Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[0sacred]

A lesson he's probably learned by now, but if you go to a concert, bring ear plugs, seriously.

also, bring a Bible to the strip club so you can better resist temptation

 

[Roguey]

also, bring a Bible to the strip club so you can better resist temptation

You can still hear the music just fine through the plugs. You just won't get hearing damage.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

A submissive gay man saying young millennial/zoomer devs are a bunch of pussies.

Built different

 

[Nano]

I want to watch these videos but there's just something about Tim Cain's mannerisms. He's so offputtingly smug and bitchy. Like a lot of poofs who try to emulate bitchy high status women. And he can't tone that down to be informative because like all bum bandits he feels the world simultaneously owes him tolerance just for existing and attacks him for not being straight. It makes him unwatchable for me.

Speaking of smug and bitchy.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

Tim is clearly a cool dude who's easy to get along with as long as you aren't some hack developer incapable of delivering two lines of code is a reasonable timeframe.

 

[Nano]

I wonder if he's in an open relationship.

 

[Naraya]

I talk about game development caution and how it seems to be affecting newer games.

This is spot on.

 

[Butter]

I wonder if he's in an open relationship.

He's gay. What do you think?

 

[santino27]

also, bring a Bible to the strip club so you can better resist temptation

You can still hear the music just fine through the plugs. You just won't get hearing damage.

I've found it tends to flatten the music out too much, but YMMV. My wife uses ear plugs at every concert.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about game economy and why it is so hard to balance the economy in them.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I want to watch these videos but there's just something about Tim Cain's mannerisms. He's so offputtingly smug and bitchy. Like a lot of poofs who try to emulate bitchy high status women. And he can't tone that down to be informative because like all bum bandits he feels the world simultaneously owes him tolerance just for existing and attacks him for not being straight. It makes him unwatchable for me.

I agree. I've met poofs like him who somehow get positions of power and have a huge grudge against anyone who doesn't think arse buggery is a great pass time. Which manifests as this very petulant bitchy personality that comes out whenever these people feel threatened. Which is all the time. I absolutely get that vibe from some of Tim's videos. Especially when he talks about how people are "allowed" to critique him and his work as if he has any actual power to stop me from saying Outer Worlds was shit that proves Cain was carried by better people.

 

[Diggfinger]

Video game "journalists" now.

What is your book about by the way ?

Post-Apocalyptic Science-Fiction/horror

Canticle of Leibowitz meets Atlas Shrugged - in a heavy Fallout sauce

Leonard Boyarsky, Jason Anderson and Chad Moore have received copies.

Cover and more info

Tofu Brains: Life on Zeeta 21 is a science-fiction/horror novel set in a dystopian future in which the world is torn by war and environmental degradation. The novel explores human behaviour in desperate situations and treats pertinent themes such as class, loneliness, identity, and human’s relation with nature.

Amazon
4.7/5 rating

Goodreads
4.20/5 rating

 

[Roguey]

"Game economy is important" - question asker. No it isn't.

"I don't worry about this too much," - Tim. Nice.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Right on. I wouldn't mind if they nuked economy as a feature entirely. It almost never works and when it does it still adds nothing.

 

[Roguey]

Right on. I wouldn't mind if they nuked economy as a feature entirely. It almost never works and when it does it still adds nothing.

People like buying (and selling) things. They had to patch in a store into Jagged Alliance 3 because of the demand to buy things.

 

[Butter]

Game economy encompasses more than just buying and selling things. Things like rarity of item drops, crafting recipes, and regularity of health/ammo pickups all fall under the heading of economy. It's actually one of the most important things to get right in a game, as it creates a push and pull with the player. When you have to switch weapons in Doom to better utilize the available ammo, that's economy. When you run through a difficult gauntlet and there's a healing fountain at the end of it, that's economy. It was pretty obvious Tim never cared about economy all the way back in Fallout, but that's not something to be proud of.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

People like having meaningful progression, plenty of ways to have that without having vendors.

 

[Roguey]

Game economy encompasses more than just buying and selling things. Things like rarity of item drops, crafting recipes, and regularity of health/ammo pickups all fall under the heading of economy. It's actually one of the most important things to get right in a game, as it creates a push and pull with the player. When you have to switch weapons in Doom to better utilize the available ammo, that's economy. When you run through a difficult gauntlet and there's a healing fountain at the end of it, that's economy. It was pretty obvious Tim never cared about economy all the way back in Fallout, but that's not something to be proud of.

Economies matter a little in RPGs but not much. There is no western RPG with a great economy unless we're talking something like Deus Ex which severely limits the ways in which you can engage with it.

I also don't really find it fun to start off as a deadbroke character and to end as a deadbroke character (unless I intentionally made myself deadbroke buying a ton of stuff before the point of no return).

 

[Harthwain]

Economies matter a little in RPGs but not much. There is no western RPG with a great economy unless we're talking something like Deus Ex which severely limits the ways in which you can engage with it.

Space Rangers 2? Starsector? These two are the best RPGs with great economies I can think of. Like, the actual economies.

That said, in pretty much any game you will reach a point when you have enough money to buy top stuff (and more). Even in real life it is possible to keep multiplying money, provided you manage to break free from not having enough money to do so in the beginning. You know, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer"?

 

[toucanplay]

I want to watch these videos but there's just something about Tim Cain's mannerisms. He's so offputtingly smug and bitchy. Like a lot of poofs who try to emulate bitchy high status women. And he can't tone that down to be informative because like all bum bandits he feels the world simultaneously owes him tolerance just for existing and attacks him for not being straight. It makes him unwatchable for me.

I agree. I've met poofs like him who somehow get positions of power and have a huge grudge against anyone who doesn't think arse buggery is a great pass time. Which manifests as this very petulant bitchy personality that comes out whenever these people feel threatened. Which is all the time. I absolutely get that vibe from some of Tim's videos. Especially when he talks about how people are "allowed" to critique him and his work as if he has any actual power to stop me from saying Outer Worlds was shit that proves Cain was carried by better people.

Evaluation by vibes is classic hairless twink behaviour, so I guess I'll defer to the expert.

 

[Wesp5]

When you have to switch weapons in Doom to better utilize the available ammo, that's economy.

And they messed this up in the new Dooms! You have to keep demons alive because maybe you would later need the completely illiogical items they drop on death...

 

[Jacov]

I agree with Tim that it's hard to balance RPG economies, because RPGs have a lot of variables, and it's really hard to account for all of them. On the other hand, modern developers don't even try. Merchants have infinitely replenishable goods, they have infinite money, and they buy all that crap that you've found in dungeons with no hesitation. In addition, this modern trend of showering players with as much shiny shit as possible to trigger their monkey brain, so that they'll keep «pecking that button» for more dopamine, doesn't help either.

I want to see more games with interesting decisions, like Pathologic 2 (haven't played the first game that much, so can't say how good the economy was there). Yeah, it's not an RPG and it follows a fairly linear plot structure (important events are tied to certain days), but the economy of this game holds solid up until the final days, where all hell let loose. There is money, but most NPCs will only barter with you. At the point when you become more or less rich — BOOM — the army is here and all money is replaced with roblox dollars, so your wealth means nothing now, sorry . Items are rare and are always in demand — you use them for your own wellbeing and to heal other NPCs (you're a doctor). You can go around killing people and robbing houses, but your reputation will tank, and no one will trade with you, when you are lying on the floor, dying from the plague and in need of those oh so sweet pills.

 

[Roguey]

On the other hand, modern developers don't even try. Merchants have infinitely replenishable goods, they have infinite money, and they buy all that crap that you've found in dungeons with no hesitation.

This design has existed since the 80s.

Styg put a bunch of annoying restrictions in Underrail that a lot of people hated, resulting in a parody character of them in the game (the guy overburdened by junk loot who slowly walks from merchant to merchant to offload it). The restrictions were phased out in most games because most people find them annoying and would prefer an economy that favors the player over nuisances.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I want to watch these videos but there's just something about Tim Cain's mannerisms. He's so offputtingly smug and bitchy. Like a lot of poofs who try to emulate bitchy high status women. And he can't tone that down to be informative because like all bum bandits he feels the world simultaneously owes him tolerance just for existing and attacks him for not being straight. It makes him unwatchable for me.

I agree. I've met poofs like him who somehow get positions of power and have a huge grudge against anyone who doesn't think arse buggery is a great pass time. Which manifests as this very petulant bitchy personality that comes out whenever these people feel threatened. Which is all the time. I absolutely get that vibe from some of Tim's videos. Especially when he talks about how people are "allowed" to critique him and his work as if he has any actual power to stop me from saying Outer Worlds was shit that proves Cain was carried by better people.

Evaluation by vibes is classic hairless twink behaviour, so I guess I'll defer to the expert.

I've been around long enough to know if someone is getting pissy and insecure about what you said about a completely different person it's because they feel they have similar traits. I'm not a poo picker though so I have no clue what you people think in between bouts of arse pain.

 

[Bulo]

Game economy encompasses more than just buying and selling things. Things like rarity of item drops, crafting recipes, and regularity of health/ammo pickups all fall under the heading of economy. It's actually one of the most important things to get right in a game, as it creates a push and pull with the player. When you have to switch weapons in Doom to better utilize the available ammo, that's economy. When you run through a difficult gauntlet and there's a healing fountain at the end of it, that's economy. It was pretty obvious Tim never cared about economy all the way back in Fallout, but that's not something to be proud of.

I felt this during my foray into The Outer Worlds. I began to buy lockpicks whenever I saw them at a vendor but discovered very quickly that there was no point in actively trying to collect them because those vendors' stock replenished infinitely and I would never be at a loss as a result. I realise that from a design perspective it's a balancing act between the sort of half-absent slack-jawed tongue-poking casual player and people who actually want to play pretend but I dislike it when games incentivise me to stop thinking. It's a real turn-off