Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[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

 

[Gandalf]

Wasting time on bad games instead of just cloning and improving titans like Wizardry VII. It's like using bad material as a smith.

 

[Quillon]

last vid seems to be a response to this:

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.

uncle Tim's watching, get your act together!

 

[Roguey]

"I play games every day." Tim keeps busy.

There are some games that are so bad that he just can't stop playing them to see how bad they get, how Codexian.

His reasons are understandable to me now because I started running Steam in online mode earlier this year (now that I no longer have to concern myself with bandwidth at all) and my stats look like this.

I don't like Drakensang, but it's not so terrible yet as to make me rage-quit it (this can still happen though).

Regardless of his reasons, still a bit funny that he put all those hours into Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and the Pre-Sequel.

 

[Wesp5]

Regardless of his reasons, still a bit funny that he put all those hours into Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and the Pre-Sequel.

Maybe this was so he could mess up the itemisation completely up in The Outer Worlds ?

 

[Late Bloomer]

Regardless of his reasons, still a bit funny that he put all those hours into Borderlands, Borderlands 2, and the Pre-Sequel.

Maybe this was so he could mess up the itemisation completely up in The Outer Worlds ?

How many hours was it? It speaks volumes on the not so great combat and bizarre loot of TOW.

 

[Bulo]

Tim "No Painkillers" Cain

 

[Roguey]

I approve of him finally turning the light on.

 

[NecroLord]

Wish Tim would do a video on the New Reno prostitutes dialogue.