A Typical Day Of Making Fallout

The Morning Routine

Tim woke around 6:00 AM, fed his cat, showered, and grabbed a loaf of cinnamon bread from his bread machine — bread he'd started the night before. He arrived at Interplay between 7:00 and 8:00 AM.

The bread became a morning ritual. Nick King, the scripter, was one of the early arrivals and would grab a slice from Tim's office. Others would stroll in and the bread was typically gone within 15 minutes. During this time, Tim checked emails — though there was rarely much, since he was often one of the last to leave the previous night.

Deep Coding in the Morning

Tim's first task was always an easy coding problem he'd deliberately left over from the night before — a 15 to 30 minute warmup to get back into the code. Once that was knocked out, he dove into something complicated, because mornings were his least interrupted time.

Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson had the office next door. Leonard arrived early too, and the early crew were generally heads-down during these hours.

The 10 AM Check-In Round

Around 10:00 AM, Tim surfaced from deep coding and made his rounds. He'd adapted his management style to each person:

• Jess Heinig — loved being asked "What'd you do yesterday?"
• Fred Hatch (assistant producer) — Tim checked what was on tap, whether reports were done, whether Fred was heading to Hollywood for voice-over sessions
• Jesse Reynolds (programmer) — usually in by then
• Scott Everts and Chris Taylor — shared an office two doors down; Tim would rearrange things on Scott's desk because Scott had everything in a particular order and would meticulously rearrange it back

Some people didn't want to be checked on until they had something to show. Tim respected that and skipped them.

Lunch at Home

Tim went home for lunch every day around noon. Not by choice — he couldn't afford to eat out. Before buying his house in 1995, he'd been saving and paying off student loans. When he did buy, he barely qualified for the mortgage. Interplay had to raise his salary to the absolute minimum needed to qualify — the event that nearly caused him to quit for the first time.

He was living paycheck to paycheck. It was tight enough that Fred Hatch rented a room at his house for a year and a half to help cover expenses.

The upside: he got to see his cat at lunch, which mattered because she needed attention. He'd eat, play with the cat, and return to Interplay by 1:00 PM.

The Afternoon Gauntlet

Afternoons were a mix of coding and interruptions:

• Producer meetings, executive producer meetings, QA check-ins — Tim met with the lead QA person every Friday morning, but most other meetings landed in the afternoon
• Spontaneous office visits — people would walk into Tim's office mid-sentence, or rush to his whiteboard and start drawing maps, writing formulas, or sketching scenarios. Tim had to work backwards: What's the problem? What's causing it? How do we fix it? Why are you telling me?
• Production questions — most team members arrived late morning, so by afternoon they'd identified their blockers and brought them to Tim

Fred Hatch handled much of the production load after the first year, including writing all the project reports. Tim suspects some reports went unread — questions embedded in them were never answered.

The Evening Wind-Down

Tim left around 7:00–7:30 PM, making it a 12-hour day. Depending on the season, he drove to work in the dark and drove home in the dark. The only sunlight he saw was during his lunch drive, or if he was lucky enough to have a window in his office.

At home, he ate dinner, gave the cat attention, and then wrote his daily notes — what happened that day, what needed to happen tomorrow. These notes are the reason his YouTube channel exists. When he left Interplay, he left most things behind, but the notes survived.

He was usually done by 9:00 PM, asleep by 10:00, up at 6:00. About seven to eight hours of sleep.

Saturdays: "Timmy Time"

Tim worked Saturdays too, even early in development. This was his time for feature requests that had come in during the week. The deal was simple: if someone had a good idea and was willing to create content using the feature, Tim would build it on Saturday. If someone requested a feature and then didn't use it, they got less of his attention going forward.

"My rule was: I'm not going to do more than you're going to do. You're wasting my time if you're asking for features you're not going to use."

Most people used them. Tim tried to leave by 4:00 PM on Saturdays — early enough to still see sunlight, maybe go to dinner. He ate out roughly twice a week: the Thursday night team gathering and sometimes after leaving on Saturday.

He wasn't alone at Interplay on weekends. Leonard and Jason came in too — it was their first time as lead artist and lead technical artist, respectively. QA testers came in voluntarily on nights and weekends to play the game, even turning down overtime pay to do it on their own terms. A VP once called Tim in to complain about this. Tim couldn't understand why someone liking the game enough to play it for free was a problem.

The testers' motivation: Monday morning builds usually invalidated save games, so they'd stay late or come in on weekends to finish their playthroughs.

Sundays and the Final Six Months

Sunday was Tim's one day off. He compressed all normal life into it — laundry, groceries, house maintenance. During the last six months of development, Saturdays and Sundays became full 7-to-7 workdays too. Laundry happened in the background: washing machine on when he got home, dryer before bed, fold in the morning. He shopped at a 24-hour grocery store at 2 or 3 AM, to the point where staff recognized him.

On Crunch and Passion

Tim addresses the modern reaction directly:

"I know some of you are horrified. That's crunch. That's abuse. All I can tell you is no one was telling us to do this. We wanted to do it. We loved what we were doing. And we loved what we were making."

He acknowledges it was unsustainable and is glad things have changed. But he also hopes people get to experience making something they love so much that they devote extra time to it voluntarily — not because they're forced to, but because they can't help it.

References

• Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IMrf9jngIw