Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[pickmeister]

That's a moronic take.

I can't count how many people I met in various roles with many years of experience who sucked a gigantic cock at their job.
And same applies for many juniors that were better than these senior guys, even with their lack of experience. They might require some guidance but the time spent with them was less exhausting than with someone who thinks he knows his shit, while the opposite is true.

Doesn't mean you should make noob a project lead but relying on years of experience as one of main indicators is how you end up with shit like we have these days.

Top managers are the worst offenders of this. Get hired, fuck up, get fired, get hired somewhere else thanks to years of experience, only to fuck up again, rinse and repeat

 

[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.

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.

Sigh. My entire point was that there is no such thing as inherent skill when being a video game designer. Experience is what gets the majority their "skill".
So your little formula(the original one in your post) is meaningless because years add skill(not too much if you are bad, but they still add something).
And your new formula actually agrees with me about experience. If you have a 100 skill and 0 years experience, you get 0.

Top managers are the worst offenders of this. Get hired, fuck up, get fired, get hired somewhere else thanks to years of experience, only to fuck up again, rinse and repeat

Managers don't fuck up. They do exactly what they are paid for. They maximize the company shareholder value regardless of long-term survivability. They are not there to keep the company afloat forever.
Most fuckups happen because the people making contracts give them way too much wiggle room even if they fail to to do the one thing they are paid to do.
But, managers, HR and non video game related stuff are meaningless to this discussion. It is a different environment.

 

[Warhawk47]

Well, after that last video Tim's really laid the cards on the table. Some of his reactions seemed prematurely combative, but after all of the other corporate BS described, I'm not at all surprised he would be on a hairpin trigger to respond to the slightest signs of it. From the interpersonal perspective, it sounds like a dysfunctional operation to begin with, so I'd argue he gets the benefit of the doubt, though it's odd he would have accepted the position under those circumstances. As for the quality of the work, he's got the receipts, so it's up to the opposition to elaborate on the specifics.

The thing which still bothers me is how well he handles criticism or rejection of his ideas. Virtually every single case provided is always notable because of its bad contexts. The minor cases are glossed over, yet there's enough suspicion of his snippy responses to wonder if that isn't the default reaction to everything. Not sure this could be confirmed or not without working with the guy directly and seeing for myself.

Top managers are the worst offenders of this. Get hired, fuck up, get fired, get hired somewhere else thanks to years of experience, only to fuck up again, rinse and repeat

This is correct. Experience is Time + Learning. Wisdom is Experience + Application. Time spent without learning certainly isn't going to translate into wisdom. As for execs, I've seen that revolving door myself. They hire each other as if they're a caste, but when you look at their track records, they end up being abysmal. In many ways, placing Tim Cain in a high position after Troika is part of the same phenomenon. Never assume that it was because the events behind the failure were well understood; the board of directors rarely understands anything.

 

[Riddler]

Listening to this it seems to me (assuming what tim says is accurate) that that art director was both psychopathic and incompetent, tim is bad at conflic resolution and Tim isn't very good at navigating the corporate environment.

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

Maybe he is a poor designer or maybe he isn't, I don't know. He definitely seems like a poor leader though. Perhaps he works best as "just" being a senior programmer.

 

[Warhawk47]

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

That meeting was a 2v1 and he definitely understood it. The giant pile of notes was like a substitute person to even the odds. The problem is that by the time it's gotten to that point, it's already game over, and you're still riding it because of the paycheck. He just didn't flat out say it during this video, likely because that sounds even less "professional" despite being totally authentic.

 

[Riddler]

Notes are good but there is no context in which a non-stop 4 hour detailed account/rant makes you come out stronger.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Does anyone know who the art director Tim Cain complained about is, and would you be willing to share their identity (in DM if preferred)? I'm just asking out of curiosity, and will keep it to myself.

 

[Butter]

Credited Art Director: https://www.mobygames.com/person/155806/matt-mocarski/

I don't know if this is the guy.

 

[Roguey]

Looks like a real jerk.

https://troikachronicles.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/carbine-studios-interview/

There is some very impressive concept art at your website, I already use the “Desktop Wallpaper #2” on my notebook. Can you tell us something about the concept art and who created it? Is the concept track “The Awakening” an actual piece to be used in the upcoming game or just something “to set the mood”?


Jeremy: Cory Loftus is our lead concept artist, and a guy who geeks us all up with his art. Our art director Matt Mocarski sweats blood with Cory and the team to make sure our art goes from concept to in-game and meets our exacting standards.

From reddit:

There are interviews with Matt Mocarski where he talks about the team working on something, then just scrapping it and changing gears because of his decision. And claiming that he's the one who decides what stays and what goes in the game. Like he was fulfilling the Creative Director role just based on the art he wanted to work on.

Polish management does it again.

 

[ghostdog]

And that's when Mocarski starts receiving death-threats by bored codexers and Tim's channel gets shutdown by youtube for igniting hate.

 

[flyingjohn]

 

[Hobo Elf]

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

Probably he was just trying win over the other decision makers. It's hard to gauge from his video if he truly thought that the art director would've taken the criticism to heart, or if he was just trying to underline the problems for everyone else to see and maybe act on it. Judging by the fact that other high position people quit around the same time as him it's obvious that the problem was with the top not snipping the problems at the bottom and letting the people who actually know their shit to work in peace. The game came out and died almost instantly, so it's no surprise that it had such a troubled development. All it takes is for one bad egg to ruin a work environment if he's being enabled by the people who have the power to do something about it.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

I listened to a podcast interview with the art director that Tim complained about, and it turns out that Matt had worked with a bunch of Carbine employees at a previous company. That's how he got the job, and promotion to art director and creative director. I think it's safe to say that the third man in the meeting was on Matt's side, so definitely it would have been a 2 vs 1 situation, as Warhawk47 wrote above.

Here's the podcast for anyone interested: https://www.mixcloud.com/gamedevast...ski-amazon-carbine-blizzard-crystal-dynamics/

 

[flyingjohn]

It is always an ex-Blizzard employee.

 

[Riddler]

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

Probably he was just trying win over the other decision makers. It's hard to gauge from his video if he truly thought that the art director would've taken the criticism to heart, or if he was just trying to underline the problems for everyone else to see and maybe act on it. Judging by the fact that other high position people quit around the same time as him it's obvious that the problem was with the top not snipping the problems at the bottom and letting the people who actually know their shit to work in peace. The game came out and died almost instantly, so it's no surprise that it had such a troubled development. All it takes is for one bad egg to ruin a work environment if he's being enabled by the people who have the power to do something about it.

I realise what he was trying to do, I'm saying that they way he went about it was stupid and not going to convince anyone. The belief that it would suggest a lack of social skills and/or immaturity.

Tim seems like a good guy and it was unfortunate for him that he was thrust into leadership positions he was seemingly not very well suited for. He would probably have been both a lot happier and more productive as senior programmer or programming lead.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

Probably he was just trying win over the other decision makers. It's hard to gauge from his video if he truly thought that the art director would've taken the criticism to heart, or if he was just trying to underline the problems for everyone else to see and maybe act on it. Judging by the fact that other high position people quit around the same time as him it's obvious that the problem was with the top not snipping the problems at the bottom and letting the people who actually know their shit to work in peace. The game came out and died almost instantly, so it's no surprise that it had such a troubled development. All it takes is for one bad egg to ruin a work environment if he's being enabled by the people who have the power to do something about it.

I realise what he was trying to do, I'm saying that they way he went about it was stupid and not going to convince anyone. The belief that it would suggest a lack of social skills and/or immaturity.

Tim seems like a good guy and it was unfortunate for him that he was thrust into leadership positions he was seemingly not very well suited for. He would probably have been both a lot happier and more productive as senior programmer or programming lead.

Well, yeah. You're just repeating what he himself has said many times. But they didn't give him much of a choice, right? He was told that either he becomes the lead designer or they can the project.

 

[Riddler]

Some of his actions are frankly bizarre, like spending 4 hours straight going through his notes of complaints during a meeting. Like what did he expect was going to happen? Is he a complete autist?

Probably he was just trying win over the other decision makers. It's hard to gauge from his video if he truly thought that the art director would've taken the criticism to heart, or if he was just trying to underline the problems for everyone else to see and maybe act on it. Judging by the fact that other high position people quit around the same time as him it's obvious that the problem was with the top not snipping the problems at the bottom and letting the people who actually know their shit to work in peace. The game came out and died almost instantly, so it's no surprise that it had such a troubled development. All it takes is for one bad egg to ruin a work environment if he's being enabled by the people who have the power to do something about it.

I realise what he was trying to do, I'm saying that they way he went about it was stupid and not going to convince anyone. The belief that it would suggest a lack of social skills and/or immaturity.

Tim seems like a good guy and it was unfortunate for him that he was thrust into leadership positions he was seemingly not very well suited for. He would probably have been both a lot happier and more productive as senior programmer or programming lead.

Well, yeah. You're just repeating what he himself has said many times. But they didn't give him much of a choice, right? He was told that either he becomes the lead designer or they can the project.

Yes, it was unfortunate.

 

[Alienman]

Wtf @ the characters and groups.

 

[NecroLord]

This stuff is getting really repetitive.
Tim should mix it up a little.

 

[bobocrunch]

The guy saying he hates meetings with Tim because they have no point is pretty on point, even from his videos I just have an overwhelming sense of ...ok at the end. They're enjoyable to watch but eventually he hits a point where he's just done talking linearly and says that's it, unable to come to a satisfying conclusion. Thankfully people overruled his ending of FO1

 

[Roguey]

On brainstorming:


Tim once again seethes at unconstructive criticism. Meanwhile, the Chad Swen Vincke approach to game directing:

While Swen's frank feedback is appreciated, he often simply states, "This isn't good enough." and other none helpful tips. When asked for suggestions on improvement, he expresses frustration, tells you it is "Unacceptable!" and tells you to figure it out on your own.

I have the suspicion the submissive in this anecdote was Megan Starks

Early on for like South Park and Pillars and Tyranny I thought it went pretty good with the brainstorming but later when I was game director it was hard to get people to brainstorm. I literally had one person who I'd worked with closely on those other games say "Yeah, I just can't do it. I mean you're game director now, I can't do it. I can't argue one of your ideas. If just you say it, I just want to implement it."

Also dishing out the dirt on Fearg's meddling in The Outer Worlds:

Ferg occasionally would but then he had the habit, and he did this way back at Interplay, where if he lost one of those, if he lost (and I don't consider it a competition), but if there was a brainstorming session and his idea didn't come out on top, he sometimes just said "put it in anyway." That was the turbo plasma rifle in Fallout. He did it in Outer Worlds with a few things, a few of which broke the game build the next day.

Additionally, there was a time when Leonard and Tim were getting heated over a brainstorming session and Anthony Davis walked in to tell them that the people who could hear it felt like mom and dad were fighting, and it surprised Tim that the younger devs could mistake passion for anger since he and Leonard had been like this the entire time they had been working together with no complaints.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Also dishing out the dirt on Fearg's meddling in The Outer Worlds:

Ferg occasionally would but then he had the habit, and he did this way back at Interplay, where if he lost one of those, if he lost (and I don't consider it a competition), but if there was a brainstorming session and his idea didn't come out on top, he sometimes just said "put it in anyway." That was the turbo plasma rifle in Fallout. He did it in Outer Worlds with a few things, a few of which broke the game build the next day.

Classic Feargus. "You should have chosen Fenstermaker"

 

[Infinitron]

I talk a little more about Carbine, since several issues came up in the comments, and there were comments from other ex-Carbine employees as well.

p.s. and again, despite this video being over 9 minutes long, YouTube is not letting me remove pre-roll ads (which the rules say I can do on any video over 8 minutes long). Sorry.

 

[flyingjohn]

Designers can't even talk to artists? Yeah, Matt had the management in his pockets.

 

[Rahdulan]

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).

Interestingly enough I always assumed Wildstar had myriad of behind-the-scenes problem, but not that art lead would be one of them.