Abstract
Problem: When creating a new CRPG IP, should a developer choose a sci-fi or high fantasy setting — and how do you handle hybrid approaches like sci-fi with fantasy elements?
Approach: Tim Cain draws on his experience shipping games in both genres (Fallout, The Outer Worlds, Arcanum, Pillars of Eternity) to compare the practical tradeoffs of each setting type.
Findings: Fantasy wins on connotation — players arrive with deep, shared understanding of zombies, vampires, dragons, and magic, giving designers a massive head start. Sci-fi offers limitless variety but demands far more exposition to establish even basic concepts, risking audience fatigue. Hybrid settings work well when story and mechanics are built to support the blend from the ground up.
Key insight: Fantasy creatures and concepts carry built-in connotation that lets designers immediately leverage player expectations, while sci-fi requires constructing those associations from scratch — making fantasy the safer and more efficient foundation for a new IP.
1. Making Melee Viable Alongside Guns
Tim addresses the practical design challenge of balancing swords and guns in the same game — something he's done multiple times across The Outer Worlds (sci-fi), Arcanum (fantasy with industrial revolution), and Pillars of Eternity (fantasy with guns).
The natural balancing factors for ranged weapons include:
- Ammo scarcity — guns require ammunition that must be bought or found
- Reload time — some weapons reload exceptionally slowly
- Range penalties — accuracy drops with distance
However, these don't fully close the gap because even a small chance to hit at range beats the 0% chance a melee weapon has at distance.
1.1. The Outer Worlds Solution
Tim's approach in The Outer Worlds was elegant: melee weapons never miss. If the target is within weapon range and within your arc of attack, you always hit. Instead of skill determining hit-or-miss, skill determined damage output — reflecting the character's ability to find weak spots, time their swings, and strike effectively. Combined with ammo costs and reload mechanics, this brought melee and ranged into reasonable balance.
2. Sci-Fi with Fantasy Elements
Tim is enthusiastic about genre hybrids, pointing to Arcanum as a prime example. While marketed as a fantasy game hitting an industrial revolution, it could equally be viewed as a technological world with magic. He even floats the idea that a future Arcanum sequel set further in the timeline could flip the ratio entirely — becoming a sci-fi game with diminished fantasy elements.
His key principle for hybrids: setting must come first, then story and mechanics must support it. If you create a mostly sci-fi world with a trace of magic, your story and systems need to explore why magic exists, why it's rare, or why it's fading. Making a game "all about magic" in a setting where magic is marginal creates a mismatch. But exploring questions like why magic is disappearing in a technological world — that could be compelling.
3. Why Fantasy Wins: The Power of Connotation
Tim's preference, if forced to choose, is fantasy — and his reasoning centers on connotation: the feelings, ideas, and associations a concept invokes beyond its literal definition.
3.1. Fantasy's Built-In Vocabulary
Say "zombie," "vampire," or "dragon" and every player immediately has a mental model. This doesn't limit creativity — Tim lists numerous ways to make each unique:
- Zombies who retain their memories and feelings but are trapped in rotting bodies driven by hunger
- Vampires with varied approaches to feeding — animal blood vs. human blood, different origin stories
- Dragons that range from mindless beasts to intelligent spellcasters who traverse other planes
Even magic, which works differently across every fantasy game, carries universal connotation — players understand the basic concept immediately.
3.2. Sci-Fi's Exposition Problem
Sci-fi's variety is both its strength and weakness. Every element — faster-than-light drives, alien species, technology systems — requires detailed explanation before players can engage with it.
Tim illustrates this with a pointed example: most people know what a Klingon or a Wookiee is, but how many know what a Scrambler, an Elor, or a Cheela is? These are significant creatures from well-regarded sci-fi novels, yet they lack the universal recognition that even basic fantasy creatures enjoy. The genre is so broad that shared reference points are sparse.
This means sci-fi developers must construct connotation from scratch rather than leveraging it — requiring exceptional writers, careful pacing of exposition, and skilled system designers to avoid overwhelming or boring the audience.
3.3. The Near-Future Workaround
Tim notes that near-future sci-fi (like Fallout) sidesteps much of this problem. Players already understand nuclear bombs, radiation, and post-apocalyptic settings, providing a familiar foundation. But the team still had to explain super mutants, ghouls, and other setting-specific elements. Once you move past near-future into far-future sci-fi, "all bets are off" — the variety of possible futures is so vast that shared understanding evaporates.
4. Tim's Bottom Line
Both genres are valid and Tim has shipped games in both. But given a blank check and free choice for a new CRPG IP, he picks fantasy every time — not because sci-fi is worse, but because fantasy's deep well of shared connotation gives designers a significant practical advantage in building worlds that players can immediately inhabit.
5. References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-HIryOehYo