Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[PapaPetro]

Are Chris and Tim on good terms?

At least Chris has given a shout out to Tim's channel on different occasions, I think he even posted the Fallout 2 video on his Linkedin page. He must hold a lot of respect for him:

Simultaneous Turns!

https://youtu.be/3dajGzCKRYw?t=2140

 

[Warhawk47]

Still strange, big surprise. The game really started with the mechanical underpinnings, finding its way from swords and shields to Fallout, but Tim's assertion prior to that is "it all starts with a setting." At least he could admit it sounds slapdash, which it does.

Another thing he seems to miss, or not hash out while discussing, is the difference between art and product. Great art rarely makes for a great product, and vice versa. Fallout 1 ended up somewhere in between. It lacked the lone visionary whose art it would have been. Collaborative art tends to fall short of what an individual can do, even when it gets awfully close, which in this case it did. The tradeoff here is that to make a product that sells, you need a team to develop it quickly enough. Some guy in his basement could just as easily have designed Fallout, but in the time it would take him to actually build it (with tools of the time) he'd likely still be at it today.

If we were all paid to exist (and it didn't involve supreme mental and physical slavery) then we could have plenty of awesome RPGs, even if they did take 5-10 years to build. There are enough people to go around. But if you want it now, in the form of a product with a price tag, you literally get what you pay for.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I like how the team decided on the post apocalyptic setting based on ideas and motives rather than cynical calculations.

 

[Konjad]

Another video firmly establishing that all the RPGs you like are only as good as they are due to luck and circumstance and there was never any grand genius behind them. It's amazing that there are any good RPGs at all.

Troika Games, Zero Sum... I'd say both of them weren't just hitting D20, they really were good (especially Troika). It was a team effort though, no single genius behind everything.

 

[Moink]

Slightly out of the loop but has Tim said anything about his time at Carbine/WildStar? I've heard some very bad things about his management during the early development, getting his side of the story would be interesting.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Slightly out of the loop but has Tim said anything about his time at Carbine/WildStar? I've heard some very bad things about his management during the early development, getting his side of the story would be interesting.

Maaaaan, now that was a shitstorm. Wildstar had some nice things going but buggy endgame, shitty updates and non existant account security quickly killed that game.
I was shocked to find my character completly naked one morning. Fuckers sold everything for gold and destroyed quest items, accound bound unsellable objects...

 

[Moink]

Slightly out of the loop but has Tim said anything about his time at Carbine/WildStar? I've heard some very bad things about his management during the early development, getting his side of the story would be interesting.

Maaaaan, now that was a shitstorm. Wildstar had some nice things going but buggy endgame, shitty updates and non existant account security quickly killed that game.
I was shocked to find my character completly naked one morning. Fuckers sold everything for gold and destroyed quest items, accound bound unsellable objects...

He's apparently innocent of a lot of these sins because he, allegedly, fucked up so much barely any of his ~5 years of work made it into the final product;

One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leadership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...

 

[Goral]

Arcanum and VtMB talks are the best:

 

[Abu Antar]

I think these guys undersell themselves a bit. They don't give themselves enough for the good things that they did, and criticize themselves too much. Not that they never made any errors in judgement. Chris Avellone is the same. Too humble for their own good in talks about previous games.

 

[luj1]

It' s because he managed to successfully switch the ruleset of Fallout few weeks before shipping. It gave him a confidence in making such rapid changes right before shipping.

Fallout's system wasn't his. That was Chris Taylor's homebrew that he created in high school, Tim's only contribution was adding Luck.

ChrisT the real unsung G

 

[Roguey]

His story reminds me of what Sawyer described as the wrong way to make an RPG (which I still agree with)

Basically I think that most designers are overly concerned with what's come before when they sit down to write CRPG mechanics. When looking at mechanics that typically go into CRPGs, it's pretty hard to reverse-engineer a plan of intent. The conclusion I'm usually left with is that they wanted the system to "look like an RPG" on a UI screen. They have classes and stats and skills and skill/talent trees and a ton of derived stats when probably not all of that is necessary.

I believe that game designers, whether working in the RPG genre or otherwise, should establish what they want the player to be doing within the world. That is, they must ask themselves what they want the core activities of the player to be. Within those activities, the designer can find ways to allow growth over time in a variety of ways. How they want that growth to occur and what sort of choices they want to force the player to make -- that's what should drive the design of the advancement/RPG system.

Instead it usually seems like most designers sit down and say, "Well what are the ability scores going to be?"

He also talks about how he still believes in the Shapes but admits he just wasn't good enough to make it work.

 

[ItsChon]

The more I learn about Sawyer the more fucking triggered I get. I can understand the issues with someone being overly concerned with what has come before, and how that could stifle creativity, but is there really no fucking middle ground? Is the only alternative to completely wipe our ass with what came before in favor of some new, "innovative" idea? Do these developers never stop to think that they're creating games that people are not only getting excited over and waiting ages to play, but also spending their own hard earned money to play? When a game ends up sucking ass because some developer thinks they've reinvented the wheel, but instead they've just bungled systems and concepts that have been proven to work, they're not only disappointing people who bought the game, they're not only wasting people's hard earned money, but they're also directly impacting the industry and the types of games we can expect to see in the future. Because of Sawyer's fuck ups with PoE, the common conception in the industry is that there is no market for a RTwP isometric RPG. Of the few types of games I enjoy, this was one of them, and now I don't know when I'll get another chance to play such a game again with "triple A" levels of polish, if ever.

 

[Roguey]

The reception of ME2/3 over 1 proves that "make progression systems after you figure out your core gameplay, dummy" method is superior.

PoE was not made in this manner. He was appealing to nostalgia (often in dumb, wrongheaded ways, that's on him).

Because of Sawyer's fuck ups with PoE, the common conception in the industry is that there is no market for a RTwP isometric RPG. Of the few types of games I enjoy, this was one of them, and now I don't know when I'll get a chance to play such a game again with "triple A" levels of polish, if ever.

Huh? Both games did well. The Pathfinder games did better. An attempt was made with Black Geyser. There's no hope for a AAA rtwp game because the market isn't there, also you wouldn't even like what a hypothetical developer would have to do to make it accessible for so many millions.

 

[Abu Antar]

Catering to nostalgia doesn't have to be bad. While I enjoy Pillars for what it is, he failed in many ways.

Both in writing, and in the combat system/combat mechanics.

 

[Warhawk47]

There's a single word that it doesn't seem Tim used throughout that entire last video: Redundant. The word he was looking for was Redundant. Was not at all surprised that testers saw no functional difference between "passion" and "zeal" when both are under the "spiritual" category, when the category itself is almost entirely redundant next to "mental." It sounded like it was all tied to "talking to people". What about resisting evil? Demonic possession? Consecrating items? Dispelling hexes? Passing through otherwise lethal barriers or opening sacred containers? Anything?

If he wanted a spiritual tie-in to perception, this would be called wisdom. Just one problem: This is a trait that players have. You can't make it a virtual trait without making the game play itself.

All of that said, I'm beginning to understand the "shapes" thing. A better way to phrase it would be a series of interconnected sliders which adjust each other to different degrees as you move them around. The issue is that if almost all traits impact each other, players will try to bullseye 3-4 of them at desired values when either 1) This is mathematically impossible, or 2) No interface options allow you to lock or specify them, resulting in constant fiddling back and forth that feels like a frustrating waste of time. Plus, changing from this point would be fraught with problems since addition would lead to subtraction. It only works well enough for the initial character setup, and some non-point based, or even non-specified progression would be needed. The best would probably be something like a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing, using the player's own actions to determine what increases (or decreases, if you're being very naturalistic and the game relies more on player skill than virtual skill).

He's apparently innocent of a lot of these sins because he, allegedly, fucked up so much barely any of his ~5 years of work made it into the final product;

One of the most prevalent issues with the game that I noticed was bad direction from top down. People like Tim Cain specifically made way more problems than they were worth. Honestly the guy was a total dick. Awful to work with and almost nothing he "did" ended up in the game. His lack of leadership I would say was one of the reasons why the first 4-5 years of the game were almost completely thrown out. Literally...

Very curious if there's anything more specific to this story.

 

[quaesta]

And we talked to Valve because the VP of Valve, Scott Lynch, had been the VP who signed us to Sierra for Arcanum.

I always wondered why Troika Games got the rights to Source Engine, and nobody else. Nice to fill that little gap in my mind

 

[quaesta]

That first question is tough, so let me answer the second one first: no, I’ve never been approached to work on Fallout, before or since its acquisition. And I’ve applied to Bethesda…twice.

As for working on it again, the best way to frame an answer is that I’m comfortable not working on it again. However, I designed a Fallout game years ago that I’ve never seen done, either in the franchise or outside of it. I poke at that design occasionally

Todd is such a scumbag. I wonder if he even read, or received that resume though, or if Pete "not discussing the realism..." Hines intercepted it.
So, if all of the people who owned Trokia were to die, and a relative found Tim's source code and released it, would there be any contractual conflict? Will we be playing OpenArcanum in 20-30 years? The future is now.

Also, I wonder what he records these videos with. They either have visual glitches or bad sound. I want to archive his channel for posterity but the quality is rough.

He said he applied. I'm giving it at least, a 70% chance, that what happened was some bot rejected his resume cause of job gaps or he didn't had up to date skills OR some HR lady rejected him, not knowing who he was, to someone else. This is even worst than simple ghosting him, he was never reached out to

 

[Roguey]

I always wondered why Troika Games got the rights to Source Engine, and nobody else. Nice to fill that little gap in my mind

Well other devs also used Source, they just weren't crazy enough to want to use it in the earliest stages of its development.

 

[Harthwain]

Huh? Both games did well. The Pathfinder games did better.

If they did, we'd see more copycats. Or more games in the series.

If he wanted a spiritual tie-in to perception, this would be called wisdom. Just one problem: This is a trait that players have. You can't make it a virtual trait without making the game play itself.

Technically you can. Instead of solving something for the player provide him with more clues than he would get otherwise (with a corresponding stat being lower), but still require him to connect all the dots (or turn it into a roll, if you want to do it in the classic DnD fashion).

 

[quaesta]

I always wondered why Troika Games got the rights to Source Engine, and nobody else. Nice to fill that little gap in my mind

Well other devs also used Source, they just weren't crazy enough to want to use it in the earliest stages of its development.

I meant early on. Cause I never saw any other developer used Source as early as pre-Half Life 2

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Huh? Both games did well. The Pathfinder games did better.

If they did, we'd see more copycats. Or more games in the series.

They did well but the Divinity games and its copycats i.e. Wasteland 3 did considerably better.

 

[Roguey]

If they did, we'd see more copycats. Or more games in the series.

The Baldur's Gate series did really well but the only copycats were Black Isle/Obsidian. Bethesda has done extremely well but KCD is notable for being the only game to chase after that Skyrim money. Publishers will do as they see fit when it comes to return-on-investment. Obsidian feels quite rightly that they'll see better returns doing first person action rpgs. Owlcat continues to support Wrathfinder through DLC and making a turn based Warhammer game (while also pivoting to a Mass Effect clone since that's where the mass market is).

I meant early on. Cause I never saw any other developer used Source as early as pre-Half Life 2

Like I said, they weren't crazy enough to want to license an engine in the earliest stages of its development.

 

[Harthwain]

They did well but the Divinity games and its copycats i.e. Wasteland 3 did considerably better.

I'd rather point towards Pathfinder being better copycat of the original Baldur's Gate style rather than Divinity or Wasteland. Both in terms of the universe and in terms of how complex the character building is.

Obsidian feels quite rightly that they'll see better returns doing first person action rpgs.

Honestly, I am not so sure they will if they keep using PoE universe. Then again, maybe it's just me who didn't really like Obsidians shit take on our-very-original-not-DnD-universe...

 

[Roguey]

Honestly, I am not so sure they will if they keep using PoE universe. Then again, maybe it's just me who didn't really like Obsidians shit take on our-very-original-not-DnD-universe...

There are no "good" fantasy settings. Forgotten Realms? Tamriel? Thedas? Rivellon? None of it matters.

 

[Goral]

It's a shame that more devs haven't kept notes on everything (well, not everything, but at least for games that are universally loved).

I talk about my extensive note-taking, starting in grad school, and how I went from paper to electronic and back again. All those notes are what led to this channel's existence.