Naraya
Arcane
You can clearly see what makes this man happy :D
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Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel
- Thread starter Goral
- Start date
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2015
- Messages
- 501
Most of what Cain is saying will generalize, but his experience is from RPGs and he will talk about why RPGs are buggy.
Will they always be buggy? Yes, they always have been. Despite what some people remember, especially console games on cartridges and other forms of media that could not be updated. They were heavily QA'd, and simplified in areas to prevent bugs, but there have always been bugs and there will always be bugs, Cain expects it to get at best the same or more probably worse in the future.
Cain speaks as someone who has released games with a lot of bugs, but the Outer Worlds had relatively few bugs compared to other Obsidian games and his own. You can ship a game with fewer bugs, shipping a game with no bugs is probably impossible
RPGs are extremely complex software, made of many interlocking pieces. Not to belittle these games, but compared to something like Street Fighter where you may have a dozen characters with some moves and animations, it's more difficult. Street Fighter has no inventory , quest history, levelling, inherently simpler to make. Now, there are some more complicated elements to Street Fighter, people will expect better animation and better fluidity of combat than from an RPG. But there are fewer pieces to it, so they can focus more on those.
In a lot of RPGs, especially nonlinear ones, that non linearity or the player doing different things in different orders can lead to blocking problems (Programming way to look at it.) Multiple solutions to things, multiple skills, multiple character builds. by necessity you now have multiple bugs. Emergent gameplay leads to emergent bugs. Ways of using skills and items in ways the developer didn't expect will lead to bugs. Ways of interacting with them emerging from the rules will lead to interactions that were not planned and do the wrong thing. Hard to track down, hard to anticipate. As games become more complex, almost impossible to anticipate, have to catch them after you make the game.
Simpler games have some of these, but not all of these. Have to account for every possible way a key could be pressed, the controller could be moved, what happens if the player tries to interact with something while doing something else or under the influence of a status effect. Even in the simplest games these are hard to test and can happen.
How would you rate bugs when you are making a game? Have to rate them somehow, at some point beyond the simplest game you will have more bugs on your bug queue than you could ever reach. Some bugs are minor, but how would you rate that?
Cain ranked the bugs on his RPGs, highest scoring ones take first priority: Crash bugs were number one, do not want people crashing, horrible for the player, but it shows an underlying instability in the game that will leave people unwilling to keep playing. If it keeps happening, if certain things keep causing it, they will just drop the game.
Highly ranked bug also goes to builds not being able to complete the games. You don't have the skills that are needed, or this build tends to get a set of quests that can't be done, or they can't acquired all the things that are needed to complete the game for whatever reasons. Can be miserable to realize your build can't beat the game after 5/10/15 hours of playing it.
Third highest rating bug are things that prevent the game from being certified. Windows/Consoles won't let your game ship if they can't meet certification. Can be anything from not connecting to their achievement systems to not being able to quit out of the game, or content in the game not fitting the age rating you asked for.
Those are the three highest kind of bugs. You may have a lot of those, which is why the next lower tiers might not be all fixed.
Next tier down would be finding things that were incorrectly implemented. A skill doesn't work like the design doc says it should, item should be doing X but isn't doing that. Flipside is something being correctly implemented, but is causing unanticipated issues. Interactions with other items cause issues. Two items work fine on their own, bring them together and cause problem. Maybe things aren't stacking, maybe they are stacking and that is causing problems. What do you to now? Delete the item or feature, you may be causing problems. Say, can't delete crafting because the item economy was prepared around it. Deleting can cause more work than leaving it in and trying to fix.
Lower tier ones are things like something isn't fun. Put something in, people are playing it, saying it isn't fun. Maybe a class or dungeon isn't fun. Maybe there is a skill nobody ever takes because it isn't fun. Works fine, it just isn't fun to play. Look for areas of the game that aren't clear, they check the telemetry for areas where the players stopped playing. Maybe it isn't clear what they are supposed to do next or advance the main questline. Maybe it isn't clear who you are supposed to talk to next or get the next item. Have to clarify, it, many solutions such as writing more dialogue, quest markers, have to discuss it and figure out what solution can be done with your time and resources.
Final one, Cain isn't sure how to clarify it, but 'sanding off friction'. Look for things that are frustrating people. Drop rates on some items are too low, some NPC is just too annoying. Maybe players are getting sick of interacting with a really sarcastic main quest NPC. These are very low priority, Cain obviously prioritizes crash bugs but he has shipped games with lots of friction and people don't like it.
People think it has gotten worse lately, Cain says everything he says is true for games since day 1 of the industry and games being released now. Things get worse when the people with the money like publishers say they can just patch it after release. Some things couldn't be fixed afterwards back in the day so they had to ship it as close as possible. Now, some people say they don't want to keep spending money, ship the game, make some money, and use that money to patch the game. If you're running off of a Kickstarter, maybe you just run out of money and have to ship what you got or throw it away. Lot of games you've never heard and will never play because the game got cancelled way before it could ever be announced.
How to prevent this from happening? It's complicated, Cain has some ideas. First, start QA/Playtesting as early as possible, at least once you have a vertical slice, maybe even when you have the First Playable. Try to have QA group playtest it. Make sure they are aware of the state, can be soul draining when you ask a QA group to test a greybox area for gameplay and they just complain about the game looking ugly. Playtesters who don't understand stages of playtesting can be frustrating. Second, in house QA. Cain has always had more luck with people he can walk over and talk to. People outside of the company may not even be in the same timezone, Cain would have to come in at 6 AM or stay until 11 PM to talk to playtest groups from halfway across the world. Having in house QA means they can access design docs, now that design docs are on the cloud they can always just check the most up to date version. If a QA staffer thinks a skill works weird, they can go to the design doc and see what is meant to happen, allowing them to write a bug knowing what is supposed to happen.
Another advantage of in house QA is something he loved doing during Fallout and wanted to do during Troika but couldn't always; weekly meetings with QA leads. Part of that would be the QA Lead telling Cain the worst bugs they have seen, and why he thinks they are the worst. Nobody will play it more than QA, ask them how it feels. A good QA Lead will tell you not only his own issues but will know his QA people well enough to know their issues, he'll know the people that like the action and the people that prefer the story, and the action people might be loving it but the story people have issues. Very valuable advice, he felt they got that in Outer Worlds and feels it shows in it's stability.
Final one is having test plans, as a designer you should be able to describe how your features should be tested. Here is a skill for lockpicking, ask QA to test it on doors and chests, and unusual cases like computers and dead bodies. Make sure those plans are followed, don't end up in a Bard/Nosferatu situation where QA hardly tests them. Those weekly meetings Cain likes help make sure those test plans are followed.
Everything Cain described? Costs money. Early QA costs money, meetings cost money, test plans costs time from developers that could be developing, so more money.
TL;DR: Games have bugs because of limited money and will always have bugs because no infinite money.
Will they always be buggy? Yes, they always have been. Despite what some people remember, especially console games on cartridges and other forms of media that could not be updated. They were heavily QA'd, and simplified in areas to prevent bugs, but there have always been bugs and there will always be bugs, Cain expects it to get at best the same or more probably worse in the future.
Cain speaks as someone who has released games with a lot of bugs, but the Outer Worlds had relatively few bugs compared to other Obsidian games and his own. You can ship a game with fewer bugs, shipping a game with no bugs is probably impossible
RPGs are extremely complex software, made of many interlocking pieces. Not to belittle these games, but compared to something like Street Fighter where you may have a dozen characters with some moves and animations, it's more difficult. Street Fighter has no inventory , quest history, levelling, inherently simpler to make. Now, there are some more complicated elements to Street Fighter, people will expect better animation and better fluidity of combat than from an RPG. But there are fewer pieces to it, so they can focus more on those.
In a lot of RPGs, especially nonlinear ones, that non linearity or the player doing different things in different orders can lead to blocking problems (Programming way to look at it.) Multiple solutions to things, multiple skills, multiple character builds. by necessity you now have multiple bugs. Emergent gameplay leads to emergent bugs. Ways of using skills and items in ways the developer didn't expect will lead to bugs. Ways of interacting with them emerging from the rules will lead to interactions that were not planned and do the wrong thing. Hard to track down, hard to anticipate. As games become more complex, almost impossible to anticipate, have to catch them after you make the game.
Simpler games have some of these, but not all of these. Have to account for every possible way a key could be pressed, the controller could be moved, what happens if the player tries to interact with something while doing something else or under the influence of a status effect. Even in the simplest games these are hard to test and can happen.
How would you rate bugs when you are making a game? Have to rate them somehow, at some point beyond the simplest game you will have more bugs on your bug queue than you could ever reach. Some bugs are minor, but how would you rate that?
Cain ranked the bugs on his RPGs, highest scoring ones take first priority: Crash bugs were number one, do not want people crashing, horrible for the player, but it shows an underlying instability in the game that will leave people unwilling to keep playing. If it keeps happening, if certain things keep causing it, they will just drop the game.
Highly ranked bug also goes to builds not being able to complete the games. You don't have the skills that are needed, or this build tends to get a set of quests that can't be done, or they can't acquired all the things that are needed to complete the game for whatever reasons. Can be miserable to realize your build can't beat the game after 5/10/15 hours of playing it.
Third highest rating bug are things that prevent the game from being certified. Windows/Consoles won't let your game ship if they can't meet certification. Can be anything from not connecting to their achievement systems to not being able to quit out of the game, or content in the game not fitting the age rating you asked for.
Those are the three highest kind of bugs. You may have a lot of those, which is why the next lower tiers might not be all fixed.
Next tier down would be finding things that were incorrectly implemented. A skill doesn't work like the design doc says it should, item should be doing X but isn't doing that. Flipside is something being correctly implemented, but is causing unanticipated issues. Interactions with other items cause issues. Two items work fine on their own, bring them together and cause problem. Maybe things aren't stacking, maybe they are stacking and that is causing problems. What do you to now? Delete the item or feature, you may be causing problems. Say, can't delete crafting because the item economy was prepared around it. Deleting can cause more work than leaving it in and trying to fix.
Lower tier ones are things like something isn't fun. Put something in, people are playing it, saying it isn't fun. Maybe a class or dungeon isn't fun. Maybe there is a skill nobody ever takes because it isn't fun. Works fine, it just isn't fun to play. Look for areas of the game that aren't clear, they check the telemetry for areas where the players stopped playing. Maybe it isn't clear what they are supposed to do next or advance the main questline. Maybe it isn't clear who you are supposed to talk to next or get the next item. Have to clarify, it, many solutions such as writing more dialogue, quest markers, have to discuss it and figure out what solution can be done with your time and resources.
Final one, Cain isn't sure how to clarify it, but 'sanding off friction'. Look for things that are frustrating people. Drop rates on some items are too low, some NPC is just too annoying. Maybe players are getting sick of interacting with a really sarcastic main quest NPC. These are very low priority, Cain obviously prioritizes crash bugs but he has shipped games with lots of friction and people don't like it.
People think it has gotten worse lately, Cain says everything he says is true for games since day 1 of the industry and games being released now. Things get worse when the people with the money like publishers say they can just patch it after release. Some things couldn't be fixed afterwards back in the day so they had to ship it as close as possible. Now, some people say they don't want to keep spending money, ship the game, make some money, and use that money to patch the game. If you're running off of a Kickstarter, maybe you just run out of money and have to ship what you got or throw it away. Lot of games you've never heard and will never play because the game got cancelled way before it could ever be announced.
How to prevent this from happening? It's complicated, Cain has some ideas. First, start QA/Playtesting as early as possible, at least once you have a vertical slice, maybe even when you have the First Playable. Try to have QA group playtest it. Make sure they are aware of the state, can be soul draining when you ask a QA group to test a greybox area for gameplay and they just complain about the game looking ugly. Playtesters who don't understand stages of playtesting can be frustrating. Second, in house QA. Cain has always had more luck with people he can walk over and talk to. People outside of the company may not even be in the same timezone, Cain would have to come in at 6 AM or stay until 11 PM to talk to playtest groups from halfway across the world. Having in house QA means they can access design docs, now that design docs are on the cloud they can always just check the most up to date version. If a QA staffer thinks a skill works weird, they can go to the design doc and see what is meant to happen, allowing them to write a bug knowing what is supposed to happen.
Another advantage of in house QA is something he loved doing during Fallout and wanted to do during Troika but couldn't always; weekly meetings with QA leads. Part of that would be the QA Lead telling Cain the worst bugs they have seen, and why he thinks they are the worst. Nobody will play it more than QA, ask them how it feels. A good QA Lead will tell you not only his own issues but will know his QA people well enough to know their issues, he'll know the people that like the action and the people that prefer the story, and the action people might be loving it but the story people have issues. Very valuable advice, he felt they got that in Outer Worlds and feels it shows in it's stability.
Final one is having test plans, as a designer you should be able to describe how your features should be tested. Here is a skill for lockpicking, ask QA to test it on doors and chests, and unusual cases like computers and dead bodies. Make sure those plans are followed, don't end up in a Bard/Nosferatu situation where QA hardly tests them. Those weekly meetings Cain likes help make sure those test plans are followed.
Everything Cain described? Costs money. Early QA costs money, meetings cost money, test plans costs time from developers that could be developing, so more money.
TL;DR: Games have bugs because of limited money and will always have bugs because no infinite money.
Last edited:
- Joined
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- Joined
- Aug 1, 2015
- Messages
- 501
Seen people in the comments wonder why there aren't more channels like this and why Cain doesn't have more people on the channel.
There are a lot of thorny legal issues about what you can talk about, especially a few years after you worked on a game or were at a company. These can be NDA/contracts/employment agreements, some of them can be quite lengthy or have no end time. Even if they don't think anyone will come after them, they could be worried that it will keep anyone from hiring them in the future.
For some people it's just the amount of time it takes, even with Cain's minimal editing everything involved with making the video takes time and for some people after you spend all day working you just don't want to do that. Also, commitment, once you do it people come to expect it and if you don't deliver you will get negative feedback.
You may feel like you don't have enough experience, you haven't worked enough different places or made enough games to have a real prespective.
Also, negative comments. Most comments are positive and he generally loves the audience, but there are negative comments. Everyone has to deal with it, for Cain they fall into A) People who don't really watch the channel, they show up, say something snipey, and move on. You can kind of tell because they've never shown up before, just doing a drive by. What Cain doesn't get is B) People who watch his videos, and don't seem to understand what he is saying. This comes in the form of people honestly misunderstanding what he said and going on a tangent, some people assume things and once they have assumed something is different they go into a tangent in a different direction (i.e Cain could have fired someone or didn't understand what the other person was saying, when that isn't related to the problem.) Many people misunderstood Cain's video on five games to learn from as his five favorite games, they were confused why he brought up Half-Life 2 despite Cain putting it in the extra placing and saying it's not an RPG. People complained he didn't mention game X that wasn't made in the 21st century when the list was about the 21st century.
Some people watch Cain with a lens, everything gets viewed through that lens. Anything he says that fits the lens, good, anything that doesn't fit in gets ignored and they go off on a tangent on how they view the world stretching something Cain said into it.
If you don't really have that experience, listen. Cain would be listening a lot at an earlier stage of his career.
On why Cain has not done more interviews, Cain has asked a lot of people, won't say who. Also has not asked some people, would rather not talk to them again.
Doesn't want to make this an interview channel, not what it's meant to be. Also makes the channel less timeless, hope the channel still has worth in 5/10 years. Whenever a channel does commentary on something a company just did, it becomes more rooted in the here and now about something many people won't care about in a few months.
Some people turn Cain down because they don't like public speaking, they're introverted and didn't get into video games for public speaking. Also, they don't like the negative response and don't want to deal with that, they tell Cain they like what he is doing but they don't want to deal with getting sniped at by randos. Some people didn't like their experiences in the game industry and wouldn't want to dredge them up. There are people who specifically didn't like working with Cain, Cain respects that. Some people want to do things this way and you want to do things another way.
Cain wouldn't have done this channel 10 years ago, but for different reasons. When Cain was in the industry in 5 years it would have been 1986 and his one project would have been Grand Slam Bridge. Ignoring the impossibility of making a channel like this back then, Cain doesn't know how to play Bridge, didn't think it would define him, limited experience, doing it at that time would have been a very oddly focused channel. 10 years later, still had that one project and was doing contract work for Interplay on Bard's Tale, would have been a very limited view. 20 years, 2001, he just shipped Arcanum, so he had a few more projects. The internet is mature enough to support videos, why not do it then? Cain had learned enough to learn what he didn't know. Cain was learning things as an employer he never knew as an employee. 20 years in, was self aware enough and knowledgeable enough to know a channel would have been talking about things he knew he didn't know. 30 years, 2011, he has a lot of experience now. Made Troika, shut down Troika, worked at Carbine, was now going to Obsidian and making South Park as his first PlayStation game. Has seen a lot, would say he had a thousand yard stare. Doing a video channel in 2011 would have been horrific, would have cast a lot of people in a bad light and told very negative stories, probably would have scared a lot of people away from game development . Had seen it all, bad employees, bad employers, bad managers, bad team members, bad publishers, bad press people, bad support staff.
43 years, it's 2023. Why can he do a channel now? It took Cain a long time to get nuance, to not put things in black and white. Cain realized a lot of people are just trying their best. There are people phoning it in, super passionate people, Cain gets it now.
Beware of anyone who made one game and acts like they know how everything works. Would also be skeptical of anyone who worked in the business for 5/10 years, how many games have you shipped, what genres do you know? Could have great input, but be a little wary of people who quickly jump to being an expert, there is a lot of stuff to learn.
There are a lot of thorny legal issues about what you can talk about, especially a few years after you worked on a game or were at a company. These can be NDA/contracts/employment agreements, some of them can be quite lengthy or have no end time. Even if they don't think anyone will come after them, they could be worried that it will keep anyone from hiring them in the future.
For some people it's just the amount of time it takes, even with Cain's minimal editing everything involved with making the video takes time and for some people after you spend all day working you just don't want to do that. Also, commitment, once you do it people come to expect it and if you don't deliver you will get negative feedback.
You may feel like you don't have enough experience, you haven't worked enough different places or made enough games to have a real prespective.
Also, negative comments. Most comments are positive and he generally loves the audience, but there are negative comments. Everyone has to deal with it, for Cain they fall into A) People who don't really watch the channel, they show up, say something snipey, and move on. You can kind of tell because they've never shown up before, just doing a drive by. What Cain doesn't get is B) People who watch his videos, and don't seem to understand what he is saying. This comes in the form of people honestly misunderstanding what he said and going on a tangent, some people assume things and once they have assumed something is different they go into a tangent in a different direction (i.e Cain could have fired someone or didn't understand what the other person was saying, when that isn't related to the problem.) Many people misunderstood Cain's video on five games to learn from as his five favorite games, they were confused why he brought up Half-Life 2 despite Cain putting it in the extra placing and saying it's not an RPG. People complained he didn't mention game X that wasn't made in the 21st century when the list was about the 21st century.
Some people watch Cain with a lens, everything gets viewed through that lens. Anything he says that fits the lens, good, anything that doesn't fit in gets ignored and they go off on a tangent on how they view the world stretching something Cain said into it.
If you don't really have that experience, listen. Cain would be listening a lot at an earlier stage of his career.
On why Cain has not done more interviews, Cain has asked a lot of people, won't say who. Also has not asked some people, would rather not talk to them again.
Doesn't want to make this an interview channel, not what it's meant to be. Also makes the channel less timeless, hope the channel still has worth in 5/10 years. Whenever a channel does commentary on something a company just did, it becomes more rooted in the here and now about something many people won't care about in a few months.
Some people turn Cain down because they don't like public speaking, they're introverted and didn't get into video games for public speaking. Also, they don't like the negative response and don't want to deal with that, they tell Cain they like what he is doing but they don't want to deal with getting sniped at by randos. Some people didn't like their experiences in the game industry and wouldn't want to dredge them up. There are people who specifically didn't like working with Cain, Cain respects that. Some people want to do things this way and you want to do things another way.
Cain wouldn't have done this channel 10 years ago, but for different reasons. When Cain was in the industry in 5 years it would have been 1986 and his one project would have been Grand Slam Bridge. Ignoring the impossibility of making a channel like this back then, Cain doesn't know how to play Bridge, didn't think it would define him, limited experience, doing it at that time would have been a very oddly focused channel. 10 years later, still had that one project and was doing contract work for Interplay on Bard's Tale, would have been a very limited view. 20 years, 2001, he just shipped Arcanum, so he had a few more projects. The internet is mature enough to support videos, why not do it then? Cain had learned enough to learn what he didn't know. Cain was learning things as an employer he never knew as an employee. 20 years in, was self aware enough and knowledgeable enough to know a channel would have been talking about things he knew he didn't know. 30 years, 2011, he has a lot of experience now. Made Troika, shut down Troika, worked at Carbine, was now going to Obsidian and making South Park as his first PlayStation game. Has seen a lot, would say he had a thousand yard stare. Doing a video channel in 2011 would have been horrific, would have cast a lot of people in a bad light and told very negative stories, probably would have scared a lot of people away from game development . Had seen it all, bad employees, bad employers, bad managers, bad team members, bad publishers, bad press people, bad support staff.
43 years, it's 2023. Why can he do a channel now? It took Cain a long time to get nuance, to not put things in black and white. Cain realized a lot of people are just trying their best. There are people phoning it in, super passionate people, Cain gets it now.
Beware of anyone who made one game and acts like they know how everything works. Would also be skeptical of anyone who worked in the business for 5/10 years, how many games have you shipped, what genres do you know? Could have great input, but be a little wary of people who quickly jump to being an expert, there is a lot of stuff to learn.
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NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
Makes sense that it's a lot about legal issues and such...
Otherwise why wouldn't a game developer/designer/writer NOT want to hang out with and discuss about his game with other nerds (preferrably) ?
I can respect one who is not an uppity fuck and talks honestly about his game, the game mechanics, story, development process, funny stories, etc.
Otherwise why wouldn't a game developer/designer/writer NOT want to hang out with and discuss about his game with other nerds (preferrably) ?
I can respect one who is not an uppity fuck and talks honestly about his game, the game mechanics, story, development process, funny stories, etc.
Tbh modern rage hate train witch hunting culture is too dangerous for a nerdy awkward introvert developer to be any kind of public figure
It's too one dimensional, ie you can rage on creatorz but they can't tell gamers that they are dumbfuck consumers that don't understand at all how industry works.
It's too one dimensional, ie you can rage on creatorz but they can't tell gamers that they are dumbfuck consumers that don't understand at all how industry works.
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"Not wanting to burn bridges" "not wanting to deal with negative comments" and "introversion" and are just as big.
I recall during the Project Eternity stream the chat asked for some peoples' names and they refused to give them out.
Also the kind of devs like Cain, Sawyer, and Avellone etc. who wade into negative forums are atypical. Seems to me that most devs react like Jeff Vogel or inXile (infamously turned on this place after all the harsh Wasteland 2 beta feedback).
__scribbles__
Educated
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Took a while to figure out how to properly phrase his thoughts on achievements because he knows people will pick and choose what they hear from it, expects a "Tim Cain Hates Achievements" article.
High level, has a love/hate relationship with achievements. 90s, early 2000s, was doing RPGs with a lot of tracker variables, how he did endgame slides, story reactivity, how NPCs treated the player. Player did a thing, player found a thing. Used those for Fallout/Arcanum, very popular, did it with ToEE but also tracked a few more things, leading to the Ego page (Highest level monster you killed, most damage you did in one attack.) Pretty fun.
Then, achievements came along. Achievements was games doing tracking, but for achievements, which Cain sees as quests given to you from the very beginning with no context, given to everyone, may not even know they are there.
In general, liked them if what they were watching you do was aspirational, if it required the character to have some skill and the player to put forth some effort. For example, even something like killing 100 ogres would be great if you didn't just do that on the main storyline. Maybe there are only 50 ogres on the main quest and the others are hidden in a mountain cave. Maybe you find a weird treasure on the body of a dead adventurer and he has a note saying there are 20 others like this in the world and something special happens if you find them all, find them all, you get an achievement. Even pickpocketing could have a cool achievement in the form of pickpocketing of very high value item, which would presumably come from a high value NPC in a difficult area, requiring thought from the player. It's a pure communication channel between the designer and player, saw what you did, they are impressed.
But as Cain saw more games doing achievements, he saw them doing it for non aspirational things. Could give many examples, doesn't want to pick on games, will name two he saw as achievements got very popular. There was one game that gave you an achievement for falling 100 feet but not dying. Had to at least a certain level to survive it, some classes could do it earlier. Cain wondered why they were encouraging players to die, felt it lost sight of what the achievement system was trying to do. Cain has seen some games give you achievements for things you do just in multiplayer, like you and your team did X, or you did this while another player did Y. Cain doesn't like this because the player's own skill doesn't matter, it requires you to be lucky to find other people willing to cooperate. It made achievements into a list of things to do.
Worst, companies started requiring them. Consoles had achievements as part of their requirement system, Valve implemented an API for their achievements in Steam. Had to have certain kind of achievements, had to have certain amount, achievements became just another thing to do, instead of something to aspire to. Like all things that go from being optional to required , they lost sight of their original goal and achievements lost their luster. From another way to think about playing the game, to a soulless point based checklist. Not what they started out as, at least for him, but what they became.
Of course, they aren't like that in all games, some games still have cool achievements. But Cain gets into an argument with designers about what counts as aspirational or not. Doesn't like how some people are made to feel like they didn't really finish the game if they don't have certain achievements. Really hates achievements that require you to play a particular class, basically forces you to play a class you don't want to to 'finish' the game. Dislikes achievements that have a limited time window to obtain them, you can only get them on this map and when that map is in a certain state, and when the map is done you are cut off from getting it. Feels like it requires metaknowledge, by the time you realize you may want to get it, too late.
Achievements should be 'I noticed you did this cool thing", they became "Do this thing".
Loves the underlying system of tracking what the player does, just not for achievements.
Nowadays some games have good achievements, some game have bad achievements, some games have achievements that Cain just stops paying attention to.
High level, has a love/hate relationship with achievements. 90s, early 2000s, was doing RPGs with a lot of tracker variables, how he did endgame slides, story reactivity, how NPCs treated the player. Player did a thing, player found a thing. Used those for Fallout/Arcanum, very popular, did it with ToEE but also tracked a few more things, leading to the Ego page (Highest level monster you killed, most damage you did in one attack.) Pretty fun.
Then, achievements came along. Achievements was games doing tracking, but for achievements, which Cain sees as quests given to you from the very beginning with no context, given to everyone, may not even know they are there.
In general, liked them if what they were watching you do was aspirational, if it required the character to have some skill and the player to put forth some effort. For example, even something like killing 100 ogres would be great if you didn't just do that on the main storyline. Maybe there are only 50 ogres on the main quest and the others are hidden in a mountain cave. Maybe you find a weird treasure on the body of a dead adventurer and he has a note saying there are 20 others like this in the world and something special happens if you find them all, find them all, you get an achievement. Even pickpocketing could have a cool achievement in the form of pickpocketing of very high value item, which would presumably come from a high value NPC in a difficult area, requiring thought from the player. It's a pure communication channel between the designer and player, saw what you did, they are impressed.
But as Cain saw more games doing achievements, he saw them doing it for non aspirational things. Could give many examples, doesn't want to pick on games, will name two he saw as achievements got very popular. There was one game that gave you an achievement for falling 100 feet but not dying. Had to at least a certain level to survive it, some classes could do it earlier. Cain wondered why they were encouraging players to die, felt it lost sight of what the achievement system was trying to do. Cain has seen some games give you achievements for things you do just in multiplayer, like you and your team did X, or you did this while another player did Y. Cain doesn't like this because the player's own skill doesn't matter, it requires you to be lucky to find other people willing to cooperate. It made achievements into a list of things to do.
Worst, companies started requiring them. Consoles had achievements as part of their requirement system, Valve implemented an API for their achievements in Steam. Had to have certain kind of achievements, had to have certain amount, achievements became just another thing to do, instead of something to aspire to. Like all things that go from being optional to required , they lost sight of their original goal and achievements lost their luster. From another way to think about playing the game, to a soulless point based checklist. Not what they started out as, at least for him, but what they became.
Of course, they aren't like that in all games, some games still have cool achievements. But Cain gets into an argument with designers about what counts as aspirational or not. Doesn't like how some people are made to feel like they didn't really finish the game if they don't have certain achievements. Really hates achievements that require you to play a particular class, basically forces you to play a class you don't want to to 'finish' the game. Dislikes achievements that have a limited time window to obtain them, you can only get them on this map and when that map is in a certain state, and when the map is done you are cut off from getting it. Feels like it requires metaknowledge, by the time you realize you may want to get it, too late.
Achievements should be 'I noticed you did this cool thing", they became "Do this thing".
Loves the underlying system of tracking what the player does, just not for achievements.
Nowadays some games have good achievements, some game have bad achievements, some games have achievements that Cain just stops paying attention to.
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The insight.
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
Tbh jeff at that ancient interview writes his name at the end cause nickname at the top is not enough. He is not from generation that has skills needed to survive online."Not wanting to burn bridges" "not wanting to deal with negative comments" and "introversion" and are just as big.
I recall during the Project Eternity stream the chat asked for some peoples' names and they refused to give them out.
Also the kind of devs like Cain, Sawyer, and Avellone etc. who wade into negative forums are atypical. Seems to me that most devs react like Jeff Vogel or inXile (infamously turned on this place after all the harsh Wasteland 2 beta feedback).
Tim also can't handle 2 mean comments from 100 positive ones to the point of making reply video on them
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
One of the reasons he left the Codex, I assume.
FalayedGong
Literate
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2023
- Messages
- 9
Any sort of use case where a achievement might make sense would make more sense to reward with something in-game. Like with Tim's example of looting some difficult to reach rich guy, the 10,000 Gold on its own is a solid reward, the achievement's redundant at that point. Having your Steam client ping you adds nothing to that experience.
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
Achievements are for Console Fags.
Simple as.
Who needs an achievement in order to feel a profound sense of self importance and grandeur? Just finish the game and let the simple act of playing the game and getting good at it be your achievement.
Simple as.
Who needs an achievement in order to feel a profound sense of self importance and grandeur? Just finish the game and let the simple act of playing the game and getting good at it be your achievement.
Naraya
Arcane
I can't agree more. Achievements are harbingers of D E C L I N E and I won't be convinced otherwise.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 35,835
I like achievements that track how much progress someone has made on the main quest. It's an argument in favor of shorter critical path content given how most people don't finish them, though for some reason most devs haven't adjusted accordingly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias many such cases
Axioms
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2019
- Messages
- 1,519
Watching the Tim Cain video on why he quit Fallout 2 really makes me want to play Fallout 1. I won't but this is as close as I've ever gotten. I want an RPG about working at 90s interplay, that would be a solid sequel to Disco Elysium as far as a critique of a capitalist hellscape.
I think achivos might be interesting carrot to hang about undiscovered obscure shit in the game, i did look them up for aod and pathfinder. Don't know how good can it be to hint player they can finish game by killing Vivec or whatever
NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
It would be cool if you didn't get hit with the "With this character's death the thread of prophecy is severed" message.
No such thing in Fallout or Arcanum, where you could butcher to your heart's content and still somehow progress through the Main Quest.
Diggfinger
Arcane
I talk about something that happened to me in college...and the different ways that people have reacted to this story when I have told it.
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2015
- Messages
- 501
The story itself is the less important than the reason he wants to tell the story. To him, it's one of the stories where he tells people the exact same story and seen them draw wildly different conclusions, including why he told them it.
Took place 1987, fourth year, last semester in engineering school. Was enrolled in class called Introduction to the C Language. He already knew it, but will explain why he was taking it.
Near the end of the course, and they had gone ahead of the course. One of those classes where they went through all the material so the professor was taking classes. Professor asked everyone what they were planning to do for the Summer, pointed to Cain, Cain said he just got hired to build a C compiler for a company near Washington DC. The professor stopped and asked why would they hire you ? The class went quiet, Cain thinks he heard someone gasp. The professor immediately apologized and rephrased it as what makes you qualified to work on a C Compiler. Cain responded that he had five years as a professional programmer and he did C. The professor wondered why he was in the class if he had been coding professional with a released product.
This was Cain's last semester, Cain needed a class to fulfill his computer science prerequisite on taking a class for a computer language he didn't already have a class in. Had taken an introduction to all computer programming languages class, most of his classes at UVA were taught in Pascal. When Cain realized he hadn't fulfilled his prerequisite , he looked for classes, there were only 3 possible classes and 2 of them conflicted with other classes. There was a humanities class where you had to read engineering based literature. Cain went to the Registrar and asked them to waive the class, just test out of it, they told him they only accepted academic waivers, Cain had done that in High School with his AP Bio, got a 5 in that. Got to skip the first semester of math. But they hadn't offered any AP Programming courses. Registrar told him that they couldn't do experience based waivers, it would be too much work to verify, and then everyone would try to claim it , they would be spending a lot of time looking up waivers that would be denied. Told him she believed him, but her hands were tied.
Having explained all that to the professor, the professor understood the situation and said it made sense because Cain was doing so well in the course. The Professor proceeded to ask Cain what he wished he had taught. Based on actually working on C in the office, Cain said he wished he was taught how to debug, nobody had taught him how to debug at UVA and it was his last semester. Some of these classes were projects that required large blocks of codes, and nobody had taught him how to debug. Was fortunate he had figured out how to debug from his office work. Said the same thing to his graduate school professors, repeats when one of them said we're not a trade school. This professor did not say that, he just asked if that was all. Cain also said it would have been interesting would be to teach how real compilers vary from the ISO, the international standard for C. Cain doesn't think any compiler, except maybe very modern ones, behaved exactly as the standard. ISO would say INS and enums have to work a certain way, the compiler doesn't behave like that, it makes them the same under the hood, or INT are only 16 bit and you had to do a long INT or a signed INT for something bigger. Would have been nice to know that, especially given the pointers of the time. They were only 16 bit, needed a 32 bit far pointer for anything bigger. They couldn't be mixed, far pointers were slower. If this was the second class in the series and not first, Cain would also have liked optimization to be taught. Like debugging, was never really taught that. Getting programs to work faster wasn't a huge problem in academics, but running them on less memory was very important, Cain had tried to run programs on their mainframe and get kicked out for not having enough memory.
Professor was paying attention to all of this. Some of the other people Cain has told this story to said it was a reason to dislike college, that professor was bad, professors and students think they know everything. Cain finds that response very odd, that professor was one of the few that ever impressed him. He asked a question, realized it was bad, apologized, and then wanted to know more. That was more than most people would do. Most people would double down, fewer would apologize once they realized they were wrong.
Has heard a gamut of reactions to the story; From college is horrible to people wishing they had professors like that and thought he was really cool.
Final note, during finals week, Cain got a message from the company that they had lost the contract to make the compiler and his job was over. This was in the middle of finals week, Cain had no time to find another job and he was out of college in weeks. Called his mom and she said he was graduating suma cum laude and already had grad school lined up with a grant for it (Lot of undergraduate loans, but had a scholarship for grad school.) Suggested he just take the summer off and spend it with them. Last time he ever had more than a week off for 40 years. Except for a one week vacation, Cain never had a break until his semi retirement state. Not sure if his Mom expected that to be the case, but it was one of the coolest things she ever did .
Took place 1987, fourth year, last semester in engineering school. Was enrolled in class called Introduction to the C Language. He already knew it, but will explain why he was taking it.
Near the end of the course, and they had gone ahead of the course. One of those classes where they went through all the material so the professor was taking classes. Professor asked everyone what they were planning to do for the Summer, pointed to Cain, Cain said he just got hired to build a C compiler for a company near Washington DC. The professor stopped and asked why would they hire you ? The class went quiet, Cain thinks he heard someone gasp. The professor immediately apologized and rephrased it as what makes you qualified to work on a C Compiler. Cain responded that he had five years as a professional programmer and he did C. The professor wondered why he was in the class if he had been coding professional with a released product.
This was Cain's last semester, Cain needed a class to fulfill his computer science prerequisite on taking a class for a computer language he didn't already have a class in. Had taken an introduction to all computer programming languages class, most of his classes at UVA were taught in Pascal. When Cain realized he hadn't fulfilled his prerequisite , he looked for classes, there were only 3 possible classes and 2 of them conflicted with other classes. There was a humanities class where you had to read engineering based literature. Cain went to the Registrar and asked them to waive the class, just test out of it, they told him they only accepted academic waivers, Cain had done that in High School with his AP Bio, got a 5 in that. Got to skip the first semester of math. But they hadn't offered any AP Programming courses. Registrar told him that they couldn't do experience based waivers, it would be too much work to verify, and then everyone would try to claim it , they would be spending a lot of time looking up waivers that would be denied. Told him she believed him, but her hands were tied.
Having explained all that to the professor, the professor understood the situation and said it made sense because Cain was doing so well in the course. The Professor proceeded to ask Cain what he wished he had taught. Based on actually working on C in the office, Cain said he wished he was taught how to debug, nobody had taught him how to debug at UVA and it was his last semester. Some of these classes were projects that required large blocks of codes, and nobody had taught him how to debug. Was fortunate he had figured out how to debug from his office work. Said the same thing to his graduate school professors, repeats when one of them said we're not a trade school. This professor did not say that, he just asked if that was all. Cain also said it would have been interesting would be to teach how real compilers vary from the ISO, the international standard for C. Cain doesn't think any compiler, except maybe very modern ones, behaved exactly as the standard. ISO would say INS and enums have to work a certain way, the compiler doesn't behave like that, it makes them the same under the hood, or INT are only 16 bit and you had to do a long INT or a signed INT for something bigger. Would have been nice to know that, especially given the pointers of the time. They were only 16 bit, needed a 32 bit far pointer for anything bigger. They couldn't be mixed, far pointers were slower. If this was the second class in the series and not first, Cain would also have liked optimization to be taught. Like debugging, was never really taught that. Getting programs to work faster wasn't a huge problem in academics, but running them on less memory was very important, Cain had tried to run programs on their mainframe and get kicked out for not having enough memory.
Professor was paying attention to all of this. Some of the other people Cain has told this story to said it was a reason to dislike college, that professor was bad, professors and students think they know everything. Cain finds that response very odd, that professor was one of the few that ever impressed him. He asked a question, realized it was bad, apologized, and then wanted to know more. That was more than most people would do. Most people would double down, fewer would apologize once they realized they were wrong.
Has heard a gamut of reactions to the story; From college is horrible to people wishing they had professors like that and thought he was really cool.
Final note, during finals week, Cain got a message from the company that they had lost the contract to make the compiler and his job was over. This was in the middle of finals week, Cain had no time to find another job and he was out of college in weeks. Called his mom and she said he was graduating suma cum laude and already had grad school lined up with a grant for it (Lot of undergraduate loans, but had a scholarship for grad school.) Suggested he just take the summer off and spend it with them. Last time he ever had more than a week off for 40 years. Except for a one week vacation, Cain never had a break until his semi retirement state. Not sure if his Mom expected that to be the case, but it was one of the coolest things she ever did .
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