Games And Theater

tim-cain game-industry theater adaptations team-composition post-production-depression

Abstract

Problem: What can the video game industry learn from the theater business, given their structural similarities?

Approach: Tim Cain explores three parallels between games and theater: how adaptations perform versus original works, how team composition affects success, and the emotional toll of finishing a long project.

Findings: Broadway data shows adaptations vastly outperform originals (82% of musicals are adaptations, with double the average run length). A Northwestern study found mixed teams of newcomers and veterans produce the best outcomes — in both theater and science. Post-production depression is a well-studied phenomenon in theater that the game industry largely ignores.

Key insight: Theater has decades of research on problems the game industry treats as unsolved or unacknowledged — adaptation strategy, team assembly, and post-ship emotional health — and games would benefit from studying that work.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XALrVhS-Idg

The Structural Overlap

Tim opens by noting that games and theater share a surprising amount of DNA. Both are collaborative efforts mixing creatives (designers/artists vs. actors/set designers) with technical people (programmers vs. lighting/stage managers). Both require discipline and benefit enormously from strong direction. Despite never being a "theater kid" himself, Tim had heard the comparison made repeatedly over decades and decided to investigate.

Adaptations Rule Musical Theater

While researching, Tim encountered data showing that the theater business was booming yet 80% of productions were failing — a pattern identical to the game industry. A friend pointed him toward Broadway musical data from Ken Davenport's site covering 30 years of productions:

  • 82% of new Broadway musicals were adaptations from other mediums (books, movies, etc.)
  • Only 18% were original musicals
  • Adaptations averaged 644 performances; originals averaged only 331
  • 30% of original musicals ran for less than a month; seven closed in their first week
  • 83% of Best Musical Tony Award winners were adaptations

Tim connects this to his earlier video about how difficult it is to establish an IP in a new medium. In musical theater, adaptation isn't a compromise — it's the dominant winning strategy. He suggests games could learn from theater's approach to adaptation.

Team Composition: The Newcomer-Veteran Mix

Tim highlights a Northwestern University study ("Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance" by Roger Guimerà and others) that examined how team experience composition correlated with success. The researchers studied:

  • All 2,258 Broadway productions from 1877 to 1990
  • Scientific publications across social ecology, economics, ecology, and astronomy journals

The Finding

Success was most strongly correlated with having a mix of newcomers and veterans. Teams of all newcomers tended to fail — unsurprising. But teams of all veterans didn't do much better. The best results came from experienced cores augmented with new people, who brought fresh energy, viewpoints, and ideas.

Tim's Fallout Experience

Tim sees this pattern reflected in his own career. When he started Fallout, he was perceived as a newcomer despite having 13 years in the industry. He was 28 — the "old guy" — surrounded by team members in their late teens and early twenties on their first project. That mix of his veteran experience with their fresh energy was, in hindsight, exactly what the research predicts would succeed. It was a complete accident.

Post-Production Depression

Toward the end of The Outer Worlds (roughly a three-year production), a first-time developer came to Tim feeling unexpectedly sad about the project shipping. Tim recognized it immediately — but learned it has a formal name in theater: post-production depression or post-show blues.

It's a studied phenomenon: a period of feeling lost, unsure of what comes next, worried about career trajectory, and anxious about potential layoffs if the project underperforms. One psychiatrist compared it to postpartum depression, noting that "at least with postpartum depression you still have the baby" — whereas in post-show blues, the thing you poured years into is simply gone and out of your control.

When Tim raised this at a team meeting, many pushed back, dismissing it as not real. He suggests this is exactly the kind of phenomenon the game industry should study and acknowledge, since theater has already done the research.

Takeaways

Tim identifies three concrete lessons games can borrow from theater:

  1. Adaptations work — theater has mastered them; games should study how
  2. Mix your teams — veterans plus newcomers outperform homogeneous groups
  3. Post-ship sadness is real — it's been studied in theater and deserves the same attention in games

References