Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and Deus Ex all took around three years.

I'm pretty sure those were outliers (though by the time Deus Ex came out game development time was already increasing). Daggerfall and Diablo seem to have taken around two years and these were kinda hard hitters, System Shock seems to have taken somewhere between a year and 18 months and i'd expect smaller games to take less time (like Bethesda's own Battlespire which took 1 year). And another thing to keep in mind is that back in the 90s developers sometimes worked in multiple projects at the same time which slowed the progress of each individual title (e.g. Battlespire was made at the same time as Redguard and System Shock at the same time as Terra Nova).

I think up to mid-90s a year was about the maximum you'd expect for most games, which is why games that took longer kinda stood out (and not always in the best way, see Stonekeep which apparently started development in the late 80s).

Dungeon Master was released in late-1987 after two years of development, though it was created by a team of just four people. Team size is quite important to take into consideration as a factor in duration of game development, as is whether a game required a new engine or re-used as existing one; Dungeon Master is an example of the former, Fallout 2 is of course an example of the latter.

 

[Bad Sector]

You listed a bunch of games that could be cobbled together quickly because they already had a lot of code and art ready to go. It took Troika three years to make Arcanum. It only took 19 months for Temple of Elemental Evil because they already had a good amount of code for it thanks to the development of Arcanum, but the constraints that schedule put on them certainly showed.

Sure, if they wanted to start *everything* from scratch they'd also need to spend time on that, but after a game or two most developers already had code they could reuse. Arcanum for example took so long in part because Cain couldn't use any of his previous code and even had to make a new system abstraction library (that he detailed on an older video).

My point isn't that RPGs didn't take more than 18 months to make, even in the 80s you can find examples of that, but that it wasn't a requirement and many games took less - especially if, as you also point out, they had resources (code, art, whatever) they could reuse. And that wasn't even an exceptional situation as can be seen especially by SSI's and New World Computing's games that did a lot of reuse (but even Interplay reused some code like Tim Cain's libraries).

AFAIK this was the norm and what some like Origin did and threw away all their code for every Ultima installment wasn't common (which eventually didn't end up that well for them once production complexity increased - not only U8 and U9 took longer to make than their previous games but they were also way buggier).

Dungeon Master was released in late-1987 after two years of development, though it was created by a team of just four people. Team size is quite important to take into consideration as a factor in duration of game development, as is whether a game required a new engine or re-used as existing one; Dungeon Master is an example of the former, Fallout 2 is of course an example of the latter.

Yes, as i replied to Roguey here, there were games that took longer, my point wasn't that RPGs didn't take long time but that there were many games that match what Tim Cain mentioned and some even taking less time than that.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the pros and cons of going to university versus being self-taught, with respect to going into the game industry.

 

[Roguey]

Cain says college never taught him how to debug or optimize code and when he brought this up one prof sneered "Sounds like you want to make this a trade school." Wonder if that's a contributing factor with regard to how games are now.

 

[NecroLord]

Cain says college never taught him how to debug or optimize code and when he brought this up one prof sneered "Sounds like you want to make this a trade school." Wonder if that's a contributing factor with regard to how games are now.

'Muh university educashun.
Creativity also played a major role back then.
Don't know how much university knowledge is in John Carmack's brain or just genius/creativity?
Same with Tim.

 

[0sacred]

Genuinely curious, is there a single good game produced by devs with a degree in game design?

 

[ciox]

 

[Bad Sector]

Don't know how much university knowledge is in John Carmack's brain or just genius/creativity?

John Carmack didn't go to university though IIRC has mentioned that he'd recommend people want to do that to go not so much because you can't learn that stuff by yourself but because it is convenient to have all that knowledge available at the same place together with other people to ask and learn with.

Genuinely curious, is there a single good game produced by devs with a degree in game design?

AFAIK Portal was made by people who learned at Digipen and is generally considered a good game. Though even taking into account that these students were lucky enough to have Gabe Newell visit them, notice their work and offer them to work at Valve, the fact that there hasn't been a Portal-level success from their students since 2007 (in fact in their "successes" page they have Portal at a prominent position) most likely mean that it wasn't because of Digipen they made that game.

 

[Roguey]

AFAIK Portal was made by people who learned at Digipen and is generally considered a good game. Though even taking into account that these students were lucky enough to have Gabe Newell visit them, notice their work and offer them to work at Valve, the fact that there hasn't been a Portal-level success from their students since 2007 (in fact in their "successes" page they have Portal at a prominent position) most likely mean that it wasn't because of Digipen they made that game.

Portal 2 was also taken from a digipen game project (the paint stuff).

 

[StrongBelwas]

Stop sending Cain/game companies your ideas for games, it just creates potential lawsuits for him and ideas in and of themselves aren't of much worth without execution.
Some of the most annoying people he's had to work with are the people who won't take "No" to their idea as an answer until he has to be super direct with them and then they complain.

 

[NecroLord]

Stop sending Cain/game companies your ideas for games

Today's game companies?
Surely you aren't serious.
Maybe indie devs, sure, but major companies? Let them burn.

 

[Jaesun]

Good video. Completely agree with him, and this was an interesting topic to go over.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

soulja boy tell 'em

 

[Warhawk47]

There are lightyears of difference between some vague notion and a well-thought out series of interlocking mechanics, narrative and art direction, ergo a whole design document in one's head. But without telepathy, the scope and quality can be difficult to communicate. In steps the rapid prototyping, but Tim just got finished explaining how the "generalist" is going extinct, so how can you prototype anything if you're narrowly specialized? You can't replicate a lot of things using pencil and paper. This is why I've gravitated to tabletop in general, since that limitation doesn't exist to nearly the same degree. Then again, neither do the possibilities.

 

[santino27]

Stop sending Cain/game companies your ideas for games, it just creates potential lawsuits for him and ideas in and of themselves aren't of much worth without execution.
Some of the most annoying people he's had to work with are the people who won't take "No" to their idea as an answer until he has to be super direct with them and then they complain.

A problem for fiction writers too.

 

[flyingjohn]

There are genuine reasons you can't just do stuff on the fly. If Tim's mystery programmer actually gave a single reason ( we are swamped, there is a specific problem with a feature, etc...) it would be okay. Just saying no makes you a prime candidate for getting fired/moved.
Blow being Blow has no understanding of working with a team. Also, Blow as a programmer is barely mediocre. Witness and Braid are not technical marvels(the witness parody game has better performance then the Witness) and he has not made any real progress with his own game engine.
But he loves to talk about stuff like he is Carmack.

 

[flyingjohn]

Tim talking about his amazing Racquetball skills. Oh, and something about issues.

 

[Jaesun]

Good video and some good advice. Completely agree with him.

 

[Infinitron]

Well-chosen thumbnail:

 

[Roguey]

Tim was for fixed but has leaned more towards limited scaling (Outer Worlds had level floors and ceilings much like Dragon Age: Origins and New Vegas) and prefers this for all games going forward. He is not a fan of Oblivion-style level scaling.

 

[NecroLord]

Ideas are amazing. Ideas are like currency. Ideas are what drives the world. Ideas are what we need to get to the next stage. And not just great inventions like the train, little things like this microphone, that enables me to speak to the unwashed masses. Cain On Games is another GREAT idea. Where would we be right now?

And we have to talk about it, because great ideas don’t come in all shapes and sizes. 9/11, September 11th. And we’re gonna use some reverence here and not be silly about this, but, look at what they accomplished with no weapons and just 11 guys who didn’t even speak English! And that proves that sometimes great ideas are actually horrible ideas.

Memes are ideas too.
Which is why we must weaponize them amd deploy them.

 

[Jaesun]

Good video. Liked hearing his thoughts on both fixed and limited scaling and agree with him that limited level scaling does at least achieve the happy medium of progression and development.

 

[NecroLord]

I liked Arcanum approach to levelling.
It has a level max of 50 and makes you feel like a demigod when you reach that point.
The loot is another business, apparently it varies with each playthrough and the character name also plays a factor in determining the loot...

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

The idea that story event adding a few toughter enemies to random encounters table is a kind of level scaling is like saying that the game having tougher enemies during the final story mission is a kind of level scaling.

 

[Infinitron]

Too-many-videos complainers got what they wanted: