Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Infinitron]

I talk about game conferences, how I eventually started going to them more often, and how that led to this channel.

 

[Roguey]

Funniest thing at the end is Tim saying he's struggled multiple times to do a video about how putting in more than 8 hours a day on something you're passionate about is good.

For an indie, A, or even AA game, knock yourself out. On a massive budget game with hundreds of other employees, why bother?

 

[likash]

Does Tim has the the stones to post here like Avellone did? He should come here and trash Fargo and Feargus instead doing passive-aggressive youtube videos.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Some of the stories are pre-Carbine, so he would have been in his 40s, and already having to eat shit for being too old. That's kinda messed up.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about game design pillars, specifically what they are, how you write them, and how they are used. I give examples of these pillars from Fallout, Arcanum, and The Outer Worlds.

 

[Roguey]

Tim laments over how Arcanum's "complex character building" pillar cost them a lot of sales, but the "long main quest" pillar was the biggest mistake. What a slog it is.

The Outer Worlds's pillars ("simple but deep" "dark but humorous" "fun trumps realism" with "it should play like a classic Obsidian game" as an afterthought) explains a lot about why it turned out the way it did.

 

[Butter]

"Simple but deep" is probably the hardest thing to do in game design. It's usually limited to puzzle games and a few strategy games like chess. I struggle to think of a single RPG that does it successfully. From what I've seen, Otter Worlds only manages the simple part.

 

[Harthwain]

"Simple but deep" is probably the hardest thing to do in game design. It's usually limited to puzzle games and a few strategy games like chess. I struggle to think of a single RPG that does it successfully.

NEO Scavenger is simple but deep.

 

[Butter]

Pretty reasonable takes.

 

[ciox]

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.

I'm curious, what do you think a third option could look like?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

From what I've seen, Otter Worlds only manages the simple part.

FWIW I thought the system in TOW was quite cool and definitely opens up a lot of build-fuckery if you make an effort to figure it out. It's just that nobody ever bothers because game is braindead easy even on Supernova

 

[Roguey]

I'm curious, what do you think a third option could look like?

Getting rid of "xp per hit" would help solve the "leveling too fast" problem. I think the entire thing could use an overhaul.

 

[Wesp5]

I'm curious, what do you think a third option could look like?

Getting rid of "xp per hit" would help solve the "leveling too fast" problem. I think the entire thing could use an overhaul.

You mean like Bloodlines does it ?

 

[Roguey]

Pretty reasonable takes.

Sawyer-haters seething that he ultimately agrees with him regarding collapsing skills and adding weak early-game energy weapons.

Tim completely overlooks fixing both the AP ammo bug that made it indistinguishable from regular ammo (which Fallout 2 did) and changing the formula so that they're not outright worse than regular ammo in all situations (which 2 did not do).

Also a bit strange how he didn't say anything about how the implementation of steal and sneak aren't fun and could use some changes.

 

[Butter]

Sawyer-haters seething that he ultimately agrees with him regarding collapsing skills and adding weak early-game energy weapons.

I guess I wasn't paying attention during that part. Fuck this decline enabler.

 

[ciox]

The more you watch that the more you feel like he never touched Fallout 2 after 1998.
And people wonder if he's tried the fixup mods..

 

[Zanthia]

He had to pull himself back from saying the traits should have been balanced and not fun. Like he remembered at the last moment that it was a single player game.

I don't see why he thinks easy difficulty should have turned off critical failures for the player and enemies. If it's going to be easy, why not go the full way? Plus, I think seeing them happen would have either encouraged people to try a higher difficulty or be really happy that they were playing on easy, so it's win-win. Easy difficulty is always kind of inherently boring, but that's no reason to make it totally flat, too.

I like that doctor is separate to first aid, even though it's annoying. Healing yourself (and your party) like that should be a significant investment. But I definitely wish he'd implemented the FO2 changes to companion control earlier.

 

[Harthwain]

He had to pull himself back from saying the traits should have been balanced and not fun. Like he remembered at the last moment that it was a single player game.

And here I was, thinking that Fallout's traits were great example how to make impactful changes to a character... I guess it was a fluke.

 

[Roguey]

I like that doctor is separate to first aid, even though it's annoying. Healing yourself (and your party) like that should be a significant investment. But I definitely wish he'd implemented the FO2 changes to companion control earlier.

It works fine in the first game because it's balanced by time. With Fallout 2, it doesn't make sense for them to be separate skills. Of course Tim is also against the time limit.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

And here I was, thinking that Fallout's traits were great example how to make impactful changes to a character... I guess it was a fluke.

IIRC it was Fargo who suggested mid-development that traits and perks be about advantage/disadvantage rather than just incremental stat increases.

 

[Butter]

He had to pull himself back from saying the traits should have been balanced and not fun. Like he remembered at the last moment that it was a single player game.

And here I was, thinking that Fallout's traits were great example how to make impactful changes to a character... I guess it was a fluke.

Balanced doesn't have to mean low-impact. If you gave Gifted more of a drawback to offset how powerful it is, it wouldn't be lower impact as a consequence.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

traits should have been balanced

What spending time around Sawyer does to MF'er. Balancitis is an an airborne patogen.

 

[Zeriel]

2) The fact that OW team failed to do their references justice also tangentially reinforces my original argument that with Fallout they accidentally stumbled into a unified vision for the project because everyone already spoke the same language.

I will add that when they were doing Fallout they had fun with it. The Outer Worlds is more like a job.

A job being a job and a job being fun is often down to who you're doing the job with. When you're doing a shitty job with a band of friends and management doesn't prevent you from just having fun with each other, even that shitty job can be fun. When you're doing a great job with a bunch of zoomers who have no clue what you're talking about, it probably becomes a chore.

It sounds like every job Boyarsky took after Troika underutilized his talents though. Guy must be used to it by now. Blizzard hired him for non-linear storytelling expertise, then decided after all they didn't want to do a branching storyline and player dialogue and assigned him to writing lore tidbits. Classic corporatism.

 

[Goral]

I talk about fun memories of Troika, so that viewers don't get the impression from my other Troika videos that we were constantly stressed there.

Edit:

• He has shown his Troika boxer shorts.
• Initially they worked from their homes.
• Sierra gave them 90 days to deliver a demo.
• They had showers in Troika office so the others had to watch out to not drop the soap when Tim was around.
• Tim Cain was bringing a dog to the office. Disgusting.
• Some of the Arcanum portraits were inspired by a 1910 yearbook.
• Everyday at 4 PM they were watching Chinese soap opera, 2 of the staff members spoke Chince but Mandarin not Cantonese so no one knew what they were saying.
• They were playing Counter-Strike drunk.

Edit 2:

The office had a men's restroom, a women's restroom, a private single restroom, and a private single restroom with a shower. The two private restrooms were lockable.For people who biked to work or who wanted to go out in the evening straight from the office or who had worked over night, that shower was awesome.

 

[Morgoth]

Those were some real dog days.