stimpack usage/melee damage/haggling/etc, but I suspect even Bethesda would think that's going too far.

Pillars pretty much had to use 6 attributes ranging from 3-18 because it was being sold as an Infinity Engine game. The problem is that each point has negligible effect. You can get a +4 and not even notice the difference. Sawyer fucked it on purpose because he didn't want chargen choices to affect character viability.

The point that Cain has only obliquely addressed in these videos is that attributes are supposed to create meaningful distinctions between characters from the start of the game. If high PER/low INT and low PER/high INT play exactly the same way, the system has no reason to exist.

With this in mind, a good attribute system should be the opposite of what Pillars uses. It should have very low granularity, and each point should feel important. Maybe this is going too far, but I've thought of a binary attribute system where you can be Smart or not, Strong or not, Fast or not, and selecting one of these characteristics would put you miles ahead of other characters in that category. This wouldn't be the most satisfying system for build autists, but it would cut through a lot of bullshit.

 

[Roguey]

Pillars pretty much had to use 6 attributes ranging from 3-18 because it was being sold as an Infinity Engine game.

Sawyer's autism declared this to be so but I believe most people honestly wouldn't care given all the other ways it's not like 2nd or 3rd edition D&D. As Avellone said, he tended to discard or insist on things based on his own whims rather than a carefully-detailed philosophy.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

He's also concerned about Fallout 5 given how Beth has been slowly chipping away at Fallout's systems (first traits in 3 [which Josh added back in New Vegas] then merging skills into perks in 4).

15 years too late to be concerned about Bethesda Softworks' version of a Fallout game.

Granted, from what I've heard about Fallout 4, the mechanics were rendered even worse than its immediate predecessor. Regardless, any prospective Fallout 5 developed by Bethesda would be created after The Elder Scrolls VI, which in turn will be created after Starfield is released, meaning that even if Bethesda manages to complete their next two games in four years each, which is unlikely, their next Fallout game would be released in 2031. More realistically, Fallout 5 would be released even later into the 2030s, assuming Bethesda decides to return to the post-apocalyptic subgenre rather than to create a Starfield II or to select a third Science-Fiction subgenre for adapting their game model.

 

[Goral]

I chat with Scott Campbell, the original lead designer on Fallout. Scott left Interplay in late 1995 (which we discuss) and was replaced by the equally talented Chris Taylor, whose game Stonekeep had just shipped.Learn about Scott's company White Moon Dreams here: https://whitemoondreams.com/

And read his article on the "Origins of Fallout" here: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Origins_of_Fallout

Edit:
Tim Cain has some inside EA sources (very high up) from which he learned that EA would have never given Interplay Wasteland license (13 m 55 s).

Much of Fallout design was ready in 1995 (Junktown, Shady Sands, Killian vs. Gizmo quest, etc,).

Edit 2:
Tim Cain and Scott talk about Steven Spielberg when he visited Interplay (he snatched one of the artists to work on Shrek). Around 45th minute.

Edit 3:
Around 55 minute he talks about how Brian Fargo fired an expert IT guy for demonstrating how badly secured net they have at Interplay.

 

[Infinitron]

Regardless, any prospective Fallout 5 developed by Bethesda would be created after The Elder Scrolls VI, which in turn will be created after Starfield is released, meaning that even if Bethesda manages to complete their next two games in four years each, which is unlikely, their next Fallout game would be released in 2031. More realistically, Fallout 5 would be released even later into the 2030s, assuming Bethesda decides to return to the post-apocalyptic subgenre rather than to create a Starfield II or to select a third Science-Fiction subgenre for adapting their game model.

Microsoft will farm out the next Fallout game to a different studio if this happens.

 

[Goral]

Tim Cain's comment under most recent video:

If you are asking if this particular channel will help my future games, then I don't think so, since I am not planning on having any future games. I am doing some design consulting as I slide slowly into retirement, but a pure "Tim Cain" is not on the radar.

Maybe that's a good thing.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Around 55 minute he talks about how Brian Fargo fired an expert IT guy for demonstrating how badly secured net they have at Interplay.

I want more of this MeToo stuff now. Fargo sounds like a hilarious asshole. I thought Cain's stolen bonus was a one time misstep, but it looks more like a tip of the iceberg now.

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Damn.
Tim is fucking cranking out videos like crazy.
Once he runs out of topics to discuss about, what will he do? Twitch streams?

Most likely whole lot of nothing. He mentions in his video about the notes that record-keeping has been an ingrained habit, those notes are a part of him at this point - that's how he remembers so much, they go back decades.
He's simply converting his notes into a publicly accessible format, so that they exist on the Internet in one form or another - no different than that time when he digitized all of his notebooks.

A bit macabre, to be honest, considering how important they're to him. Feels like watching somebody at the sunset of his career chiseling his own headstone. Very Churchill-like, if you will.

On the other hand he says everyone was also on the same page on The Outer Worlds.

Also, everything is couched in terms of the team rather than the designer's vision, yet FO1's team was mostly working independently, and their unity of vision was evidently a fluke.

I don't think there's an inherent contradiction here. There was a unity of vision, it just wasn't centralized, and nobody questioned it because it was the status quo.

If you listen to the video where he list his inspirations for Fallout's setting, he rattles them off one by one, going from the memory(and notes, of course) - there's Canticle for Leibowitz, he was watching Mad Max 2 on repeat with Boyarski, he was GM'ing GURPS for his friends at the time so on and so forth. And every item on his list of inspirations, be they incredibly specific things Tim grew up with, or the IPs with broader appeal he picked up in his early adulthood was also on every nerd's radar at the time. See, when he mentions Zelazny now, he's name dropping a classic, but Zelazny was still alive and very popular in early 90s - a household name for fantasy fans. Ditto for the other sources of inspiration he brings up.

So of course Tim knows every single brick that went into the foundation of Fallout is because it was informed by the media he grew up with, his zeitgeist, if you will - and at the time his team was staffed by people immersed in the same cultural context, people just like him. These people understood each other, understood what they were building, and they've had the common building blocks. All that remained was putting them together. And even when somebody strayed from the vision, he was course corrected using the same common language. There was a unity of vision - but it was also completely accidental, a byproduct of being a specific person at a specific time.

This also explains the Outer Worlds. Tim's approach typifies the designers of the era - a lot of notable figures from the 90s regurgitated at least as much as they designed, and for a while all was well - until, as the decades went by and the 2010s were in full swing, there was no more Good Old Content. As the media around them changed and they were slowly deprived of viable sources of inspiration, they were left with suboptimal material - uninspired, predictable. Secondary. They now had to make tertiary content based on secondary content. So what could they do with it? Outer Worlds. They made Outer Worlds.

This is a cautionary tale for designers and writers. If you want to make something interesting, you need to curate your references very carefully, you can't just rely on popular culture, you need education and familiarity with the subject. You create what you know. If the media you're immersed in is trash, you will only increase the garbage pile.

 

[Harthwain]

A bit macabre, to be honest, considering how important they're to them. Feels like watching somebody at the sunset of his career chiseling his own headstone. Very Churchill-like, if you will.

I would rather say he's leaving a legacy behind. He's going to die anyway - like anyone - so might as well share what he can with people who are interested in what he has to say about it.

 

[deama]

This is a cautionary tale for designers and writers. If you want to make something interesting, you need to curate your references very carefully, you can't just rely on popular culture, you need education and familiarity. You create what you know, and if the media you know is trash, you will only increase the garbage pile.

Not just that, but also finding the people that share -or are at least willing to share- the same/similar references to make the game out of.

 

[Roguey]

Everything Scott Campbell says shows he's one of those seagull designers who wouldn't have a clue how to actually implement all his crazy ideas. His stories about what a clown Fargo was are great though. Additionally it's personally amusing how he refers to the Burger Becky of the past as Bill. Unable/unwilling to retcon his memories.

As the media around them changed and they were slowly deprived of viable sources of inspiration, they were left with suboptimal material - uninspired, predictable, secondary. They now had to make tertiary content based on secondary content. So what could they do with it? Outer Worlds. They made Outer Worlds.

Attempts to curate taste were made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-a-corporate-space-colony.130421/post-7119849

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Attempts to curate taste were made https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-a-corporate-space-colony.130421/post-7119849

Ah. Outer World's sources of inspiration:
- Wes Anderson: the pretty candy box aesthetic, decorative, nostalgic, striking compositions, gorgeous colors and formalism, all of it used to present death as a joke or gloat over small cruelties candy coated into casual nastiness - it's a power, but not used for good. I doubt 99% of the Obsidian staff could understand anything of Anderson. They could take the pink colors and mid century moustaches and put them into the game, which seems to have happened.
- Deadwood: moldy and clueless serial designed for doddering denizens of old folks' homes.
- Simpsons
- Firefly: cheese that caught up a cult following among god knows whom
- and True Grit: an American Gothic, post-modernist prank which will fly over Obsidian staff just like Wes Anderson. The only thing they'd likely take away from it is how to turn serious material into children's adventure tale.

With these references, some of which are empty of meaning entirely, others hiding the meaning so deep it would be lost on Obsidian staff, what did you expect to make?

With such an amorphous mix, the only thing you can make is Rick and Morty, which is exactly what happened. They took what was on the surface and ran with it. This is such a perfect explanation, it makes you go "how didn't I think of it before?"

 

[Zeriel]

His story reminds me of what Sawyer described as the wrong way to make an RPG (which I still agree with)

Basically I think that most designers are overly concerned with what's come before when they sit down to write CRPG mechanics. When looking at mechanics that typically go into CRPGs, it's pretty hard to reverse-engineer a plan of intent. The conclusion I'm usually left with is that they wanted the system to "look like an RPG" on a UI screen. They have classes and stats and skills and skill/talent trees and a ton of derived stats when probably not all of that is necessary.

I believe that game designers, whether working in the RPG genre or otherwise, should establish what they want the player to be doing within the world. That is, they must ask themselves what they want the core activities of the player to be. Within those activities, the designer can find ways to allow growth over time in a variety of ways. How they want that growth to occur and what sort of choices they want to force the player to make -- that's what should drive the design of the advancement/RPG system.

Instead it usually seems like most designers sit down and say, "Well what are the ability scores going to be?"

He also talks about how he still believes in the Shapes but admits he just wasn't good enough to make it work.

It's hard to take Sawyer's criticisms seriously because he's even worse (by a large margin) at making RPGs, so... it's like someone who always burns their instant noodles critiquing a successful chef. Well, okay, maybe you are better at critiquing than doing, but it's hard to say and I'm inclined to just think the guy is retarded and autistic instead.