Abstract
Problem: How do deeply ingrained personality traits like naivety and optimism shape a game developer's career — for better and worse?
Approach: Tim Cain reflects on decades of experiences where his trusting, optimistic nature led to both accomplishments and exploitation, offering specific stories from Troika Games, Obsidian Entertainment, and his YouTube channel.
Findings: Despite repeatedly being burned by dishonest publishers, lying interviewees, and employees who broke promises, Cain consistently reverts to his baseline trusting personality — and argues this is simply how personality works. His optimism enabled him to ship ambitious games with small teams, while his naivety left him vulnerable to financial exploitation.
Key insight: Naivety and optimism are inseparable traits that function as both a developer's greatest strength and greatest weakness — and a colleague's advice was: "Don't stop."
Personality as a Fixed Trait
Tim opens by framing naivety and optimism as core, largely immutable personality traits. He believes most people's baseline temperament gets "set in place" in their 20s or 30s. Events can temporarily shift someone's mood — a happy person can be brought down, a dour person can crack a smile — but within a week or two, people revert to their defaults. Tim's default is trusting and optimistic, and decades of negative experiences haven't changed that.
Optimism in Game Development
The optimistic side is visible in Tim's game credits. Looking at the feature lists, team sizes, and development timelines of his games, most people would conclude he was wildly overambitious. Yet his attitude was always "we'll figure this out, we'll knock it out." Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't — but the optimism was what made those attempts possible in the first place.
Naivety About Lying in Interviews
A comment on his channel prompted this video. Tim had discussed being upset that people lie in interviews, and commenters responded that everybody lies in interviews and it's perfectly fine. This genuinely shocked him. Tim has never lied in an interview — not to applicants, not to employers — and finds it alien that someone would feel justified doing so. Yet despite this awareness, he continues to take people at their word.
The Troika Royalties Story
Tim shares the royalty experiences from Troika Games' three titles (1998–2005), without naming which game is which:
Game with Gross Revenue Percentage
Troika had an extraordinarily rare contract for a percentage of gross revenue. The publisher sent two checks, then stopped. Their excuses escalated: first claiming returns negated sales (irrelevant for gross), then reclassifying cost of goods (packaging, cloth maps, CD keys) as "gross" expenses. They never sent another check.
Game with Vanishing Statements
A second publisher sent a few financial statements, then stopped. When Tim requested them, the publisher said Troika hadn't hit the royalty threshold. Tim asked for statements anyway for record-keeping. The publisher stopped returning calls. As late as 2018 — thirteen years after Troika closed — Tim asked again and was told statements "hadn't been compiled yet," despite the publisher being a public company with legal reporting obligations.
Game with No Statements at All
A third publisher never sent any financial statements whatsoever, as far as Tim can recall.
Why Not Sue?
Tim explains why developers rarely pursue legal action against publishers: it costs tens of thousands of dollars, publisher accounting can make profitable games appear unprofitable (citing the My Big Fat Greek Wedding case), and suing a publisher effectively blacklists you from the industry. He notes that digital sales through platforms like GOG may have finally pushed Troika's games past their royalty thresholds — particularly the one with the gross revenue contract — but recovering that money remains impractical.
"Don't Worry, We'll Take Care of You"
Tim flags this common employer phrase as essentially meaningless without a contract — and even with a contract, enforcement is difficult. He's been told there was no money for raises while having access to financial records that proved otherwise. He's been promised bonuses that never materialized and team reorganizations that never happened.
Naivety About Employees
Tim balances the picture by acknowledging he's been equally naive about employees:
- Being told the engine didn't support a feature when it did
- Employees promising to stay late after he bought them dinner, then leaving right after eating
- People claiming deep genre expertise who had clearly never played a game in that genre
- Employees promising to finish a milestone before leaving for a new job — and never following through. One person did this to Tim twice, and he believed them the second time
Being Told to Stop Talking
At Obsidian during The Outer Worlds, Tim openly discussed his retirement plans. Colleagues told him to stop — some because it made him seem disengaged from the current project, others because it made people who couldn't retire feel bad. Tim's intention was practical (preparing the team to step up), but he complied.
He was also criticized for repeating information between team meetings and admin meetings, told he was being "naive" for thinking both audiences needed the same project updates. He never fully understood this objection.
The YouTube Channel as Proof
Tim points to his own channel as evidence of his continued optimism. Despite 5% of comments being negative — accusing him of blaming others, demanding he literally post production code, or dismissing his industry perspective — he keeps making videos because the other 95% of viewers are engaging constructively. That's enough for him.
Tilting at Windmills
Tim closes with advice from a colleague he worked with for over twenty years: "Tim, you like tilting at windmills. That is both your biggest strength and your biggest weakness. Don't stop."
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgwDZDCaZso