Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[__scribbles__]

A clip that links to this in the comments:

Fred and Dan chat with Tim Cain about his career in games, including his leadership on Fallout, Arcanum, The Outer Worlds, and more. Tim explains why The Ur-Quan Masters is one of his favorite role-playing games, and shares his insights on telling an interactive story and finding a game's tone.

 

[Cohesion]

StrongBelwas Thanks. You're doing god's work. Don't have time to watch YouTube, your summary is much appreciated.

 

[__scribbles__]

I look at the objective data on my computer role playing games (numbers like team size, budget, sales, and review scores) to see if there are any conclusions I can reach.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Cain wants to look at the hard factual data of his games.
Wanted to look at all the games he worked on, but he has games with his code in them like Pillars 2 and Starfleet Academy but he didn't really work on, he just providing them something or he worked on them very briefly and was then moved off, will not be including those. Some games credited him in thanks like Fallout 3 or New Vegas, won't include these. Won't include any non-RPGs or expansions. Wildstar was such an outlier in many ways and hard to quantify because he doesn't know the final budget and the team size was huge but he wasn't sure how big, will not be included. Basically looking over the math of nine RPGs in this video.
First looks at development time, chart at 2:37. Time is divided into months, Fallout 2 was the quickest in 12 months, longest was South Park in 48 months (an estimate, was worked on for about a year before he got there.) Very slight upward trend in development time, but it's generally variable. RPGs seem to take between 28-35 months from that chart which makes sense to Cain.
Next, development team. Will look at credit size, but lots of people get credited, Cain just wants to look at specifically the development time. Chart at 4:20. Goes from 14 to 75 people, with the exception of Fallout to Arcanum, team size has a strong trend upward. When he went to go look at credit size(Chart at 5:09), the range is quite large, goes from 142 to 791. For almost every game he made, the factor of development team vs. credits is a factor of 10. However, there are often cases of repeats in the credits, but even accounting for that, there are many people needed to bring a game to market.
Next comes budget(chart at 6:40), Cain looked up information publicly. Double checked it against what he knew privately since publishers are publicly traded and have to mention it in shareholder events, and it seems to match. Doesn't have access to the information on the games he wasn't a director or company owner on. Ranged from $2 million to $33 million (Outer Worlds), again general trend is upward.
Next comes sales in millions of units (chart at 7:22), trend is 100,000 units (Vampire Bloodlines) to over 5 million (Outer Worlds and South Park.) Trend is generally up even considering the dip between south park to pillars/tyranny.
Final chart is review score on metacritic (8:30), specifically the PC version review score. The range is 71 from ToEE to 89 for a tie between Fallout 1 and Pillars of Eternity 1. Very very minor trend upwards.
What conclusions can you draw from this? No correlation between metacrtic score and games sales/budget/development team size. Obviously a correlation between budget and team size. No connection to scores and copies sold, Bloodlines scored well, worst selling RPG in Cain's career. No correlation between score and budget. No correlation between score and team size, Fallout and Arcanum scored better than teams with big games. Score doesn't seem to affect sales.
Development time and score both seem to go upwards slightly. Some games he rushed out early in his career, later games he generally took longer on.
Temple of Elemental Evil and Tyranny were two of the fastest games he did, and they have the lowest scores. Fallout 2 was done in a year, but got a high score.

 

[Gandalf]

How sales are counted? It's only up to one year since release or what? I thoought a classic like Fallout would make more sales in 27 years of it's existence.

 

[Roguey]

Budget drop:

Bloodlines was made for a mere $5 million ($8 million in today's money) and here's Paradox wasting $25 million on a cancelled sequel that looked worse and a so-far unknown amount on something that looks even worse.

The Outer Worlds certainly has the polish and better core mechanics, too bad the writing and the art were both significantly lacking despite that bigger budget.

We can thank Feargus for why Tyranny has less budget than Pillars.

 

[Roguey]

How sales are counted? It's only up to one year since release or what? I thoought a classic like Fallout would make more sales in 27 years of it's existence.

Yeah he doesn't really say where he stopped counting. The Outer Worlds made it to 5 million after four years. It'd be fair to either put all sales to date (though I don't believe he'd be in a position to get the numbers on the older non-Obsidian titles) or the numbers after the same amount of time for each had passed.

 

[Wesp5]

Yeah he doesn't really say where he stopped counting.

It must be early, because according to SteamDB, Bloodlines copies are estimated between 650k and 2 million and Fallout 1 between 500k and 11 million. At least the SteamSpy numbers should be accurate and they don't count copies sold before or on GOG.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Prefers to think about XP Per Act instead of XP Per Hour because people go through his nonlinear RPGs very differently. Repeat that you should have the story done before thinking about any of this.
Think about what level the player should be around each act.
Recommends giving XP just from quests, not for killing things or using skills. With Quest XP, you can give the player experience no matter how they completed it. If told to retrieve an item from bandits, no matter how you resolve it (diplomatically, forcefully, sneakily etc.) you just have to worry about them completing it.
Not certain about giving XP for achievements. Aspirational ones like completed 50 side quests in an area, he can see that as a nice bonus, doesn't think it's a great idea for things like killing 50 bugs or falling from a great height. XP is what you do to instruct the player on what you want them to do. If kills and use of skills are things the player is being told to do to get encouraged, the player is being encouraged to play a certain way. The logical endpoint for encouraging that kind of playthrough is the player finds an NPC, exhausts their dialogue tree for speech checks, steals everything they had, and then kills them to maximize XP gain.
So if you agree with Cain, how do you go about doing that? Given how many player builds can be made, divide the quests into main quests and side quests. Side quests don't necessarily have multiple solutions. Take up the total XP you want to give the player, and put about 80% of that into the main quests in each act. The idea is that if the player does just the main quests, they will hit each act with about 80% of the possible XP, and if they just stick to the main quest they won't hit level cap. Lots of different player builds, so when it comes to the side quests, they may do some, but not all of them, doing them gives a few extra levels but are not required to complete the game. Try to give roughly equal amount of side quests each act, with a good balance of combat side quests and noncombat side quests.
This is very hard for several reasons, several Cain planned for and some he didn't. Try and keep the XP in an external table. A quest doesn't say give 500 XP, it says give level 5 XP, and a table says Level 5 gives 500. You will be adjusting things later in the game when the content is in. Every game he has made has had content cut from it for various reasons. As you cut quests/NPCs/Areas, you cut the XP involved with them. Now you need to figure out how to hit that same 80% XP goal across each act. Can't just do an across the board shift because the cut content probably was focused around certain acts. Can also ask QA if they are at an adequate level at each act. This also becomes very messy if you have additional sources of XP such as killing things, keeping XP to one source makes it more manageable. This is the closest Cain has figured out to an engineering approach to the solution, short of just going by the seat of your pants and adjusting XP per act on the fly.

 

[Wesp5]

This is exactly how XP work in "Bloodlines", but absolutely not how XP work in "The Outer Worlds" where you get them from speech stats over lockpicking and hacking to killing enemies. How could that happen? Was he forced to do it that way by others?

 

[ciox]

I feel like I've spent most of my life agreeing with Cain's point and the "quest XP only" paradigm. But lately I feel this can fail in some circumstances, like when you are explicitly building a psycho minigunner berserker character (or team) that isn't really intended to do a lot of clever alternate solutions. It can also fail at making some areas feel like they are worth visiting, since it puts significant pressure on devs to be consistent with how they hand out quest XP, or whatever special hand-placed XP.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise like XP being granted automatically for kills but with some conditions, like it must be a unique named monster or a monster type that was not encountered before. This doesn't help very much with the former, but it does help with the latter since it's less likely you will get into a fight with dangerous new opponents and have nothing to show for it.

 

[agris]

I feel like I've spent most of my life agreeing with Cain's point and the "quest XP only" paradigm. But lately I feel this can fail in some circumstances, like when you are explicitly building a psycho minigunner berserker character (or team) that isn't really intended to do a lot of clever alternate solutions. It can also fail at making some areas feel like they are worth visiting, since it puts significant pressure on devs to be consistent with how they hand out quest XP, or whatever special hand-placed XP.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise like XP being granted automatically for kills but with some conditions, like it must be a unique named monster or a monster type that was not encountered before. This doesn't help very much with the former, but it does help with the latter since it's less likely you will get into a fight with dangerous new opponents and have nothing to show for it.

Underrail's oddity system addresses a lot of this. You can have the same sets of oddities appear on enemies as in containers located behind area guarded by enemies. With a limit on how many of a given type of oddity a player can get XP from - exactly how UR does it - you prevent double-dipping XP while allowing for the murderhobo, sneaker, and explorer to all advance.

 

[Roguey]

This is exactly how XP work in "Bloodlines", but absolutely not how XP work in "The Outer Worlds" where you get them from speech stats over lockpicking and hacking to killing enemies. How could that happen? Was he forced to do it that way by others?

Most likely, yes. Earlier this week he did a video where he said the game director doesn't necessarily get the final say. He was overruled by Boyarsky and/or the owners (who were perhaps still feeling the sting from all the xp addicts complaining about how the Pillars games did things; Sawyer is the Feargus-whisperer so he was able to get his way)

 

[std::namespace]

How could that happen?

he is full of shit

 

[ciox]

I feel like I've spent most of my life agreeing with Cain's point and the "quest XP only" paradigm. But lately I feel this can fail in some circumstances, like when you are explicitly building a psycho minigunner berserker character (or team) that isn't really intended to do a lot of clever alternate solutions. It can also fail at making some areas feel like they are worth visiting, since it puts significant pressure on devs to be consistent with how they hand out quest XP, or whatever special hand-placed XP.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise like XP being granted automatically for kills but with some conditions, like it must be a unique named monster or a monster type that was not encountered before. This doesn't help very much with the former, but it does help with the latter since it's less likely you will get into a fight with dangerous new opponents and have nothing to show for it.

Underrail's oddity system addresses a lot of this. You can have the same sets of oddities appear on enemies as in containers located behind area guarded by enemies. With a limit on how many of a given type of oddity a player can get XP from - exactly how UR does it - you prevent double-dipping XP while allowing for the murderhobo, sneaker, and explorer to all advance.

Underrail is one of the games I had in mind. It has the issue that many tough monsters don't drop unique oddities, they drop something you found a long time ago on a weaker monster, sometimes this was patched to fix it like with Black Crawler after like 7 years, but that just points out the potential problem, there is added pressure for devs to be consistent in delivering XP when the XP isn't systemic and usually things will fall through the cracks.

 

[Butter]

Tim's recommended model of 80% XP for main quest and 20% for side quests is absurd. If only the guy who made Fallout could talk to him and explain why that game was great. The main quest is technically quite short, only requiring you to do two things to win. But both of those things are challenging, and without a significant amount of XP from other sources (i.e. side quests) you're not going to be strong enough. The game is telling you what it wants you to do: Get out there and interact with the world. Do more than just follow the main quest. I gave up doing side quests in The Witcher 3 after about 10 minutes when I saw that they were giving fuckall XP. The game was telling me what it wanted me to do, so I listened.

 

[NecroLord]

Gaining bonus XP for completing quests in unusual ways, through diplomacy, subterfuge, etc.
Full Rambo mode also works.
Side quests should be there to aid in your levelling process.
Some side quests can also be really memorable if done right.

 

[Wesp5]

This is exactly how XP work in "Bloodlines", but absolutely not how XP work in "The Outer Worlds" where you get them from speech stats over lockpicking and hacking to killing enemies. How could that happen? Was he forced to do it that way by others?

Most likely, yes. Earlier this week he did a video where he said the game director doesn't necessarily get the final say. He was overruled by Boyarsky and/or the owners (who were perhaps still feeling the sting from all the xp addicts complaining about how the Pillars games did things; Sawyer is the Feargus-whisperer so he was able to get his way)

Cain answered to me in a YouTube comment explaining exactly this and saying that Boyarsky wasn't the reason. Makes me wonder who was powerful enough to overrule both of them and maybe add all the woke things too? Who were the owners of Obsidian at the time?

 

[Roguey]

Cain answered to me in a YouTube comment explaining exactly this and saying that Boyarsky wasn't the reason. Makes me wonder who was powerful enough to overrule both of them and maybe add all the woke things too? Who were the owners of Obsidian at the time?

It's always Feargus and Parker. Avellone said Monahan and Jones don't really care.

Any political issues you dislike would be entirely on Boyarsky/Cain. Feargus was the guy who kept demanding that a character design needed to be sexier until they delivered this expecting him to say to tone it down (he did not):

All game journalists and most of the people working at the company are against this kind of thing now, so the fun's over, and he's letting them make the kind of unglamorous characters they want.

 

[rojay]

I feel like I've spent most of my life agreeing with Cain's point and the "quest XP only" paradigm. But lately I feel this can fail in some circumstances, like when you are explicitly building a psycho minigunner berserker character (or team) that isn't really intended to do a lot of clever alternate solutions. It can also fail at making some areas feel like they are worth visiting, since it puts significant pressure on devs to be consistent with how they hand out quest XP, or whatever special hand-placed XP.

Maybe there could be some kind of compromise like XP being granted automatically for kills but with some conditions, like it must be a unique named monster or a monster type that was not encountered before. This doesn't help very much with the former, but it does help with the latter since it's less likely you will get into a fight with dangerous new opponents and have nothing to show for it.

I am trying to think of games that I've completed where I didn't reach the xp/level cap on my first playthrough. I think maybe when I first won ToEE I had some characters who weren't max level, but I can't remember, because it was so long ago. I'm also struggling to remember a game where I hit the max level *right* before the end, and thus didn't get to actually enjoy the benefits. Maybe Wrath on my first run?

I guess the point is that in the majority of games I've completed, I've hit the xp/level cap before I finished; some games it's earlier than others, but when it's as early as it was in BG3, it's frustrating.

Maybe someday I will learn to stop caring about character advancement and learn to love bears

 

[Goral]

I like Bloodlines/Colony Ship/Age of Decadence XP system the best but IMO the amount of points we get should be weighted. In Colony Ship or even Age of Decadence going the talker route was the easy mode and going full murder psychopath was hard and XP points (at least in some cases) should reflect that. It might be a balance nightmare for devs though.

 

[Wesp5]

I like Bloodlines/Colony Ship/Age of Decadence XP system the best but IMO the amount of points we get should be weighted.

Bloodlines uses bonus XP for something like not being seen or killing nobody. You could also give some for killing everybody !

 

[Wesp5]

Cain answered to me in a YouTube comment explaining exactly this and saying that Boyarsky wasn't the reason. Makes me wonder who was powerful enough to overrule both of them and maybe add all the woke things too? Who were the owners of Obsidian at the time?

It's always Feargus and Parker. Avellone said Monahan and Jones don't really care.

And the former would force the game directors to use an XP system they don't like? Is getting-XP-for-everything their favorite system? I never player any other Obsidian game...

Any political issues you dislike would be entirely on Boyarsky/Cain.

It's not only the political issues, which probably would be up to the writers, but also most NPC models were so ugly, women and men! They didn't even fix it in the DLC after all the backlash of the original game as if they just couldn't do better.

 

[Roguey]

And the former would force the game directors to use an XP system they don't like? Is getting-XP-for-everything their favorite system? I never player any other Obsidian game...

There are a lot of XP addicts, of course that attitude would extend to RPG studio managers. Of all their games, Pillars 1 and 2 are the only ones where you'll eventually stop getting xp from kills after filling out the bestiary, and that was both controversial and a compromise from the original idea of no xp whatsoever.

It's not only the political issues, which probably would be up to the writers, but also most NPC models were so ugly, women and men! They didn't even fix it in the DLC after all the backlash of the original game as if they just couldn't do better.

Halcyon Helen looks good in the cinematic trailer, but they did the best they could with the tools they had available in the game itself.

 

[Bad Sector]

I like XP from kills for two reasons:

1. I like to explore the world (often ignoring the main quest and sometimes looking for side stuff) and in RPGs this also implies that there will be battles. I want to get XP from those battles otherwise they're just a waste of time with the game telling me to stop exploring and get back on the quest rails.
   • A game could give something else for the combat, but at the end of the day the resource that matters most in RPGs tends to be XP (or whatever equivalent there is for character progression). And while it could, in theory, give some other resource for combat that is also used independently for character progression (e.g. quest completion gives points -XP or whatever- to be used to improve stats, combat gives points to be used for getting perks or improving skills), IMO in practice this all boils down to the same thing and the separation is artificial complexity.
2. I want to be able to create supermen characters if i put the effort (see above about exploring the world). I don't want a character that killed 1000000 NPCs to have the same power as a character that killed 100 NPCs. Raising a character or party from hobos to demigods by murdering everything that breaths is immensely satisfying.
   • BTW, this is not the same as "unlocking every skill, perk, etc" which i do not like as it hampers replayability.

Feargus was the guy who kept demanding that a character design needed to be sexier until they delivered this expecting him to say to tone it down (he did not):

IMO this Feargus guy should start demanding stuff again :-P