Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Goral]

I talk about why I left the development of WildStar at Carbine Studios in 2011. Along with Fallout 2, WildStar is the only other game I did not complete, but like Fallout 2, it did ship without me, getting released in 2014.

Edit:
Tim Cain was paid the best there but in the end he felt sick there and it broke him (he literally says it).

 

[Moink]

One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leadership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...

He directly talks about this in the video, interesting to see another point of view on the topic, thanks for the video Tim (since you clearly read this thread)!

 

[sosmoflux]

It's cool how he's always in the right and everyone else is wrong and immoral and crazy and dumb

 

[Infinitron]

One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leadership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...

He directly talks about this in the video, interesting to see another point of view on the topic, thanks for the video Tim (since you clearly read this thread)!

Timestamp?

 

[pickmeister]

"I don't get angry, I start playing around. So I started pointing out - I have 27 years of design at this point, he had none.."
No, Tim, that's not playing around. That's you getting angry, being insecure, and in denial about it. You're certainly not deescalating the situation. That's an F for conflict resolution. Not saying the guy wasn't being a retard but at least be honest to yourself. Years of experience don't mean shit. Every industry is filled with idiots with XX years of experience and being awful at it the whole time.
Using amount of time spent in a field as an argument, even sarcastically, is moronic.
I understand what he's trying to say but he's certainly not helping his case with his "sassiness".

In any case, this sounds like a textbook case of lack of proper management. This art lead should've been kept in check by someone higher and that guy didn't give a shit. Many such cases.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The more these come out, the more Tim looks like a neurotic pain in the ass to work with.

 

[Moink]

One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leadership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...

He directly talks about this in the video, interesting to see another point of view on the topic, thanks for the video Tim (since you clearly read this thread)!

Timestamp?

It's around 11:26, what I posted was an excerpt from a longer comment about working under him and the art director who Tim mentions :

Spoiler

Ex Dev on wildstar here. Watched the video and although it was quiet informative, I just wanted to chime in on some of the key factors on why this game was a huge flop.
I worked on the game for 5+ years and let me tell you.. This games was destined to fail wayyy before there was any issues with servers or not enough updates.
Development on this project was a nightmare. The real Development time frame was closer to 10/11 years. Coming onto the project at the 5 year mark I soon realized that the leads and big boys had no fucking clue what a good game was and they could not commit to any idea. Too many cooks in the kitchen that can't cook anything other than Mayo and Beef Jerky sandwiches... Look for the double meaning in that. It's there.
One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leardership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...
Then you have an art director who couldn't keep his nose out of anything. His selfishness drove off many of the best artists in the company including cory loftis. Literally... Cory Loftis LEFT the game which is based off of his style almost entirely because of this guy. This same art director was also responsible for hijacking the story and overall vision of the game as well. Wondering why there wasn't more raids and dungeons? Because the ART DIRECTOR thought several ALREADY MADE LEVELS didn't fit the story anymore... So they threw them away... He also made calls on gameplay... Which... is a hole other nightmare.

The gameplay was once good... I would say around the 7 year mark. 1v1 combat was very fun at this point and each class felt very unique and fun. Unfortunately most of that was thrown away and replaced with alot of new stuff that was just NOT tested enough. I repeat... most of what launched in Wild star combat wise was BARELY tested. Stuff like Warplots was broken to shit from start to finish. The designers leading WarPlots were absolute lazy trash and would knowingly put in broken systems and call them done just to appease their bosses. The only reason that warplots was even REMOTELY playable on launch was because of some amazing talent on the 3D prop team. I am not joking.. Artists LEANRNED HOW TO SCRIPT TO FIX THIS CRAP.
Pvp in general was absolutely broken. I didn't even work on paper let alone work in a multi million dollar game. The idea of telegraphs is pretty straight forward and seems to just work for most cases in combat.... except in any fight larger that has more than two characters per team... Attack telegraphs drawing on the ground is very clear when you have a small amount of people fighting but in medium to large pvp fights ( pretty much every fight that matters) the entire ground becomes a multi colored disco dance floor. Casual to moderate gamers were like deer in headlights during the VERY FEW playtests that were had for larger pvp battles. SO MUCH FEEDBACK was given by the teams that participated in these tests and almost nothing was fixed about it.
The leadership was god awful. Proof of this was that most of the BEST things in the games that players loved the most such as Double Jump and Hoverboards were things that were never planned for or schedules by leads. Those were passion projects. Double Jump was made by an ARTIST. That artist got in trouble for making double jump and eventually fired for other reasons. Never got credit either. Hoverboards were snuck in by an animator... He got written up for secretly working on hoverboards in his freetime with other coworkers. The place was a prison of ideas and everyone was getting shanked for even THINKING that they WANTED to think of something to improve the game.

Oh did I mention mandatory Crunch? We would crunch for months at a time. Mandatory. I remember working from 10am to 3 am everynight 6 days a week for about 3 months straight. And I got a talking to once because I was 10 minutes late to work. ONCE. Because Jeremy Gafney saw me coming in late. Everyone working on this game was absolutely DONE with the BS and it shows. The love died way before this game launched. No one in the studio really wanted to play the game. And then we shifted to try to cater to the hardcore audience?! ( this was the version on launch. The hardcore not for pansies mmo) During a time where pretty much almost every successful game was being carried hard by more casual players.

I can go on but... I think you get the picture. These devs thought they were clever enough to ignore pretty much every other successful business model and all other mmorpgs to make this.. There you have it...

 

[PapaPetro]

I talk about why I left the development of WildStar at Carbine Studios in 2011. Along with Fallout 2, WildStar is the only other game I did not complete, but like Fallout 2, it did ship without me, getting released in 2014.

Edit:
Tim Cain was paid the best there but in the end he felt sick there and it broke him (he literally says it).

More game devs/designers should do more of these candid disclosures.

 

[flyingjohn]

The more these come out, the more Tim looks like a neurotic pain in the ass to work with.

Not saying the guy wasn't being a retard but at least be honest to yourself. Years of experience don't mean shit. Every industry is filled with idiots with XX years of experience and being awful at it the whole time.

Found the artist alt's.

 

[pickmeister]

Found the artist alt's.

Found Tim's alt.

Unrelated but the art of Wildstar is the main reason I never tried it. I despise that cartoony shit.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Does anyone know if this is Black Hound or Black Isle's Torn?

While on the subject, Torn was supposed to be using SPECIAL, which is the first time I'm hearing about it.
Can anyone ask Tim to talk about it? He probably knows some stuff or trivia.

 

[Infinitron]

He doesn't strike me as the type who'd gossip about a game he didn't work on.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Infinitron can you ask Sawyer if this screenshot from Black Hound pls? On that platform where you're Melmoron or something.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Does anyone know if this is Black Hound or Black Isle's Torn?

While on the subject, Torn was supposed to be using SPECIAL, which is the first time I'm hearing about it.
Can anyone ask Tim to talk about it? He probably knows some stuff or trivia.

I've always seen that image as a screenshot from an early build of Black Hound. They had UI icons for it too. I guess it reached a similar state of development than the original Fallout 3.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I've always seen that image as a screenshot from an early build of Black Hound.

It may be Black Hound, because an icon says Project Jefferson, which was Black Hound.
I also found an article claim it's from Torn.
Or it could be just some art someone put together and used as wallpaper.

 

[Roguey]

"I heard you sucked as a designer"

Bit of an audacious thing to say but yeah, Tim's argument was poor. Decades of experience doesn't make you a good designer, also let's face it, Arcanum shows system design is not one of Tim's strengths. Chris Taylor did the heavy lifting on Fallout.

Does anyone know if this is Black Hound or Black Isle's Torn?

While on the subject, Torn was supposed to be using SPECIAL, which is the first time I'm hearing about it.
Can anyone ask Tim to talk about it? He probably knows some stuff or trivia.

Project Jefferson folders on the desktop. That's BG3.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Project Jefferson folders on the desktop. That's BG3.

The folder is BG3. The wallpaper can be anything.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I've always seen that image as a screenshot from an early build of Black Hound.

It may be Black Hound, because an icon says Project Jefferson, which was Black Hound.
I also found an article claim it's from Torn.
Or it could be just some art someone put together and used as wallpaper.

In the end, none of those games made it to a stage of development where you could recognize them as games. FO3 was probably the most development these cancelled projects saw. Any material regarding Torn or Black Hound you could ever find barely count as proof of concept type stuff.

 

[Roguey]

"That sounds like a design problem. "

"That sounds like an art problem. "

Holy fuck what a nightmarish environment.

Project Jefferson folders on the desktop. That's BG3.

The folder is BG3. The wallpaper can be anything.

Well it's not. This is Torn:


https://www.unseen64.net/2009/03/27/black-isles-torn-pc-cancelled/

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Looks barely distinguishable from NWN.

The mysterious screenshot above does so too, if not for anime-like characters.

 

[flyingjohn]

So I have a question here anybody believing experience doesn't mean jack shit?
Would you hire a 10+year designer(with projects that have actually shipped) or a guy who has never designed anything officially, if you were in charge of a video game team?
Apply this to almost every role.

 

[Harthwain]

So I have a question here anybody believing experience doesn't mean jack shit?

I think the idea here is that it's not experience as such that separates a good designer from a bad designer.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

So I have a question here anybody believing experience doesn't mean jack shit?
Would you hire a 10+year designer(with projects that have actually shipped) or a guy who has never designed anything officially, if you were in charge of a video game team?
Apply this to almost every role.

Experience is not a panacea, nor is it an argument.
In a way, it's a multiplier of a skill. If your skill is zero, you can multiply it by 20 years and it'll still be zero.

 

[flyingjohn]

In a way, it's a multiplier of a skill. If your skill is zero, you can multiply it by 20 years and it'll still be zero.

If you never worked on something your skill is zero regardless of what you believe.
A bad designer with experience is still above zero because he will at least have some experience in actually designing a game compared to a newbie.
You aren't magically born with the ability to design videogames and especially in a corporate environment with working with multiple people.

Now, a newbie that has actually been involved in actually designing fan projects and actually has a good portfolio is a different story. But that is a unicorn, maybe in a million. All you will get from unexperienced designers is dead ends and quitting midway because they realize they are in way over their head. Or a autistic piece of shit like the artist.
It is a lot like the mystical "genius" freelance programmer who never worked at any firm. You will hire thousands of people who can't do a basic loop before you even get this guy if you go that route.

Now I am not saying Tim is some genius designer. I believe Troika's failures were all related to design not bugs. But, if it is your money on the line you bet your ass on experience because it is the only real way to judge quality quickly.
Or you just hire the cheapest guy if you don't care, but that is a different story.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

In a way, it's a multiplier of a skill. If your skill is zero, you can multiply it by 20 years and it'll still be zero.

If you never worked on something your skill is zero regardless of what you believe.

According to what I wrote, if you multiply any skill by 0 years, you'll get zero. I don't think you understand multiplication if this is something that flew above your head.