Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Roguey]

Cain is seething over the Patel approach to work.

I had someone lie to my face about something and when I discovered it later, and I called him out on it, he said "I was told
to lie to you" and I was very confused at why he thought that made it better. You know, I said "If I tell you to murder
someone you're not going to do it, so I don't know why you think being told by someone above you in the chain to lie
to my face is something that's going to get you off the hook later." It ended up with me basically not talking to him for
several months. I don't know if he noticed I don't know if he cared. I do know that there were things that came up that we were supposed to work together that I just went "Can't, I'm not available," and didn't say anything else.

More of that passive aggressive behavior from Tim.

A similar thing that happened on the same project: I told people to let me know if something changed in an area because it was an important area of the game. I come in the morning and play the game every morning. Came in one morning and that thing was changed and I was like "what?" I mean I have access to perforce, saw who changed it. Went to the person who is in
charge of managing those things and said "What happened here?" I didn't want to go talk to the person who put it in, I wanted to talk to the person who scheduled it to go in and I said "What happened here?" and he goes "Oh, you noticed that?" Like of course I noticed it, and he said "Well I was told to put it in," and it was again by someone above both of us and I was like "But you were told to let me know" and he goes "He told me not to tell you that" and I'm like... and he said "So I didn't lie to you," so he thought not telling me something was not as bad as lying to me about it, and keep in mind this is something I was going to notice and it was going to come up, and again it was a complete trust breaker and I even told him "I understand that you are in a bad situation, that somebody above both of us told you not to tell me something that you know you should have told me but I hope you know this means going forward, I don't trust you" and I mean he was broken, and I was like I had to tell him, he asked me "What do you mean by that?" and I said "Every day I'm going to look at perforce check-ins on anything that you're responsible for scheduling and I'm going to confirm that it's something that I knew was on the schedule and that was done the way I had approved of and if I find a problem again, you and I are going to have issues. So I don't care what anyone else tells you, if you put something in that's not what I said, you and I are going to talk and if you tell someone that you're scheduling to put something in that isn't what I said, we're going to have a problem" and that put him in a very bad position but I didn't know how else to trust him going forward.

I get the feeling both of these incidents were from The Outer Worlds? More of that Feargus/Parker meddling.

What can they do when the choice is to either risk getting fired/reprimanded or get a stern talking to from their project lead who can't actually fire them considering the owner has their back for doing what they told them to do?

 

[Viata]

"I was told to lie to you"

What an amazing environment to work. No wonder Obsidian keeps releasing shitty game after shitty game.

 

[0sacred]

So all in all, he's got a problem with the American culture of silently fitting in (lest they be bullied into fitting in) and passive aggressiveness instead of open confrontation.
All he needs is to hire Slavic people in the future. Solved.

My experience after living with three Russians is that they are very passive aggressive if they are transplanted into a civilized environment. So Tim better move to some backerwater shithole in Eastern Europe, maybe that way he'll see some Slav chimpout.

 

[Alienman]

he knows it has become a negative adjective in the industry

What? I guess that explains why so many games feels so plain. No passion allowed.

 

[Butter]

I get the feeling both of these incidents were from The Outer Worlds? More of that Feargus/Parker meddling.

What can they do when the choice is to either risk getting fired/reprimanded or get a stern talking to from their project lead who can't actually fire them considering the owner has their back for doing what they told them to do?

To be fair, these anecdotes could easily have been from Carbine, given how dysfunctional it apparently was.

 

[NecroLord]

Tech director at Interplay, large amount of Fallout and Troika team didn't go to college.

Probably a major reason why their games are so awesome.
College educamashun doesn't necessarily make one smart or creative.
Just take a look today...

 

[Roguey]

I get the feeling both of these incidents were from The Outer Worlds? More of that Feargus/Parker meddling.

What can they do when the choice is to either risk getting fired/reprimanded or get a stern talking to from their project lead who can't actually fire them considering the owner has their back for doing what they told them to do?

To be fair, these anecdotes could easily have been from Carbine, given how dysfunctional it apparently was.

Possibly, but my recollection is that the biggest issue there was with the art director whose attitude was "fuck you, we're doing things my way", not someone above them trying to be sneaky. Additionally I'm not sure if an MMO could be considered to have an "important area of the game."

 

[The Wall]

Tim Cain is simultaneously Genius and Retard

 

[StrongBelwas]

He mentioned using Perforce for source control on Outer Worlds/Obsidian in the Evolution of Source Control video, but no mention of what they used at Carbine one way or the other.

 

[NecroLord]

Tim Cain is simultaneously Genius and Retard

I think he got retarded the more he aged.
Fallout and Troika days - Pure Genius and creativity.
Anything after that - Retard, lacking vision and direction.

 

[ds]

Tim Cain is simultaneously Genius and Retard

I think he got retarded the more he aged.
Fallout and Troika days - Pure Genius and creativity.
Anything after that - Retard, lacking vision and direction.

The fate of most creative people. You either retire as a legend or see yourself become mediocre.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about multiple quest solutions using an example from Fallout. I explain how some solutions are systemic, arising from the existing game rules and needing zero effort from the developers to create.

 

[ds]

That's some grade A autism at the end, being annoyed at giving money being implemented inconsistently for different NPCs. Guess what, real people are not consistent robots. Different conversations doing the same thing differently makes them feel more organic even if the differences are not intentional but the result of them being implemented by different people.

 

[Butter]

That's some grade A autism at the end, being annoyed at giving money being implemented inconsistently for different NPCs. Guess what, real people are not consistent robots. Different conversations doing the same thing differently makes them feel more organic even if the differences are not intentional but the result of them being implemented by different people.

Also gender parity autism. Garl should've reacted exactly the same way to his mother as to his father, not because it makes sense for a person to do that, but for B A L A N C E.

 

[StrongBelwas]

If you're going to work on tools, you should know disciplines besides your own.
Cain learned how to make dialogue tools better from writing his own dialogue and reading the dialogue of others, having an understanding how textures are done can help art programmers.
If you try using the mainstream game engines, at some point you'll run into some annoying process that makes you wonder if anyone in that company has actually made a commercial video game with that engine.
Going from Fallout to Arcanum, they hade to remake all of their tools. During Fallout, he had not made a single level. But he had heard a lot complaints about the process of making levels. It could be unclear where walls and tiles matched up, you'd put them down, realize they don't quite connect, and than have to find another tile that connects, a tedious process. He implemented a spray tile function for Arcanum that would automatically transition the tiles to connect correctly and select random variations of those tiles. Made creating the base of the maps trivial. Than implemented being able to quickly create walls for buildings, and add doors or swap them out in the building.
For Fallout didn't make the Scripting system, but fixed a lot of bugs related to them. For Arcanum, before anyone wrote a script, designed SockMonkey. Tried to make it very difficult to create infinite loops and generally made the script to be restrictive, but underestimated the ability of some scripters to create bugs. Generally though, the bugs with the scripting remained in the semantic (Script just isn't doing what it was supposed to do, instead of crashing the game) area, saving them a lot of time.
Saw a lot of bugs in Fallout's dialogue, as well as wasted memory. Lots of similar sounding strings that had to be translated or stored, which led to Tim creating generated dialogue for Arcanum. Could quickly implement things like bribing and made localization easier.
These tools helped considerably to make it possible to make Arcanum in the same time as Fallout with a third of the team size.
TL;DR Good tools are made by knowing who uses the tool and how they use it, ideally use it yourself. Build the tool that lets them do common things quickly. Design the tool so it reduces the amount of mistakes they could possibly make, or the memory they can use. People will find a way to make mistakes, but you can keep the issues down.

 

[Roguey]

It's certainly curious how people made better games with worse tools. I guess it's true you can make "more" game with better tools, but that content isn't actually better.

 

[Viata]

Limitation breeds innovation. It's far easier to make games today, yet that also makes it far easier to have a high output of trash as the skills required to make a game is quite low now.

 

[goregasm]

Limitation breeds innovation. It's far easier to make games today, yet that also makes it far easier to have a high output of trash as the skills required to make a game is quite low now.

Well put. I'm a tradesman/craftsman as a career, having worked on everything from shiny new skyscrapers in America to ancient churches in Saint Denis, we can build entire neighborhoods in weeks nowadays, where the skill involved in building one mortise and tenon joint, an extremely old, labor intensive, but strong method of framing is lost on 70% of people I work with.

New and old methods in my field result in complete projects, one way ends in completion, perhaps newer methods end up with projects with no "soul" the other older way breeds ingenuity and typically results in a sort of beauty, through a more laborious process.

Folks who take on projects with a "less is more" approach tend to take them on because they want to create them.

With all the tools at hand to make the process more efficient, it's usually about completing a project rather than creating something, at least in my field.

 

[agris]

It's certainly curious how people made better games with worse tools. I guess it's true you can make "more" game with better tools, but that content isn't actually better.

not at all. barriers to entry filter for talent, vision, and drive.

 

[deama]

So all in all, he's got a problem with the American culture of silently fitting in (lest they be bullied into fitting in) and passive aggressiveness instead of open confrontation.
All he needs is to hire Slavic people in the future. Solved.

My experience after living with three Russians is that they are very passive aggressive if they are transplanted into a civilized environment. So Tim better move to some backerwater shithole in Eastern Europe, maybe that way he'll see some Slav chimpout.

What about icelanders/northern-europeans? I heard they're so blunt that they will tell you you're fat to your face and think it's a favour they're doing for you.

 

[deama]

It's certainly curious how people made better games with worse tools. I guess it's true you can make "more" game with better tools, but that content isn't actually better.

Possibly the idea is that due to using worse tools, you're more often put into that "zone" or thought process wherein you have to keep thinking of what you're doing, so as to not make an obvious mistake etc...
Due to this, it gives ample opportunity to re-evaluate certain things you're doing, e.g writing dialogue, you're constantly confronted by it, forcing you to think about all of it more and more, at which point you may come up with a better idea for the dialogue.

 

[__scribbles__]

What about icelanders/northern-europeans? I heard they're so blunt that they will tell you you're fat to your face and think it's a favour they're doing for you.

Somewhat. Here in Sweden, people will tell you straightforwardly what they don't like about you but only if you're a friend or family. Never seen somebody talk like that to a person they don't know or are only acquaintances with. Haven't been to Denmark or Norway for extended periods of time, but they don't seem much different.

Never been to eastern Europe but the people from there that I've met have been more in line with what you describe.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the continuum of player agency in games, including what I like to include in my own.

 

[ds]

Quest-critical NPCs have a far better solution than either invulnerability or Tim's cop out of preventing direct access to them (which you can't use all the time without it feeling artificial):

Player agency doesn't mean that your choices can't result in a game over. Of course ideally the game adapts and still lets you go forward if at all possible.

 

[Roguey]

Bizarro-Codexer in the comments

in the past 2 weeks I went from playing Disco Elysium (err rather, trying to play it, it instead, plays the player, and is garbage) to

Torment: Tides of Numenera

the contrast between the two is EXTREME

loving Tides

I was a high-tier backer and then when it finally released, was upset at some of the decisions and on top of always waiting for RPGs to have their bugs and stuff worked out, have put off to playing until now - the writing is top-notch and they understanding agency and behavior and everything in a way almost never seen

I was super excited for Disco Elysium when it came out, and told many people about it, hyping it without having played it - it is truly horrible, nihilistic sophomoric vapid (also using shock value and having no sense of good storytelling or how to build anything of a world or anything) with no sense of good writing, of personality or behavior, anything worthwhile

Disco lacking agency is true.