Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[StrongBelwas]

Using Fallout as an example because it's his oldest game and there shouldn't be any spoilers (Was surprised that china nuking America was considered a spoiler.)
Factions shouldn't be monolithic entities where everyone in them feels and thinks the same things. The super mutants and the brotherhood of steel both had characters that were pretty distinct from the standard grunts.
Cain is sick of narrative designers that think that sarcasm is the first and best way to make a character, if Cain played a game that didn't have any sarcastic characters he'd be happy. It's too easy, if you're thinking of a character and they're main trait is sarcasm, think again. Cain has rejected several characters on games he has worked on because they already had too many sarcastic characters. Plenty of alternatives, you could have smart characters, you could have (very) dumb characters, you could have very violent characters or passive characters. Gives fun opportunities for dialogue skill based player characters. A good faction has room for all kind of characters. They should also have realistic goals the player can understand, such as the mutants appearing to just random attacks but the player learns the raids are trying to find prime humans that didn't receive a lot of radiation. This also explains the difference between the dumber mutants and the Lieutenant. Likewise, the Brotherhood of Steel is trying to preserve technology, and their attacks are explained by trying to keep technology out of the wrong hands (Anyone but theirs.)
Why do you need to make the factions like this? It's realistic, if you care about that (Cain doesn't, but he put it in the list because some people care.) Cain cares about the factions are able to be used to support the story, if they have characters with lots of goals, you have reasons for the player to get involved with the story. It also means that if factions have different characters, different player builds can be supported. If the faction has tough character, combat characters get an interesting fight (Super Mutants and Brotherhood are both very tough to fight.) Speech characters also get interesting options, such as with the smart mutants, or the Cathedral. And for sneak characters, both of those factions are rich and have large maps to sneak and steal through.
Also supports players. Some players want sarcastic NPCs (That's fine, just not too many), some players want mean NPCs.
Big factions with varied characters should also mean no matter what kind of character the player makes it shouldn't be too obvious which faction they should support.
One of Cain's favorite things about New Vegas is that he couldn't out figure out which faction to support, so he made a save and played through it with every faction. Blew up the brotherhood of steel outpost once, felt bad about it but wanted to see what would happen.
TL;DR Make as many different factions as you can with very different faction members.

 

[Alienman]

His disregard for nuance when it comes to factions might explain why the organizations felt so one note in Outer Worlds.

 

[NecroLord]

Using Fallout as an example because it's his oldest game and there shouldn't be any spoilers (Was surprised that china nuking America was considered a spoiler.)
Factions shouldn't be monolithic entities where everyone in them feels and thinks the same things. The super mutants and the brotherhood of steel both had characters that were pretty distinct from the standard grunts.
Cain is sick of narrative designers that think that sarcasm is the first and best way to make a character, if Cain played a game that didn't have any sarcastic characters he'd be happy. It's too easy, if you're thinking of a character and they're main trait is sarcasm, think again. Cain has rejected several characters on games he has worked on because they already had too many sarcastic characters. Plenty of alternatives, you could have smart characters, you could have (very) dumb characters, you could have very violent characters or passive characters. Gives fun opportunities for dialogue skill based player characters. A good faction has room for all kind of characters. They should also have realistic goals the player can understand, such as the mutants appearing to just random attacks but the player learns the raids are trying to find prime humans that didn't receive a lot of radiation. This also explains the difference between the dumber mutants and the Lieutenant. Likewise, the Brotherhood of Steel is trying to preserve technology, and their attacks are explained by trying to keep technology out of the wrong hands (Anyone but theirs.)
Why do you need to make the factions like this? It's realistic, if you care about that (Cain doesn't, but he put it in the list because some people care.) Cain cares about the factions are able to be used to support the story, if they have characters with lots of goals, you have reasons for the player to get involved with the story. It also means that if factions have different characters, different player builds can be supported. If the faction has tough character, combat characters get an interesting fight (Super Mutants and Brotherhood are both very tough to fight.) Speech characters also get interesting options, such as with the smart mutants, or the Cathedral. And for sneak characters, both of those factions are rich and have large maps to sneak and steal through.
Also supports players. Some players want sarcastic NPCs (That's fine, just not too many), some players want mean NPCs.
Big factions with varied characters should also mean no matter what kind of character the player makes it shouldn't be too obvious which faction they should support.
One of Cain's favorite things about New Vegas is that he couldn't out figure out which faction to support, so he made a save and played through it with every faction. Blew up the brotherhood of steel outpost once, felt bad about it but wanted to see what would happen.
TL;DR Make as many different factions as you can with very different faction members.

I like how the Brotherhood just didn't give a shit about what the Vault Dweller did, despite you being an Initiate. One would expect them to train you and have you perform duties for them, but the Wasteland is the best teacher, right?
They let you go on your merry way even in endgame.
Wonder what happened to the Power Armor? Would've been interesting to leave the Power Armor as inheritance to his descendant, namely the Chosen One in Fallout 2, huh?

 

[user]

Moral of the story is you don't have to pander to casuals. If it's a good game, they'll still buy it and your review scores won't suffer. Casuals will always look up guides and hints, because they want to consume the game and move on, not get stuck on something mildly challenging or potentially miss a secret.

I think From gets a pass from critics because of the bottom-up wave of acclaim creating Fear of Missing Out. There are certainly a loud number of them who are constantly complaining about how their games need an easy difficulty so their jobs can be easier. And then there are the envious western devs:

Kehkehkeh I remember that, and they weren't the only ones being salty about something they simply fail to understand. Should they even work the industry?

 

[Vyvian]

Horizon Forbidden Bore guy talking about quest design. Peak comedy.

 

[Moink]

I think the sarcasm thing is less an "easy to write" problem and more a problem with people not being sincere when it comes to writing things nowadays, everything has to be tinged with irony.

 

[Alienman]

I think the sarcasm thing is less an "easy to write" problem and more a problem with people not being sincere when it comes to writing things nowadays, everything has to be tinged with irony.

Marvel writing.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about being proactive at work and why this is so important.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Wants to focus on this from the previous video because people were wrapping it up in the passion argument.
Goes back to the story about the friend he refused a promotion who was technically good but just wouldn't do anything without being explicitly told, saw no evidence he would take care of problems on his own.
What made him think of doing this video was seeing people in the comments say they are not ready yet for a games job list their reasons and beg for Cain to do a coding video, but what gets him is seeing that probably not a week go by where someone doesn't say "Could you talk about how to get a job in the industry", and their inability to take a minor step to see if he already did that video is a mark against them.
If you were working and you see something wrong, just ask someone. Don't need to go in person, you can use slack or email. If you don't want to directly ask the game director/Cain or a higher up you can ask whoever you report to. If you think you know the fix, try it and then shelve it, so you can access it later if the fix is approved.
If you hate being a cog/not being listened to, those are a symptom of you not being proactive. You aren't a cause of the problems of the company, but you are a symptom. Have to find some way of communicating unless you're going 100% solo dev.
If you don't do this, they may not find the problem until the game is released or it's so far into development the fix is very expensive.
The worst someone can do is say it's not a problem and leave it. Maybe they already know about it, maybe they are aware of 100 more important problems. But at least you told someone.
Not being proactive is inevitably going to put a ceiling on how high you can go up in the chain, because sooner or later the job will involve noticing and communicating problems. Cain has known some people so good at their job but so against managing people that companies invent side jobs for them where they become something like a principal programmer where they manage an entire section of the game without anyone under them, but even those people are very proactive with reporting problems. Knew a graphics principal programmer who often went and asked about problems they noticed in designs or the save system.
However they structure it, a team is going to need someone looking out for problems, try and be that person.

 

[Quillon]

I talk about being proactive at work and why this is so important.

So woke devs in murica telling each other @1:03:

"Passion is bad because it makes you used by corporations"

no wonder we get soulless gayms. this should be a straight up firing reason in an industry that heavily relies on creativity ffs

 

[StrongBelwas]

Uses the original Junktown setup as an example, Killian throttling the town with harsh justice if you help him defeat Gizmo vs. Gizmo helping the town grow.
Realized late in playtesting that there was no clue that siding with Killian would have such negative long term consequences, players felt punished for doing what the game seems to guide you to do. Killian and Gizmo were both already recorded and it wasn't even clear their voice actors could come back, so they decided to change the ending instead of the dialogue to include clues. You could also always just choose to walk away. Most players feel the need to intervene, but perhaps this can be a lesson that sometimes the best option is not taking a side.
Cain gets the most comments when he tells a game development story that is very grey and people go to the comments and start taking sides. Goes back to the story of the team member told to add a feature without telling Cain, and mentions that feature caused a lockup bug that meant everyone in the team learned about it within 24 hours because they had to be warned to avoid an area or the game would be stuck.
Whether in real life or in games, once you've made a choice, you are now part of the problem. Once a superior has asked you to do something that is a little unethical, and you do it, they are going to come back and ask you to do something worse. When the lockup bug was discovered, and Cain wrote the report on it and figured out the superior that caused the issue to begin with, he sent the report to him and assigned him to clean up the problem. The superior passed that onto the lead programmer who passed it onto the programmer, and now everybody knows how a bad feature got into the game, leading to a trust problem. Everyone is responsible for their actions, and Cain now considered himself responsible for checking on that team member's check ins for the last few months of development.
Cain thinks gray morality makes games more interesting, and definitely leads to more people talking about the game.

 

[Roguey]

I have a question re: grey morality. How do you ensure that the choices offered to the player don't end up having one choice as the better choice in terms of gameplay?

That’s a tough question, and it’s part of the reason I like to give XP for quests and not for combat and skill use. My best answer is you try to balance out the rewards from different choices, and make the really important rewards not be tied to specific decisions, e.g. the ogre chief has the best crushing weapon in the game, but you can kill him, steal it, buy it, or do a quest for the ogre….all of which leave the clan with a different reaction to you.

XP Addicts seething, though every Tim Cain game (Bloodlines isn't his) gives xp for combat and skill use so this is something he likes to do in theory.

 

[user]

So woke devs in murica telling each other @1:03:

"Passion is bad because it makes you used by corporations"

no wonder we get soulless gayms. this should be a straight up firing reason in an industry that heavily relies on creativity ffs

There's a not-so-thin line between being a subservient corporate cuck, ripe for exploitation, and being a passionate and proactive developer. Or as Tim said, this is something different.

 

[Quillon]

There's a not-so-thin line between being a subservient corporate cuck, ripe for exploitation, and being a passionate and proactive developer. Or as Tim said, this is something different.

I don't care about how devs are treated, that's their problem. I care about what they do. Being passionate is/should be a requirement if their goal is to produce a good gaym/something worth playing.

Tim's just complaining about the same thing with this and a few other vids, while trying to seem like not really doing it.

 

[user]

There's a not-so-thin line between being a subservient corporate cuck, ripe for exploitation, and being a passionate and proactive developer. Or as Tim said, this is something different.

I don't care about how devs are treated, that's their problem. I care about what they do. Being passionate is/should be a requirement if their goal is to produce a good gaym/something worth playing.

Tim's just complaining about the same thing with this and a few other vids, while trying to seem like not really doing it.

Of course there are people who say this because they just don't really like their job and would like to believe that being proactive equals being the former.

But frantic crunches or ridiculous dev sprints to fatten shareholder wallets ASAP do not lead to passionate work, but the exact opposite of that.
They lead to shoddy products, devoid of passion. If there's not even enough time to complete all tasks before a deadline for a barely working product, how much passion or quality do you expect in it?

You know, a lot of people make comparisons with devs of the past, doing passion projects, working on 2 jobs at the same time etc. There are huge differences though. Those devs were not working in money crunching soulless corps and those who were setting the goalposts and deadlines usually had a vision and were passionate about game dev themselves. And their goals were not just about selling more and faster. This is not the case today outside of some indies.

 

[NecroLord]

Uses the original Junktown setup as an example, Killian throttling the town with harsh justice if you help him defeat Gizmo vs. Gizmo helping the town grow.
Realized late in playtesting that there was no clue that siding with Killian would have such negative long term consequences, players felt punished for doing what the game seems to guide you to do. Killian and Gizmo were both already recorded and it wasn't even clear their voice actors could come back, so they decided to change the ending instead of the dialogue to include clues. You could also always just choose to walk away. Most players feel the need to intervene, but perhaps this can be a lesson that sometimes the best option is not taking a side.
Cain gets the most comments when he tells a game development story that is very grey and people go to the comments and start taking sides. Goes back to the story of the team member told to add a feature without telling Cain, and mentions that feature caused a lockup bug that meant everyone in the team learned about it within 24 hours because they had to be warned to avoid an area or the game would be stuck.
Whether in real life or in games, once you've made a choice, you are now part of the problem. Once a superior has asked you to do something that is a little unethical, and you do it, they are going to come back and ask you to do something worse. When the lockup bug was discovered, and Cain wrote the report on it and figured out the superior that caused the issue to begin with, he sent the report to him and assigned him to clean up the problem. The superior passed that onto the lead programmer who passed it onto the programmer, and now everybody knows how a bad feature got into the game, leading to a trust problem. Everyone is responsible for their actions, and Cain now considered himself responsible for checking on that team member's check ins for the last few months of development.
Cain thinks gray morality makes games more interesting, and definitely leads to more people talking about the game.

"Gizmo helping the town grow."
You're kidding?
Gizmo's pocket and belly growing, perhaps.
Gambling and whores...
Killian is a fair man, so I don't know what negative consequences are there to his leadership.

 

[Butter]

I guess Junktown could "grow" into New Reno. Not sure that qualifies as an improvement. As great as Fallout is, I'm pretty sure you could come up with a better scenario for the "good ending turns out to be bad" twist.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about why game directors seem to have strong egos...and I don't mean being egotistical. Instead, they have well-developed game development philosophies.

 

[StrongBelwas]

The director's philosophy should be what guides every feature and decides what is implemented. There are probably leads working under them making a lot of those decisions, but they should all be using the director's vision as a basis.
A good director should be willing to discuss those goals and change them if they end up causing problems (i.e a weapon that blurs the distinction between melee or ranged, or the sharp distinction between melee and ranged causing some weapons to not be implemented.)
There is a limit to how much they want these goals constantly confronted. You shouldn't be getting behind work because you've spent hours arguing with the game director. Some things are going to be subjective, the game director may not feel the problem is high priority, or recognizes the problem, but believes they are worth accepting because the ultimately support the main goals. If it's subjective, you just have to accept the director wins out, unless you start constantly spotting problems.
Prefers developed game philosophy to adopted game philosophy. Developed would be something you worked out after years at looking at other games and talking to people, an adopted one is you worked under someone, they told you how to do it this way and it will always be done this way, and you just accept it. Cain has worked with a lot of people, particularly newbies, who come in, say this is how you do it, Cain questions why, and they don't even really know, it's just how they were told to do things. Sometimes they don't even realize why that way conflicts with the goals Cain has for the project until he explains it to them.
Cain's family always rooted for the hometown football time, Cain's brother in law preferred the Minnesota Vikings, Cain thought that was interesting because the brother in law grew up in Washington D.C. like the rest of them. Cain had a friend who changed religions in graduate school, Cain being personally secular and having taken a comparative religion class a few years back thought that was interesting because it hardly happens. Cain believes that people with adopted belief systems get more defensive than those with developed belief systems when questioned, thinks you can also spot the difference in game development when you start questioning someone and see how they respond.
Game directors should be able to explain to you their vision in a consistent way.
If you find yourself constantly clashing with your directors and you have your own consistent vision, maybe you could be a director someday. Cain getting to be Fallout's director was a combination of luck with his producer having to move to another project and giving him control, and having 13 years in the industry before Interplay.
Talk to other developers about their philosophies (Assuming they can explain it), play a lot of games, conferences like GDC can be a good way to find more philosophies. Question how games work, why something works in one game and not in another. Then if you ever get the chance to be a game director, you should be able to strongly argue for your philosophy and goal.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about the in-person tests I have given to programmer and designer candidates... and why I do these tests in-person.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Key reason to do the tests in person is that people will often lie. People lie about the programming languages they know, they lie about what they have experience doing. The most common lie Cain finds is people inflate the role they had in a game they worked on. They claim they came up with the idea or their work was integral to it, or maybe they take complete responsibility for a feature multiple people had worked on. Enough people have lied about it and ruined interview situations to the point Cain has to do it in person.

Cain wants to see how you work in person, and needs to see you in action. Cain wants to see your thought process and encourages people being interviewed to talk their way through the solution on a whiteboard. Your attitude is also important, you will probably be assigned to a team.

Cain gives the example of a music playlist editor, the user can add songs at any time, what do you think should happen when the player adds a duplicate song? Cain waits to see how the interviewee responds, what they think is the right answer. Then, Cain walks through all the different ways he personally thinks it could be handled, and asks them to comment on each one. First one Cain thinks of is silently reject the song entry, nothing else happens, the playlist just continues sans duplicate. Second, duplicate the song on the list, do nothing beyond that. Third, have a pop up that the song is already on the playlist and if you would like to duplicate. Fourth, player is asked at playlist creation if they want duplicates allowed on the list.

Cain likes that question because Cain wants the person being interviewed him to walk him through the thought process of which one is best, and it doesn't require any knowledge of the industry or specific background, it's basically a critical thinking question wrapped up in a game design.

Why can't Cain just send you an at home test and let you do it at your own? Lots of people hate those, consider it unpaid work. People just look stuff up online, or get a friend in the industry to help them answer the questions. Happened too often, people ruined take home testing.

If you have a better idea, let Cain know in the comments, but you always have to consider how your interview solution keeps them from getting someone else to help them answer and also shows they can work in a team.

Programmer tests are general questions, anything more than that is left to a specialist programmer. Cain tends to ask questions like give him an integer, return true if even or false if it's odd. Most people assume that is easy, Cain asks is it really? Second, given two integers, return their average. If you think that sounds easy, Cain asks if you are really considering everything. Third, given a string that is a number, convert it to a number, or given a number, return it's string equivalent. Fourth, Cain really likes this one, reverse a string. Cain likes to ask variations after seeing the first implementation. Cain asks for a reversal but using no extra memory (Thanking them if they managed that on the first try.) Now, reverse the words in a string (How are you becomes you are how), and than asks the same thing but again using no extra memory. Anything more specific than that, bring a programmer over to ask. Also likes to ask most difficult piece of code you've had to implement, and why was it difficult? Cain mainly likes to pay attention to how someone answers this one, was the code difficult because the design was vague, it was just a really tricky problem , the designer wanted an impractically quick solution, etc.

Design, Cain breaks it up into lots of different things, given how many different considerations there are for designers. Will not go into narrative design, he generally leaves that to the lead narrative designer to ask. Likes to ask top three games of all time, and why? For each one, give Cain it's best and worst feature. If you can't think of one thing your favorite games didn't do right, Cain might have some follow up questions. What is your least favorite game, and what did it do best and what did it do worst? Can you objectively quantify a game without letting your emotions about it get in the way? What are your three favorite game genres, Cain does not expect RPGs to be in the top three. There isn't a wrong answer to this, he wants to see how you respond. If you just dismissively say you like action games and don't really elaborate about them or mention any other genres, that's a bit odd. If you say you only like 'dating games, adventure games, or games with lots of microtransactions', Cain will have some interesting follow up questions.

Last general one would be if you were designing an RPG and were told not to use classes. Tell Cain what the advantages and disadvantages of a class-free system compared to an RPG that uses classes. Wants to see designers critique their own work, if they know why they are doing what they are doing.

After this, Cain asks more specific questions. For combat, how would you implement a numerical ranking of weapons that indicates how good it is, what factors go into that? Tell Cain all the factors that go into the hit probability of a particular weapon on a particular target. What would you want to include in that, and why?

For a level designer, Cain prefers to lean on his lead level designers for questions, but he asks what goes into making a good combat environment? Name a game that does that well. What do you think the advantages and disadvantages are for giving each player character race a different starting zone?

Finally, some economy questions, particurally if the interviewee pitches their skill at crafting systems. How would you approach designing the amount of gold players receive per hour, and what factors would go into determining that (Player level, zone, etc.) How can you add new high level items into an existing RPG without making existing high level items obsolete?

The common trait among this questions is they rarely have a wrong answer, Cain wants to see your thought approach. Many of these could be answered just by playing a lot of games and being analytical about them. They are for Cain to deep dive into your thought processes and your biases. Cain sometimes gets surprising answers. For the games Cain is working on (And he hopes you looked this up beforehand), there are some answers that will obviously be more appropriate. If they are interviewing for a crafting designer for an MMO and you say you don't play MMOs, that's a red flag and Cain hopes your answers are very good.

Lot of people don't like this, but it helps a lot to separate out the outright liars and people who exaggerate their abilities.

 

[__scribbles__]

I talk about my thoughts on modding, including how I like to play them, how I like my games being modded, and how I respect those who make them.

 

[Gandalf]

StrongBelwas Do you plan to write about what's going on today's episode?

 

[StrongBelwas]

Love mods, love modders, wrote a list to make sure he covered everything.
Loves it for showing creativity and effort, goes above and beyond.
Generally likes to do his first playthrough vanilla with any patches the company applied. Likes to play sans DLC first time around. Later on uses mods, likes to start with ones that add new areas and quests. Likes less to play ones that change system mechanics or remove mechanics entirely, feels that is altering the foundation. Less interested in those as a player to be specific, would find that kind of mod portfolio very interesting if he was interviewing someone for a position.
Won't review the mods he uses.
Encouraged modding in all games he had a lot of control over. Arcanum, they made sure they shipped the world editor and Sockmonkey, the script editor. Convinced the publisher to do that via multiplayer, saying they would need modding to help players get the new maps they would want.
Huge difference between someone just saying they'd want something to work differently and a modder going to get it done. Respects doing something instead of saying something.
Can't always prioritize modding. Often had publishers who pushed back, saying they don't pay Cain & Co. to make it easier to mod, and they are running out of time/money as is. Can't prioritize adding new stuff like exposing stuff to modders, can't always ship tools. Sometimes tools are proprietary , like third party tools to do lip syncing they bought or subscribed to, they can't include those for the modders. Some tools required networked resources as the teams got a lot bigger, at Obsidian they used a string tool that keeps text in a big database and keeps track of how many things are being referenced, what languages it has been translated to and what languages it needs to be translated to. That isn't on any one person's computer, hard to ship because it's propriety and needs a network backend. Could theoretically do a non-networked version, but hard to justify the time and expense.
If a game ships not very mod friendly, it's more likely that modding wasn't a priority than the developers specifically not wanting people to mod.
Many games now ship on common engines like Unity/Unreal/GODOT, these games use similar data format. Learn one, much easier to make some mods (not all mods) for that system. Still likes it when games ship with specific tools, but push comes to shove, learn a game engine and mod with that.
TL;DR : likes mods, plays with mods, likes when people play his games with mods, understands some aren't as easy to mod as others.

 

[Viata]

Was there any mod for TOW?