Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Butter]

His description of Otter Worlds villains makes the whole conflict sound really unengaging and contrived. Two groups agree one what the problem is, and they have somewhat similar solutions in mind, and the obvious synthesis of their plans is apparently just not on the table. Now you have to pick one and go to war over it.

 

[Roguey]

His description of Otter Worlds villains makes the whole conflict sound really unengaging and contrived. Two groups agree one what the problem is, and they have somewhat similar solutions in mind, and the obvious synthesis of their plans is apparently just not on the table. Now you have to pick one and go to war over it.

There's not enough dimethyl sulfoxide available to combine the plans.

 

[NecroLord]

Tim masturbating himself at the thought of how DEEP and HIGH IQ The Outer Worlds setting is, when it clearly is not.

 

[Nano]

Horny warning:

Spoiler

I wonder if Tim ever got sucked off under the table in one of his videos.

 

[Viata]

That is a high level of faggotry. Watches a man talking in a video and what he thinks about is if someone is sucking that man off while recording those videos.

 

[Nano]

That is a high level of faggotry. Watches a man talking in a video and what he thinks about is if someone is sucking that man off while recording those videos.

Only if the guy is cute.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Cain broke down the things he notices in game and what questions he asked.

Intro could be the cinematic he sees on the Steam page to something he sees pre release like the trailer, or the first cinematic he sees on starting the game.

First question is if he is intrigued, if this is a world he wants to play in. Major turn off is protagonist being a smug jerk or NPCs being snarky. Likes it when the intro makes him want to explore the world, to see what happened to it.

On character creation, asks himself if he knows what he is doing, what kind of archetypes the game supports. If he is being asked to buy attributes or skills, what does that entail. Does not like it when the game is vague and says something like 'makes you shoot better', wants details.

Finds it odd if the game implies there is a diplomatic route but there is only one speech skill, no speech skills, or no perks that modify speech.

Tries to play normally for at least a half hour, then asks himself if he has any idea what he is doing. Is there any indication where the story is going. Within ten minutes, the interface usually has something that annoys him. It's a shame because good interface doesn't go noticed but bad interface instantly causes problems. Doesn't like important information being buried in multiple sub menus, or constant repetition. Menus are often too confusing, character sheet being hidden under a status menu, was playing a game recently where he could not figure out where his XP was, could see it pop up on the HUD when he killed something or completed a quest, but could not figure out where it was until he found it under 3 menus.

Tries to play normally for an hour, then stops to consider if his build feels good and is fun to play. Does it feel like how he envisioned it would play, and would the mechanics work how would they seemed like they would work, and most importantly do the mechanics make sense in the setting (For example, you make a dialogue character, and then the first hour has nobody to talk to.)

One of Cain's clients had him play through several levels of their game, he made a dialogue-focused character, confirmed with the devs you should be able to play it via diplomancer, and then there was an hour long level of nothing but combat encounters and stealth sequences, not one person to talk to. He confirmed with them this was a finished level, which is why they asked him to play through it. Has had this problem with shipped games, including games where he can spend the first hour not using any of his preferred/tagged skills.

Should also be able to determine the pacing of the game from the start. Tutorials longer then 10/15 minutes that are unskippable are a problem. Have characters been introduced, has the villain been hinted at, is the mixture of exploration-combat-dialogue good? Cain considers the start of the game being nothing but one of those to be a red flag. Cain recently played a steam demo of an anticipated game and in the first hour he did nothing but talk to people, 'Yikes'.

Bit more vague, but after the 'first act'/first major chunk of the story, Cain stops himself and honestly considers if he is having fun. This is very often the point he stops playing games. At this point he can safely judge it and all of it's aspects. Cain cares very little about a game's art quality compared to the other aspects, not just due to his color blindness.

Has been burnt by games his friends would say get better later on that didn't. Sometimes he enjoys himself on a visceral level then realizes he doesn't really like it, the combat may be fun but the story is dull.

Asks himself what the designer is trying to get him to do. Usually clear that they want him to be a good guy or go to a certain town or oppose someone. If the villain is doing something Cain agrees with, why should he oppose him.

Cain has played games, implies he even worked on a game once, where he agreed with the villain, wanted to work with him, but did not have the option to do so.

If stealth is the most enjoyable thing to do in the game, but the game is sold on the quality of it's combat, Cain questions the developers' intentions. Some games, the developer seems to push the player to do the non fun things.

Past the first act, Cain looks at the game's progression and considers if it feels like his character is gaining power and knowledge about the world. Are there still challenges, new challenges? Wants to be challenged by threats that make sense, doesn't want to see high level wolves if low level wolves were the starter enemies.

At the final encounter, first thing Cain asks himself if defeating the main villain (By speech or combat or what have you), did it feel satisfying? If the game offers replayability, does Cain feel like playing it again? When Cain replays a game, it's usually because the endgame makes it clear Cain did good but could have done some things better. Being told the ghouls die in Necropolis if you don't fix the water pump is a good example, it makes the player want to try a character that can repair it.

 

[Roguey]

I make a dialogue character and there's literally no one to talk to in the first hour. One of the clients I'm working for
had me play through some levels in a game they're building. I made a dialogue character which seemed like it was perfectly legal and possible and I confirmed with their designers that that was a valid character. I then played an entire level
for over an hour that had no one to talk to and I was shocked. It was all combat and occasionally stealth ways of
getting around those combat encounters. There wasn't a single dialogue and I just went "Is this level finished?" and
they're like "Yeah that's why we had you play it" and I'm like "I have problems" and I've played shipped games like that that for some reason the character I made didn't seem to be using any of his skills, and in the first hour, if I make a
character that doesn't use the skills that I picked as my main skills, in Fallout that would be a tagged skill, something's wrong.

I hope this isn't Bloodlines 2.

Once again affirming that he deeply regrets many of the skills included in Fallout. Gambling, traps, big guns, and energy weapons certainly aren't going to be used in that first hour.

Is there good pacing to it? Meaning sometimes I'm exploring, sometimes I'm fighting, sometimes I'm talking to people. If it all seems to be exploration or it all seems to be talking or it all seems to be combat: bad. I played a demo on Steam recently for a game I was looking forward to and all I did in the first hour of that demo was talk to people. Yikes.

Tim would hate Planescape Torment if it were released today (and possibly hated it on release).

I think pacing is important but I don't necessarily agree with the idea that combat, exploration, and dialogue need to be featured in near-equal amounts at any given point. That kind of artificiality can detract from the experience.

Now I've also played a lot of games where the first act was amazing and then it kind of fell apart after that, but if you can't make the first act good you're probably going to lose me.

Frequently the first act is where I stop.

Larian makes games for the Tim Cains of the world.

I've played a game, possibly even worked on a game, where I've questioned the villain in the sense of "I kind of agree with the villain here, why am I opposing him?" and there was no option to do so.

I wonder, is this about Thaos in Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny before they patched in the option to side with Kyros?

 

[0sacred]

I think pacing is important but I don't necessarily agree with the idea that combat, exploration, and dialogue need to be featured in near-equal amounts at any given point. That kind of artificiality can detract from the experience.

it is a good thing within the first hour though, I agree with Tim there. You want to get a good idea of everything the game has to offer. Also, think of the journos

 

[Butter]

I wonder, is this about Thaos in Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny before they patched in the option to side with Kyros?

I assumed he was referring to Thaos.

 

[Lance Treiber]

Cain cares very little about a game's art quality compared to the other aspects, not just due to his color blindness.

I want to comment on that, hoping that Cain reads this thread, but I have to give a bit of context to convey my answer to him.

Sculpting seeks to represent the true shape of objects as they are in a different size & material, nothing special here.
Painting on the other hand seeks to transcribe 3-dimensional volumes into 2d shapes, which is not a direct transcription, but a magician's trick.
However, once the painters have learned this trick and started painting realistically, it became like a magician walking out on stage and showing the same trick over and over to the yawning audience.
Thankfully, painting doesn't only consist of shapes, but also of colors. The colors could be used in a myriad of new exciting ways, combinations that don't exist in our world, lighting that you'd never see in reality. This is the direction that painters then went to create art.
Then some people decided to do away with shapes and that ended with the idiocy like the black square, but that's another story.

Now back to video games. They convey the world, but after the introduction of the PBR shading, hasn't it become extremely boring to convey the world as it is? Visuals are a part of the whole medium, you can't ignore them.
Fallout had incredible visuals. Masterful shapes, but also happy comic book colors, combined with a grimdark worldbuilding. Contrast evokes emotion in humans, like the cheap overused orange/blue lighting. Fallout's contrast between the artstyle and the narrative made a mark on a lot of people, maybe even unconsciously. And he doesn't think visuals are important?

I think he doesn't understand what I'm talking about precisely because the only thing he can see is shapes, and as long as they're good, he's content. He's forgotten what colors can do.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Cain believes he is good at thinking about narrative design, just not implementing it.
Sources of game lore are the ones that the game drives, that the game forces on you, then there are the ones the player drives, the player wants to know more and starts digging.
Game driven is whenever the game provides lore that you didn't ask for. Biggest example is just the game world itself, you see things in the world that inform you how it is.
NPCs barks are another example, anything NPCs say without the player prompting them to. Guard worries about bandits, you know the world is dangerous and bandits are a concern.
How NPCs start conversations the player initiates can be another important source of lore. A merchant can hope he has what you have after bandits stole most of his inventory, player can either just move onto trading or can inquire about the bandits, at which point it becomes player driven. Maybe completing other quests or getting higher social skills can make the merchant more willing to talk.
Another player driven source is books/newspapers, player chooses to interact with, they give a lot of lore.
Player can also get lore just from exploring the game world and seeing how it is.
Once Arcanum players saw their actions in the newspapers, it was a big ego boost, and would prompt them to check out more newspapers. Don't underestimate the player's ego as a tool to get them to do stuff.
Can also make lore something the player can use to solve problems. Need to find a location, study the lore to find it or get a person who knows the location to tell them. If players realize lore leads to new locations, they'll explore it a lot more. Can also attach perk/skill bonuses to books.
If you attach crafting recipes to the lore books, that is another incentive for the player to dig into it. Maybe even require understanding of lore to allow the player to cast some spells. Cain gives the example of a summoning spell that by default gives you a generic demon, but if you study the lore, you can learn the name of a specific more powerful demon and summon them.
Lore adds functionality to other items. Artifacts in D&D are a good example of unlocking new abilities in items through exploration and discovering new things.
Can also just implement Lore granting XP. Can easily get players who otherwise wouldn't care about lore to dig into it.
Cain speculates about a Literacy skill for a very lore heavy game, in a game where lore did everything Cain mentions above, it could be extremely useful.

 

[0sacred]

I am now convinced that players should only get dumped with lore that pertains to you in some way. It's ok if an NPC tells you about a conflict that you're in the middle of, for example. Stories that give you a deeper understanding of the world you're in should be gathered by environmental storytelling and ingame books. Just like in real life, NPC's shouldn't care too much about affairs that don't affect them directly. Unless the NPC is literally a historian I guess, but even then they shouldn't assume you care about their stories, just like other NPC's wouldn't.

 

[Viata]

PoE taught me that every NPC is a historian.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Can also just implement Lore granting XP. Can easily get players who otherwise wouldn't care about lore to dig into it.

If you make something award XP, you're forcing a certain type of players (completionists) to do it. If they hate it, you make them do what they hate.
Imagine forcing people to read Sawyer's drivel and then test them on it. If they pass, they get XP. You think they'll thank you for it in their reviews?

How about you make lore an aside. If the player wants your lore, he'll dig in. I never needed XP incentives to read computer notes in Deus Ex, VTMB, Fallout. They were fun. In PoE, the books were almost physically painful to read.

 

[0sacred]

Can also just implement Lore granting XP. Can easily get players who otherwise wouldn't care about lore to dig into it.

If you make something award XP, you're forcing a certain type of players (completionists) to do it. If they hate it, you make them do what they hate.
Imagine forcing people to read Sawyer's drivel and then test them on it. If they pass, they get XP. You think they'll thank you for it in their reviews?

giving flat out XP for engaging in lore dumps is bad. What I think is ok is having to have an idea of the lore to succesfully navigate dialogue or even puzzles (maybe optional). It would make sense for the player to have to have some idea of the world they're in.

 

[Roguey]

Cain dismisses criticisms of lore dumping in dialogue because as far as he's concerned, it's the player's choice to click those options. Don't like it, don't ask.

In my observation, xp for reading lore entries just means that people will click on them but not actually read the words.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Cain dismisses criticisms of lore dumping in dialogue because as far as he's concerned, it's the player's choice to click those options. Don't like it, don't ask.

When dialogues are full of lore dumps, it becomes a game of sidestepping land mines. "Don't like, don't ask", he says. When you become afraid to click anything that diverges from the critical path, lest it blows up in your face, this is punitive design.

 

[Old Hans]

Tries to play normally for an hour, then stops to consider if his build feels good and is fun to play. Does it feel like how he envisioned it would play, and would the mechanics work how would they seemed like they would work, and most importantly do the mechanics make sense in the setting (For example, you make a dialogue character, and then the first hour has nobody to talk to.

sounds like tim played underrail

 

[Roguey]

sounds like tim played underrail

It's an exploration-and-combat oriented game but there are definitely people to talk to in Underrail's opening section.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about game pitches to publishers, including what they should contain and what I used for game pitches in the past.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Cain's pitched products that got approval have always shipped, a relative rarity in the industry.
Fallout had no pitch doc, only well until the game's development was the vision document created.
First time he really had to convince a publisher was Troika with Arcanum, he and the founders made an 100+ page document. Showed it to pretty much every major publisher at the time, zero interest. Only Sierra really wanted to do it. They had 90 days to make a prototype to get approval. Prototype was a bit more developed then what Cain would describe in the past, it had people and buildings, time of day, dynamic shadows.
Approached by Atari and Activistion for ToEE and Bloodlines. All communication was verbal, no pitch or design document.
Next real pitch was WildStar, when the first design team was let go, Cain was given 90 days to come up with a new design, including classes( The original design being classless was apparently a major issue with the publisher.) Spellslinger class was an artist's ideas. Healer class was heavily changed, otherwise classes are as they ended up in the game. OG setting for Carbine was planet in the center of a multiverse with things from other dimensions bursting in. An executive pointed out that a game that could theoretically have anything doesn't really have a setting.
Sort of involved in Pillar's 'pitching', but it was unlike any other pitch they were doing. They blew past the first goal and then were making stretch goals up as they went along.
Involved in the Outer Worlds pitch, firefly meets fallout was already decided on, worked with Leonard on a pitch document involving mechanics and setting. The original plan was for Obsidian to self fund and publish, that idea didn't last 60 , possibly even 30 days. Pitch deck in powerpoint hastily constructed. No concept art so they had to just use other people's art in the same style they desired.
Showed it to 'everyone', Microsoft said no, Sony brought in a lot of people and asked really good questions, including a system designer and programmer who interrogated Cain over lunch. Sony seemed like they were going to go for it, then suddenly said no. Take Two's Private Division ended up coming in.
Pitches should have three different things if you don't have a design doc (You should have a design doc), starting with the elevator pitch.
Fallout's 1 elevator pitch would have been post apocalypse in the world the 50s would think would happen.
Should explain why the game is different and interesting, in a way that makes the publisher believe it (You already believe yourself.) You should be able to point out unusual settings and mechanics, things they have not seen before. If it's too different, they may get scared, so you have to do something like "Imagine X, but Y". Uses Arcanum as an example, heavy basis on LOTR, but introduces the industrial revolution.
Final clincher is why you should be the one to develop the game. If it's early on your career, bring up your technical expertise and how only you have what it takes to make it. If you're an old veteran, discuss your association with the game's genre and your previous game's successes.
Publishers really like powerpoint presentations. If you got to make a demo, make it pretty, publishers are not going to dig a greybox.

 

[0sacred]

Final clincher is why you should be the one to develop the game. If it's early on your career, bring up your technical expertise and how only you have what it takes to make it.

fake it till you make it

 

[Viata]

Just be a famous old dev and do a kickstarter. A lot of dumb people will give you money expecting a good game, despite it has been proved over and over that old devs are unable to make good games again.

 

[Roguey]

"Obsidian was going to self-fund it"

Yeah that was delusional.