Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[PapaPetro]

He said it in the vid, the Marketing Department designs the game these days, not him or any of the devs like in the 90s.
It's "Product" now.

 

[Roguey]

He said it in the vid, the Marketing Department designs the game these days, not him or any of the devs like in the 90s.
It's "Product" now.

Interplay's marketing department had quite a bit of say in the 90s, especially after Fallout turned out to be a proven success.

 

[PapaPetro]

He said it in the vid, the Marketing Department designs the game these days, not him or any of the devs like in the 90s.
It's "Product" now.

Interplay's marketing department had quite a bit of say in the 90s, especially after Fallout turned out to be a proven success.

Yeah, he telegraphs it pretty hard that it has been the lifelong archnemesis of his career (it especially irked him when they would take undeserved credit for his game).
I imagine every new cool idea that pops in his head gets quickly shot down by his own mental Marketing Department demon:
"Oh they'll never go for that."
"That's not realistic!"
"Does it appeal to the zoomer market segment?"


You can tell he just wants to make games. Big Games.
He doesn't want to do this dumb meta calculation crap he has to layer over it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wants to try something new.

Comes up with literally Fallout except in space and everybody is a communist.

 

[PapaPetro]

Wants to try something new.

Comes up with literally Fallout except in space and everybody is a communist.

He seems smart/wise enough to avoid obvious hackery like that.
I'd like to ask him what his & Leonard's initial vision was before concessions were made.

 

[Infinitron]

He seems smart/wise enough to avoid obvious hackery like that.
I'd like to ask him what his & Leonard's initial vision was before concessions were made.

This is cope. Tim's a light-hearted guy who wanted to make a game with a Futurama/Rick and Morty vibe. Apparently those aren't tiresome tropes to him. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[PapaPetro]

This is cope. Tim's a silly guy who wanted to make a game with a Futurama/Rick & Morty vibe in space.

I'd still like to know.
Even if it were the case, I'd ask him how he didn't notice.
Seems too thoughtful of a guy to be oblivious like that.

I *know* Tim is simulating silliness.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I was about to rant about ToW story but it took me about 5 minutes to vaguely remember what it was even about, which basically sums it up.

The opening hook and first 15-20 minutes was really solid and sets up the tone well, but it becomes disjointed and aggresively unfunny shortly after and never really picks up.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I alt+f4'ed when I met the first planetary security (basically police) who camp at your ship, which was 3 chicks or something like that. If someone makes a mod to turn all females into males, I'll give it another try.

 

[Diggfinger]

Can Infinitron please henceforth start each and every news-post with the phrase...

"Hi....it's me, Infinitron"

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The funniest thing was when modders replaced angry lesbian ship computer with a hot lady and redittors got butthurt.

 

[Moink]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about how some game bugs become game features, and give examples of this from several of my own games.

 

[Roguey]

The examples he lists aren't really things I'd consider bugs, just unplanned features

1) In Fallout, the ability to place items in any NPC's inventory when stealing was unplanned
2) In Arcanum, you could enter the hand-crafted areas that weren't yet marked on your map or areas you weren't supposed to get to (e.g. a place that's completely walled off) by placing your character on the coordinates and going to the game world view.
3) In The Outer Worlds going through a loading screen clears the hostility from any creatures that had seen you on that map. In one map you had to make it to a computer that can only be interacted with outside of combat, so some people would rush through it, step into the new area nearby, and then step back so they could interact with it in peace. The balance-fixated would dislike this and a number of simulationists would also dislike it for being incredibly gamey.

 

[PapaPetro]

1) In Fallout, the ability to place items in any NPC's inventory when stealing was unplanned

It felt like this was a rushed byproduct of party inventory managment.

 

[Butter]

3) In The Outer Worlds going through a loading screen clears the hostility from any creatures that had seen you on that map. In one map you had to make it to a computer that can only be interacted with outside of combat, so some people would rush through it, step into the new area nearby, and then step back so they could interact with it in peace. The balance-fixated would dislike this and a number of simulationists would also dislike it for being incredibly gamey.

Yeah, this is crap. Didn't Oblivion address this 17 years ago?

(Oblivion came out 17 years ago. JFC.)

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, this is crap. Didn't Oblivion address this 17 years ago?

(Oblivion came out 17 years ago. JFC.)

Tim said they left it this way on purpose because it was fun and mentioned that Arcanum did not do this, monsters would remain where they were and aggressive for a while

 

[Infinitron]

Relevant to Codexers?

I talk about how to give good feedback on game design, specifically how to keep the feedback relevant and actionable.

 

[Butter]

What good is customer feedback if he never makes a sequel?

 

[Roguey]

Relevant to Codexers?

All this seems to be advice for other developers while in they're in the process of making it, not fans criticizing a released title.

Tim's forever seething whenever an Urquhart/Parker-type gives him empty criticism.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about my experiences at Troika Games and why I won't run another company.

 

[Roguey]

Those dishonorable employee stories are great. People stealing cases of soda, racking up $1000 in international phone bills, negotiating for a pay raise/promotion and then immediately using that as leverage for a better offer at another company. I can respect the hustlegrinding of the last one. I bet Ferret Baudoin dabbled in a bit of all that when he jumped from Obsidian to Bioware in the middle of NWN2.

 

[deama]

Speaking to the progression question, I prefer the metroidvania approach the best.
The oddities from underrail isn't bad, but it still doesn't make enough sense, e.g. you find some nicknack and it gives you exp? What?
What if instead, you find a serum, and that serum gives you an attribute point to spend how you like.
Or how about you find a really rare book with some "ancient secrets" that gives you a few points in skills for you to distribute?

I'll officially coin it as the "metroidvania progression system", you can quote me on that!

With other systems like how bloodlines does it, rewarding based on quests, I don't really like that either, it has some of the problems that the traditional system has, though not as bad. It essentially creates a problem in that your character becomes stronger, whilst the world remains "flat" type of issue, and trying to "upgrade" everyone else is a nightmare in terms of balancing and narrative etc...

You might be thinking though "yeah, but then why isn't everyone else getting stronger by finding these serums or books either?" It's because it doesn't hit as hard. Finding these items you can easily hide it within the story, such as the player character is just "lucky" so they end up finding a lot of these items, or just tie it into a specific reason, like the player character has a special ability that allows him to "extract" or "use" these serums, that's why he's growing stronger so quickly compared to everyone else.
From quests though it's iffy because quests are a lot more common, they're a lot harder to mask it, and therefore feel more artificial in that regard.

 

[PapaPetro]

I talk about my experiences at Troika Games and why I won't run another company.

Alright, which one of you did it?

A former (disgruntled) employee maybe?
Fargo

Those dishonorable employee stories are great.