Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[NecroLord]

Hate it when designers insert political and social commentary in the games they are working on.
It's not funny, it's not clever.
The only game where it really worked was Deus Ex, but it was non partisan. It asked more questions about social and political problems and did it in a quite prophetic way when you factor in what has happened since the game was released, but it did not provide clear answers.

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about all of the questions you might want to ask yourself before going into the game industry.

 

[0sacred]

The question you need to ask yourself is if you're a white male, and then reconsider

 

[normie]

I answer my channel's most frequently asked question, would I work on a new Fallout? TLDW: Maybe...what's new about it?

 

[NecroLord]

The question you need to ask yourself is if you're a white male, and then reconsider

The question you need to ask yourself is if it is truly worth it.
Is it worth it to become some corpo's bitch and be a mere gear in the ever grinding Triple A machine?

 

[0sacred]

I answer my channel's most frequently asked question, would I work on a new Fallout? TLDW: Maybe...what's new about it?

A big reason why Tim had a Midas touch in his prime was probably this, only working on projects he was genuinely enthusiastic about. And having the spine to follow through with it. Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

 

[0sacred]

BTW, has Tim done a single one of these where he answers a simple yes or no question straight up?

 

[Pyrite Pachyderm]

BTW, has Tim done a single one of these where he answers a simple yes or no question straight up?

Maybe?

 

[Roguey]

Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

Sawyer was excited about Deadfire, he got burned out because Feargus demanded full voice acting in the middle.

BTW, has Tim done a single one of these where he answers a simple yes or no question straight up?

Only in the comments. Every video has to be at least 10 minutes long so he can choose where the ads go, catering to his viewers who don't use adblock.

 

[normie]

"You're gay... and you have to leave." *Smalltown Boy starts playing*

 

[Melcar]

I wonder in what part of the wasteland he got the gay?

 

[normie]

I wonder in what part of the wasteland he got the gay?

just stay out of Zesty Sands, their leader Baradesh has made bacha bazi law of the land over there, turning many Randy into Dandy

 

[S.torch]

I misremembering or didn't Tim said just before Outer Worlds released that games should be apolitical?

 

[Alienman]

I wonder in what part of the wasteland he got the gay?

The glow of course. Just look at that thing.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

adblock

Too bad for him I subscribed to YouTube Premium and donated regularly to YouTube executive holiday fund.

apolitical

It's impossible to be apolitical. Game saying "This game does not have political theme" is a political statement, that they're against game with obvious political theme.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/obsid...lecture-players-with-politics-in-outer-worlds

 

[FreshCorpse]

apolitical

It's impossible to be apolitical. Game saying "This game does not have political theme" is a political statement, that they're against game with obvious political theme.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/obsid...lecture-players-with-politics-in-outer-worlds

I don't know if you're being serious or sarcastic but a) that link says nothing I can see in support of your statement and b) anyway your statement is nonsense. There are lots and lots of games with no real political theme and they are not explicitly against other games having political themes. Pong for example.

I always hate the fuckwits who chant "everything is political". They they really mean is that they want all art to be considered solely against their personal political preferences. They end up going to bat for shit games that happen to meet their threshold for "woke enough".

 

[Yosharian]

TOW was Obsidian trying to be apolitical

 

[0sacred]

Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

Sawyer was excited about Deadfire, he got burned out because Feargus demanded full voice acting in the middle.

Was he excited to work on IWD II? Was he excited to work on all those Fallout DLC? Maybe he just fucking loves more of the same? I doubt it. And even if he did, that would still explain why Tim has more impressive titles under his belt.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

TOW was Obsidian trying to be apolitical

It's not even the politics themselves that are the issue imho, but the cartoonish ways in which they're portrayed. You can have cyberpunk style settings without saturday morning cartoon villains. Although in the case of TOW that's further exacerbated by piss poor worldbuilding.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

that link says nothing I can see in support of your statement

The link inform the one I replied to, to what the TOW developer actually said.

Pong

Everything is political, because Pong does not exists in vacuum. It has cultural impact, thus political. What started from just moving shadow on the wall, evolved as Artistic medium.

I am sorry that your 2 brain cells are struggling to fathom this simple notion.

If you are disturbed/triggered/discomforted by the notion that a creation of a creator will inevitably imparted with its creator's ideas - I recommend you to just play shadow puppet. You need only a candle, a dim room and your two hands.

 

[Roguey]

I misremembering or didn't Tim said just before Outer Worlds released that games should be apolitical?

That was Avellone. Leonard Boyarsky said that Outer Worlds wasn't anti-capitalist (and it wasn't) and that he personally loved money. A number of devs on twitter seethed about that and retweeted one of the artists saying that a project director's views don't reflect those of the team's.

Can you imagine Soyer turning down working on Pillars II? nah, he did it and complained afterwards about muh isometric burnout.

Sawyer was excited about Deadfire, he got burned out because Feargus demanded full voice acting in the middle.

Was he excited to work on IWD II? Was he excited to work on all those Fallout DLC? Maybe he just fucking loves more of the same? I doubt it. And even if he did, that would still explain why Tim has more impressive titles under his belt.

Yes. IWD2 brought 3rd edition rules to the Infinity Engine. He loved being able to do Honest Hearts because he wanted to do an RPG with real religious themes. He was also the one who asked Bethesda to do Gun Runners' Arsenal, to prove that one could make weapon pack dlcs that had good value.

All of those have something new, much like what Cain prefers.

 

[0sacred]

All of those have something new, much like what Cain prefers.

Didn't Cain need several new things to get his creative juices flowing? Of course there's always something new with a sequel.

 

[Yosharian]

> Leonard Boyarsky said that Outer Worlds wasn't anti-capitalist (and it wasn't) and that he personally loved money. A number of devs on twitter seethed about that and retweeted one of the artists saying that a project director's views don't reflect those of the team's.

TOW's development woes in a nutshell

 

[Infinitron]

Hmmm!

I talk about how you can write interesting and memorable NPCs without falling into the same old overused tropes.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Pong

Everything is political, because Pong does not exists in vacuum. It has cultural impact, thus political. What started from just moving shadow on the wall, evolved as Artistic medium.

I am sorry that your 2 brain cells are struggling to fathom this simple notion.

If you are disturbed/triggered/discomforted by the notion that a creation of a creator will inevitably imparted with its creator's ideas - I recommend you to just play shadow puppet. You need only a candle, a dim room and your two hands.

Right right, of course, so now we play motte and bailey with your argument where what started as a hardline 'all art is political. even being apolitical is still political' position morphs into 'yeah, ok, but surely a teeeny tiiiny bit of the creators' politics is being transmitted, right?' when presented with the slumdunk counter-example that pong hasn't got shit to do with politics in any meaningful sense.

You might as well say that "everything is energy displacement" or "everything is entropy" or "everything is relative" or "everything is a thing, dude. even nothing is sort of a thing". It's stoner logic. Saying that 'everything is political' meaning that some tiny, imperceptible part of the creators worldview made it through into the final product is as close to a valueless statement as you can probably get. It is the perfect motte to retreat to.