Data On My Games

tim-cain game-development data-analysis rpg south-park fallout outer-worlds metacritic budgets team-size

Abstract

Problem: Game industry discourse often relies on subjective opinions about which games are "good" or "bad" — but what do the actual numbers say about a veteran RPG developer's career output?

Approach: Tim Cain compiled objective, publicly available data across his nine RPGs (Fallout through The Outer Worlds) and charted development time, team size, credits count, budget, sales, and Metacritic scores to look for correlations.

Findings: Budget, team size, and sales correlate with each other (bigger budget → bigger team → more sales), but Metacritic score has essentially no correlation with any of those three. The only weak correlation is between development time and score — rushed games tend to score lower.

Key insight: Throwing more money or people at a game won't improve its critical reception. Score is most influenced by having enough time to realize the creative vision, not by budget or team size.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyu2DJBWPOc

1. The Dataset

Tim Cain narrowed his full career down to nine RPGs, excluding non-RPGs (Grand Slam Bridge, Bar Tail Construction Set, Rags to Riches), games he only contributed code/design to (Pillars 2, Starfleet Academy), games that merely credited him (Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas), and WildStar (subscription MMO with hard-to-quantify data).

The nine games: Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and The Outer Worlds.

Fallout 2 is included despite Tim only being on it for the first three months, because the entire game was made in one year.

2. Development Time

Development time ranged from 12 months (Fallout 2) to an estimated 48 months (South Park: The Stick of Truth). South Park is Tim's longest project — longer even than The Outer Worlds. Tim joined in 2011, it shipped in 2014, and it had already been in development for roughly a year before he arrived.

There's a very slight upward trend over time, but high variability. Temple of Elemental Evil was done in under two years; Fallout took three and a half. Roughly, an RPG seems to take 28–35 months.

3. Team Size and Credits

Core development teams ranged from 14 to 75 people. With the exception of the dip from Fallout 2 to Arcanum, team size always went up — a strong, consistent trend.

Credits tell a more dramatic story: 142 to 791 people. For almost every game, the ratio of dev team to total credits is roughly 1:10. The credits curve mirrors the dev team curve exactly, meaning the full ecosystem of people needed to bring a game to market scales proportionally. By The Outer Worlds, over 500 people were credited.

4. Budget

Budgets ranged from $2 million to $33 million, trending consistently upward. South Park cost significantly more than Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny. Most budget data comes from public shareholder filings — publishers are public companies and must disclose this information.

5. Sales

Sales ranged from under 100,000 units (Vampire: Bloodlines) to over 5 million (The Outer Worlds). A notable revelation: South Park: The Stick of Truth also sold 5 million units, matching The Outer Worlds as Tim's best-selling game. This data comes from Ubisoft's public filings.

Sales trend upward and look similar to the budget curve, with dips after South Park into Pillars and Tyranny.

6. Metacritic Scores

PC Metacritic scores ranged from 71 (Temple of Elemental Evil) to 89 (tied between Fallout and Pillars of Eternity). The trend is nearly flat — averaging about 82 at the start of his career and 84 at the end. Incredibly variable, barely trending over 40 years.

7. The Key Correlations (and Non-Correlations)

7.1. What correlates with what

  • Budget ↔ Team Size ↔ Sales — all three correlate with each other. Bigger budget means bigger team and bigger marketing campaign, which may drive more sales. This is intuitive.
  • Development Time ↔ Score — both show slight upward trends. When time is cut too short, scores suffer. Temple of Elemental Evil and Tyranny were both done in two years and had the lowest scores. However, Fallout 2 was done in one year and scored well, so this correlation has exceptions.

7.2. What does NOT correlate

  • Score ↔ Sales — Vampire: Bloodlines scored well but is Tim's worst-selling RPG. No relationship.
  • Score ↔ Budget — Fallout 2 scored well on a tiny budget done in one year.
  • Score ↔ Team Size — Fallout and Arcanum had small teams and scored better than some games with large teams.

8. Tim's Conclusion

Changing budget or team size won't affect a game's critical score. The score is most related to whether the team had enough time to realize their creative vision. That's only loosely correlated to budget — a small team with a small budget can work longer, while a big budget might still come with a tight deadline. The data across nine games and 40 years supports what Tim has said repeatedly: more money and more people don't make a better game.

9. References