Abstract
Problem: After decades of writing post-mortems for every game he shipped (starting with Fallout), Tim Cain noticed recurring patterns — but what were the common threads across all of them?
Approach: He reviewed all his personal post-mortem notes, looking for universal themes. He found that successes were highly subjective and variable, but failures converged around the same issues repeatedly.
Findings: Five recurring problems appeared across most of his games: over-scoping, bugs, weak openings, niche appeal, and being stuck in one genre. The Outer Worlds was a notable exception to the first two.
Key insight: Failures are more universal and actionable than successes — people agree on what went wrong far more readily than what went right, making failure a more reliable teacher.
Why Failures Are More Universal Than Successes
Tim explains that when reviewing his post-mortems, the things that "went right" varied wildly between games and between people. Some loved certain stories, NPCs, or systems; others hated the same ones. He couldn't extract a reliable "top five things we always did right."
Failures, however, were remarkably consistent. People are more likely to vocalize problems than praise — nobody writes "the story in Act 2 is one of the best act two stories I've ever seen," but plenty of people will declare "the ending was the biggest letdown in the history of games." This asymmetry makes failure a more reliable source of patterns.
Problem 1: Over-Scoping
Most of Tim's games had too many features for their budget and team size. The root cause was poor estimation — of cost, time, and what was truly "core" versus nice-to-have.
Arcanum was his worst example, which he calls his "kitchen sink game." Nearly every idea from anyone on the team made it in. Whenever he suggests a feature he'd cut (like the newspaper), someone insists it was one of the best parts — which is exactly the dynamic that caused the over-scoping in the first place.
The financial pressure at Troika compounded this. Tim, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson paid themselves half salaries for the first year because they'd underestimated startup costs (conference room furniture, a refrigerator — small things that added up). They couldn't afford to hire a producer or business manager.
How Over-Scoping Shows Up in Reviews
Reviewers rarely say "this game was over-scoped." Instead they report the symptoms:
- Unbalanced systems
- Unfinished or abruptly-ending quest lines
- Late-game levels that feel rushed, empty, or too small
- Mechanics that feel half-baked
The Outer Worlds Exception
Tim believes The Outer Worlds was properly scoped. Its biggest complaint was being "too short" — which he told the team before launch would actually be a sign of success, because it meant they avoided the usual problems. Strong production support and design doc reviews helped.
Problem 2: Bugs
Not just code bugs — system mechanics bugs, script bugs, and balance issues. Tim distinguishes between code (general systems) and scripts (specific implementations by designers), noting many bugs lived in the scripting layer.
He uses the example of Harm in Arcanum becoming an overpowered one-stop spell for mages — never intended, but crash bugs always took priority over balance fixes right up to ship day.
The Outer Worlds was again an exception, shipping in a remarkably stable state compared to his other games and previous Obsidian titles.
Problem 3: Weak Openings
Tim's games often failed to grab players quickly enough. There's a rule about hooking players in the first hour — but over his career, that window shrank to 30 minutes, then 10, then 5.
This pressure forces games to front-load spectacle: a big monster, a cool weapon, an impressive set piece — even if the design didn't originally call for it that early. Fallout and Arcanum both had weak openings by this standard.
On Tutorials
Tim is firmly against tutorial levels, especially in replayable games where they become tedious on repeat playthroughs. His preferred approach: contextual pop-up hints that players can dismiss permanently with an "I don't want to see this anymore" option.
Problem 4: Niche Appeal
Tim's games were often called "flawed masterpieces" — buggy but deeply compelling to a specific audience. The niche quality wasn't just in settings but in mechanics, humor, and quest design.
Early in his career, his teams made games purely for themselves — putting in jokes they found funny, mechanics they personally enjoyed, quests they wanted to see. He never considered demographic appeal. When a marketing person first asked "what's the demographic for your game?" he was genuinely confused, thinking that was their job to figure out.
He acknowledges his brain simply doesn't work that way. He starts from his idea book, not from "what's popular now" or "what gap exists in the market."
Problem 5: Being a One-Genre Developer
Tim has many ideas that would work better as tactical games, adventure games, or shooters — but he kept making RPGs. Two reasons:
- Path of least resistance — he had success in RPGs, so that's where inertia carried him
- Typecasting — once known as "the RPG guy," publishers wouldn't buy a non-RPG pitch from him
He was excited to work at Carbine Studios on WildStar specifically because MMO RPGs are distinct enough from single-player RPGs that it felt like branching out, even if adjacent.
Looking back, he wonders whether some of his games might have been better served by a different genre entirely.
The Emotional Side of Shipping
Tim includes a brief but honest aside: it's normal to feel a mild sadness when a game ships. After years of devotion, it's suddenly done and out of your hands. He reassured a colleague at Obsidian after The Outer Worlds launched who was confused by this feeling. It's not depression — just the natural letdown of releasing something you've poured yourself into.
References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am52Ceuzgh8