Game Conferences

1. Early Career: No Access (1980s–Early 1990s)

Tim worked at Pegasus/Cyberon from age 16 to 20 (high school and college). He never attended a game conference during this period — he's not even sure game conferences existed in the 1980s, and if they did, he didn't know about them.

When he joined Interplay in 1991 (as a contractor, then employee in 1992), he was interested in attending GDC but couldn't. Interplay had a pecking order — he was too new and wasn't in marketing, so he didn't get to go.

2. First GDC Experiences (1994–1995)

In 1994, Tim finally made his case to attend GDC. He took extensive notes and sent out a company-wide email summarizing everything he'd learned — topics, advice, and insights. Those notes were handwritten on loose-leaf paper and have since been lost (possibly in a box in his garage).

He also attended Gateway and Orccon (tabletop and role-playing game conferences in Los Angeles) on his own time for fun. At one of these — likely Orccon around 1994–95 — he met Gary Gygax in person for the first and only time, getting him to sign the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Years later, Tim spoke with Gygax by phone while making Temple of Elemental Evil.

2.1. What Early GDC Was Like

GDC in the mid-90s was tiny — just a few hundred people, all contained within the conference rooms of a single hotel. It was easy to walk around and meet people. At night, manufacturers like Logitech would set up booths in one of the hotel ballrooms and give away products. Tim walked away with a Logitech flight stick, which proved perfect timing since X-Wing had just come out.

2.2. Round Tables Over Talks

Tim preferred round tables to formal talks. Round tables typically featured four or five experienced people discussing the pros and cons of a topic. He attended ones on adventure games and RPGs — and at the time had no idea what distinguished the two. When he asked, someone told him: "If you have hit points, it's a role-playing game."

3. The Troika Gap (1998–2005)

During Troika's entire seven-year existence, Tim attended only one conference — a GDC in 2004 or 2005, where he went with Leonard Boyarsky looking for contract work. They didn't find any contracts but did meet some industry acquaintances. Nothing much came of it. Time pressure at Troika simply didn't allow for conferences.

4. Carbine: A Director's Access (2005–2011)

At Carbine Studios, Tim was a director with actual conference budget. He attended GDC Online (GDCO), where he gave a talk on how to do stories in MMOs. He saw major industry figures there — Chris Metzen from Blizzard, Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) — but regrets not approaching Koster to introduce himself.

5. Obsidian and Beyond (2011–2020s)

At Obsidian, Tim initially stepped away from lead roles, which gave him more free time to think about games and rekindle his passion. This period saw his most active conference participation:

• GDC 2012 — Gave the well-known "Making of Fallout" talk
• Reboot Develop 2016 (Croatia) — Near Dubrovnik, where Game of Thrones was filmed; Tim enjoyed walking the city recognizing filming locations
• GAME X 2016 & 2017 (Sydney, Australia) — Did a round table in 2016 and a formal talk in 2017
• PAX — Attended multiple PAX events: Seattle, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, and Boston (multiple times). He particularly liked PAX Boston for its size — not too big, not too small — and its convention center layout that kept everyone focused in one area rather than scattered across a city
• GDC Virtual — Participated in a virtual showcase shortly before this video, finding the questions surprisingly different from what he expected

6. From Conferences to YouTube

Tim's increasing conference engagement late in his career made him realize he enjoyed talking about game development. After leaving Obsidian and moving to Seattle during the pandemic — with few opportunities to attend events — he wrote his autobiography (unpublished), worked on games and toys, and eventually started his YouTube channel.

He emphasizes the channel is not about building a personal brand, promoting a Kickstarter, or drumming up interest in sequels. It's simply that after decades of accumulated experience, he feels he has insights worth sharing — even if the modern industry is very different from what he experienced.

7. Reflections on the Modern Industry

Tim observes several major shifts:

• The disappearing middle tier — Money is concentrating on fewer, bigger games (tens or hundreds of millions of dollars) while the indie scene has exploded. Mid-tier studios are vanishing.
• Greater diversity of games — Which he considers a positive development.
• The "nine-to-five" mentality — More developers want to treat game development as a regular job, which Tim finds complicated. He sees passion as important but acknowledges the word has "almost become a dirty word."
• Impostor syndrome and time — It took Tim 15 years to stop feeling like an outsider in the industry, and another 10 before he felt he truly knew what he was doing. Only after 40 years does he feel confident commenting on industry trends.

8. References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpIJ7h4JVW8