Tim CaincreatedFalloutin the 1990s, giving us one of the most popular series in the gaming industry at large. However, he has not shied away from sharing how this very muchwasn’t what was envisioned at the time, as the first Fallout game was considered a “B Tier” project at Interplay.
So, how do you convince your coworkers to come and help you out of a game that seems much less likely to succeed than everything else the studio is working on? Turns out, all you need is pizza and passion.
In hislatest YouTube video, Cain shares some advice with the next generation of game devs, telling them to stick with genres that they are passionate about. He cites Fallout as an example of how this can work, as it was the promise of free pizza that got devs to check it out, but it was the passion they had for the concept and the genre that got them to stick around and get the game off the ground.
Tim Cain Explains How Limitations Helped Fallout’s Development
“I got everybody together after hours, I just sent out an email saying if anyone wants to and meet me in a conference room, and there will be pizza,” says Cain. “I did not know that that limitation was self-selecting for a highly motivated, highly passionate team. What was a limitation turned out to be an amazing filter for what turned out to be a really awesome team to work with.”
Throughout the video, Cain says that working within his limitations has always helped him and encourages other devs to do the same. This means playing to your strengths and working within the genres you’re passionate about. It also pushed him to create tools that sped up game development, and he cites Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura as an example of this. And, of course, Fallout itself, as Cain’s limitations in finding devs to work on the game meant that he only had those who really believed in its potential.
With that said, there were still outside pressures influencing Fallout. Cain has previously revealed that he had topush back against Interplay trying to make the combat real-time, as opposed to the turn-based mechanics we got in the end. If he hadn’t, then Fallout could have been a lot more like Diablo. The cancelled version of Fallout 3, codenamed Van Buren, would have introduced real-time combat.
