Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Roguey]

Tim confirms he has a Switch and a Series X. He got into console gaming in 2019 because of leg damage.

Tim made his Steam profile private because I kept reporting on how many hours he was sinking into the Borderlands series. He claims that just because he plays a game lot doesn't mean he likes it, sometimes it's purely research and analysis.

Tim said they were told to make The Outer Worlds casual, so don't blame him for how it's dumbed down. He was the one who pushed for silliness, Leonard pushed for social commentary.

The Fallout team gelled very well so it was surprising and disappointing for Tim later on when he actually had to deal with difficult people.

A hypothetical scenario where he kept on making Fallout games: fully 3D and exploring different parts of the world and not just America (i.e. retrofuturistic Russia and China).

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

He claims that just because he plays a game lot doesn't mean he likes it, sometimes it's purely research and analysis.

A true Codexer

 

[Diggfinger]

A hypothetical scenario where he kept on making Fallout games: fully 3D and exploring different parts of the world and not just America (i.e. retrofuturistic Russia and China).

Nothing new and the most 'safe' answer he could give her. It's been said before, perhaps when he and Leonard talked.
Guess me might never know what his actual Fallout ideas are.

But interestingly, he said "that's not where the series are going" (implying, I think, that Bethesda is not at all taking the series down the same route as Tim would).

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Tim made his Steam profile private because I kept reporting on how many hours he was sinking into the Borderlands series. He claims that just because he plays a game lot doesn't mean he likes it, sometimes it's purely research and analysis.

He was the one who pushed for silliness, Leonard pushed for social commentary.

I see Tim's research did not go to waste.

Tim said they were told to make The Outer Worlds casual, so don't blame him for how it's dumbed down.

Memory holing the whole shapes and triangles talk, huh. Alright then.

The Fallout team gelled very well so it was surprising and disappointing for Tim later on when he actually had to deal with difficult people.

QED.

 

[0sacred]

women

 

[NoMoneyNoFameNoDame]

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.

I think one point Tim failed to capitalize on, is you should also keep your precious idea to yourself for your own good in general.
Meaning blog posts about your idea demeans the idea if you didn't already prove them.

Pre-announcements rarely have the strategic value we imagine them to.

This is how patches should work as well. Pre-announcing patches that involve work you haven't done is a good way to ruin your patch.

1) Don't tell the world what you're doing.
2) Do finish what you're doing, then you can tell the world.

Pitching an entire game idea is hilarious self-destructive practice.

It's why I kept secret about my game and the specifics as long as possible. A bunch also got cut, and I had to renegg on a few key features.

The magic of DMing Tim Cain, and be like you can make this work just listen. Yeah that's dumb.

Now finish is perhaps subjective. But usually having a prototype that works is enough. However I would add a 3rd rule.

3) Don't share just because you did a good thing.

Recall that other than for marketing purposes, presenting that you did a good thing is a waste of time.

Tim Cain did surprise me about one thing. He won't even look at demos. If his reasoning is correct about legal danger why does he work with more than one client?
In essence if someone emailed Tim Cain with a preauthorized I won't sue you legal letter, would Tim actually then review your shit?

I think he would resist because he's probably aware that a lot of people who look up to him, he would be ashamed of.
Everyone can go play the game they like philosophy, does not solve the problem of what if Tim hates your game?

Anyway I want to apologize to Tim for spreading that nasty T:OW dev conversation. It occurs to me he might view such rumors
as lies, being spread.. that would be terrible. So I disavow any leaked conversations that suggest Tim has wrongly steered T:OW
or wrongly quieted T:OW employees differences of opinion.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about why I think it is critically important to challenge yourself. Specifically, you should find ways to take some risks and push yourself so that when opportunities arise, you will be able to take advantage of them.

 

[NecroLord]

I talk about why I think it is critically important to challenge yourself. Specifically, you should find ways to take some risks and push yourself so that when opportunities arise, you will be able to take advantage of them.

Just be urself, bro.

 

[Roguey]

"You can say they're equal... but it won't be the same."

 

[StrongBelwas]

Flat hierarchy is a nice idea, but the actual reality when they executed it during Arcanum was a big failure.
Everyone got the same pay and in theory same amount of work. This created issues for the Cain/Anderson/Boyarsky's personal lives and they had to underpay themselves, plus try to cut corners on snacks and electricity in the office whenever they could. Some people simple can't do as much work as other people.
They tried to make Cain/Anderson/Boyarsky interchangeable in business dealings, but it became clear their publishing partners wanted certain people signing things or giving them feedback, even if they did not directly state it sometimes.
Some people are not that good at doing multiple things, and they will get very upset when you try and tell them this. Some people are really not suited for talking to press, and the lack of hierarchy made it hard to agree on a spokesperson.
Many websites saw the Credits not assigning roles and just randomly gave people roles, such as Tim Cain getting Lead Animator, i.e Mobygames, fixed now but was a problem.
He won't outright tell you not to try a flat hierarchy yourself, but be prepared for many, many problems. Personally would never want to work in such a system again himself.

EDIT: whoops, old.

 

[agris]

real flat hierarchy has never been tried

 

[KVVRR]

Even in the best case scenario, flat hierarchies seem to cause more trouble than not, either for the developers or the products they're trying to do themselves. Just look at Valve.

 

[NecroLord]

We need moar inclusive hierarchies.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about how the dialog files worked in Arcanum.

 

[Roguey]

They wrote all the Arcanum dialogue in Excel because they didn't have time to make a tool.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

They wrote all the Arcanum dialogue in Excel because they didn't have time to make a tool.

Torment dialogue was also written in Excel

 

[NecroLord]

Where is the SARCASTIC option, Tim?

 

[Jaesun]

This was interesting to watch, as I *think* Fallout/Fallout 2 possibly used excel format as well? The dialogue files from what I recall in Fallout look in a similar format, of which I was always wondering what the format was. Once he showed that excel spreadsheet I was like that's it, interesting.

Completely get the time factor of coming up with a build from scratch dialogue tool, or just use excel and import it as text file would work just fine. And saves a LOT of time for a project. A luxury Troika at the time did not have.

IIRC Obsidian a few years back wanted to finally spend the time to code a new dialogue editor tool for them to use moving forward. Don't recall if they ever finished that or not.

 

[Roguey]

IIRC Obsidian a few years back wanted to finally spend the time to code a new dialogue editor tool for them to use moving forward. Don't recall if they ever finished that or not.

You're recalling way back to the 00s, they finished that and have been hyping it up for well over a decade.

 

[Wesp5]

They wrote all the Arcanum dialogue in Excel because they didn't have time to make a tool.

The dialogue files of Bloodlines are simple text files and I always edit them with WordPad !

 

[Goral]

They wrote all the Arcanum dialogue in Excel because they didn't have time to make a tool.

The dialogue files of Bloodlines are simple text files and I always edit them with WordPad !

Why would you edit Bloodlines dialogues at this point?

 

[Wesp5]

They wrote all the Arcanum dialogue in Excel because they didn't have time to make a tool.

The dialogue files of Bloodlines are simple text files and I always edit them with WordPad !

Why would you edit Bloodlines dialogues at this point?

Not much editing needed today, but all the years I just used WordPad and not another tool.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the fact that I play a lot of games, which includes a lot of hours playing games that I don't even like.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It took you less than one minute to post video after Tim uploaded it. Infinitron strong.

 

[Bulo]

It took you less than one minute to post video after Tim uploaded it. Infinitron strong.

Someone's been tuning his algorithm