Fallout creator speaks out..

So Tim Kaine is an OG. He is an OG. He's a real one. How the internet changed game design. People have been criticizing what he said in this video. They've been upset about it. We're going to watch it. That just looks like honestly he's Isn't he drinking out of like one of those like candles that has like the Virgin Mary on it that you get at like [ __ ] a flea market for a dollar? Jerry. Hi everyone, it's me Tim. Today I want to talk about how the internet changed game design. This is from a question from Padoni Roso. Hope I'm pronouncing your name right. How did your thought process in designing and making games change? or maybe what adaptations did you see in general in making games by the industry around you with the advent of social media and video game streamers? To what extent and how do developers and or publishers keep in mind how streamable are their current projects in development? I'm sure that video game streaming cannot be ignored as a sort of mostly free commercial and promotion circuit for a modern day game. So, how do you guys manage this change from what making and selling games was only 10 to 20 years ago? 10 to 20 years. I'm going to go back 45. By the way, when I talk about how it changed the design, it's not just the design of the games. I want to talk about how they were portrayed to the public and also how the public received them. Yeah. So, because of that, I'm not going to talk about multiplayer games because there was a big switch from LAN to client server for a lot of reasons that are beyond the scope of what I want to talk about here. But if you want to talk about how design docs changed over that same 45 year time period, I have a video that I'll link below called evolution of video game design docs. And if you want to know how I felt technology changed relevant to video games, I have a whole techn uh technology evolution uh video. I'll link that below, too. Mhm. So this is a big question that was asked because there's been a lot of changes of the internet what we called it. It was it sure has arpeanet internet web. It's just online it's just the the net. And I want to start back in when I started which is the early 80s. So I'm going to talk about the all of the 80s here and part of the early 90s. Holy [ __ ] back then you pretty much made what you wanted. Um I've called it the wild west. There's a video I made very recently called Carefree to Careful. I'll link it below where I talk about that. But there wasn't really a net. So everything was done in print. There were guides and even whole walkthroughs printed in magazines printed media. But most people who played games just the Brady Games survival uh the Brady Games strategy guide. Yes. Figured it out. They I would say the majority of people who played games didn't go get walkthroughs or reviews. That's true. They saw a game, they bought it, they took it home. They may read the manual while it while it installed and then they played it. Pretty simple. What was cool about back then was categories of games were really loose, if they were used at all. There were a few terms like role playing games, sim, uh, 4x, although they didn't really call it 4x. They might have just called it like exploration. Most games weren't categorized. You figured out what kind of game it was by looking at the back of the box and looking at the screenshots. That was a long time. That was probably a decade, decade and a half where that's how games were sold and that's how That's actually true. Like I remember going to Circuit City and you would literally just go to like these different basically chain link garbage cans and they just had like uh sharewware games and it just had a list of all these games and you would just buy it and then just play all of them. Games, you know, they were sold physically and people found out about them by word of mouth or looking at the game store. Very rarely printed media. All of that started changing in the late 90s and the 2000s. The internet became insanely popular. It came from being something that I used academically to suddenly all my friends were talking about it. All my friends were using it and they were very excited about it and they were like, "Did you know about email?" Yeah, I've been using email for a decade. But now everybody has email and everyone's getting email addresses. The internet got so popular that people could easily find a guide to any game they wanted to play online and game categories started tightening up. There was adventure before we had printing limits. I printed out the entire strategy guide for Secret of Mana. Oh boy, that's a good one. Yeah, I was like fifth I was like fifth or sixth grade. I think it was fifth grade I did that games from role playing games. Um what this affected what I did is I I was starting to become more um it was more possible for me to have a say in what I wanted to make. I wasn't making games because other people said, "Here's what we're making this year." But people were like, "Hey, what do you want to make?" And I put together some engines. So, I started making my games more complex, which subsequently made walkthroughs harder to define. I mean, what kind of character did you make? What choices did you make as you were playing? These all affected the walkthroughs. I remember when somebody asked me what I imagined the walkthrough for Fallout was going to be like, and I'm like, "It could be really different. You don't have to go to these places in any particular order and depending on what kind of character you're making, some of them are easier, some of them are harder and what you do in those locations will be different. So that was fun to me. Sure. Of course. Then starting I want to say YouTube, which was February 2005. Oh, at that point, videos became very easy for people to share. Playthroughs were really easy to make. Before we had YouTube, we had like MySpace video. We had Google Video. Google Video was really good. Google Video was the best thing that we had until YouTube. Like I remember a lot of uploads that we did with Google Video. Xfire. Yeah. Angel Fire was another one. Share and easy to find, which meant people could just watch a game being played. Exactly. and decide if that's what a game they wanted to buy. And if they were ever stuck, they could just look up a playthrough, sometimes a playthrough of just that one spot they were stuck in. This trivialized puzzles because you could just type, you know, Fallout master how to kill and just lay it out. There'd be a video who would do that. Here's what you do. Are you good at combat? Who would possibly do this or armor or weapons? Do this. Or you have speech, do this. Do you have stealth? Do this. Nobody had to figure it out. They could just look it up. Uhhuh. So instead, I started focusing my games on what your character could possibly do. And then puzzles relied more on finding the puzzle pieces as doing them in the right order. So like the master was a good example of it. It survives to this day because even if you read what you have to do, you still have to go do all those things. You just don't go in and go speech 100 master. So what I liked is it from my so my game started going from finding items and using them to exploring all these places, learning about things and then you could use them especially Yeah, sure. Not just in combat but in dialogue. Then the 2010s rolled around and those walkthroughs and videos online were starting to be replaced with influencers. I don't recall hearing the word influencer before the 2010s. I hate it. I honestly I still hate that word. I I don't like the word influencer because what was interesting about I I don't like it because it takes agency away from the user. Like what do you mean influencer these individuals is more than showing how to play games, they were actually recommending whether you should buy them or not differently than journalists. Journalists would frequently say, "Look at the game. Look at all these. look at the features and it supports this and it's very similar to this game and blah blah blah. And then they'd finally give it like we're gonna give it an eight out of 10 because it was a little buggy but we liked it. Feel like eight out of 10 is really good. Influencers did something different. They were like here's a game I love it. It's for you and let me show you. And then there show high points of it. That's what I do. Game print magazines by the way by the 2010s are already dying. And I think this killed them because why wait for a review when someone you already followed could just tell you about the game? And that's exactly what I said, whether or not you should buy it. True. Um, publishers responded to this by sending copies of the game to influencers. True. And online channels just as much as they did to game journalists. And that kind of changed things because the journalists were at least I think sometimes trying to be objective. I don't think I I look man like that's the way it was back in the day. But like [ __ ] I mean the thing is like he's right that like back in the day they were trying to give you a fair shake. They were trying to give the game but the thing is that like in like the middle of like the 2010s things really became biased. And I think that now they're extremely biased. You have games getting rated down for, you know, like the studio practices with Blackmth Wukong or for AI usage and things that are basically value judgments by the user and that's it. There's any objectivity. I mean, influencers themselves go this is what I like, this is what I don't like, or I'm here for the hardcore. So many designers like myself, we frequently thought, well, how is a certain event in the game going to look like when someone's playing it live or live or recording themselves playing it to put up as a stream? We thought about cinematics. We thought about end bosses. We thought about unusual weapons you could get. And because of that, we wanted it to look really good in video. Oh, yeah. And that was one reason like particle effects became a big thing because you wanted you just didn't want it to go boom. You wanted a big explosion and you wanted to be pretty. So, why is it that every gotacha game can't realize that sponsoring every streamer to play the beginning of your gotacha game when the beginning of your gotacha game is just a proper noun lore dump that has nothing to do with anything and it's insanely [ __ ] boring and you pay them to play it for one to two hours and all they do is play through the exact same story line that's extremely boring and repetitive and it's just introducing so much new information that nobody can follow along with it. Why haven't they realized that that's a bad strategy? I wonder I I I wonder I I look just me. NTE was pretty good. Do you know why NTE was so good? It's because I didn't do it. I knew it was going to be like that. The moment that I could get away from the main story, I'm like, "All right, let's see what happens. Can I go to jail? Can I fight a boss? Can I do something else?" That's that's immediately why is because I knew that that would be more interesting for people to watch and colorful and all these things especially in a clip because people will see that on some channel where someone's talking about the game and they see that clip and now they really want to play the game. So now you're thinking about your game the way we used to think about interviews. When you went into an interview, you're like, "Okay, I got to have some sound bites ready so that you know I I so when I get quoted, I want to make sure the sound bites quoted." Now it's like, "What part of our game would make good clips for influencers to show?" And now we're in the 2020s and many gamers don't even Now we're in the 20 Yeah, it's about right. Yep. There you go. I think that's the way a lot of people feel now. Many gamers don't even look to influencers for reviews. They look to influencers to be told how to think about the games. He's right. So, people don't form opinions from the online video. They're handed an opinion from the online channel they're watching. What this means is I've seen reviews go from this game has less combat and more puzzles and dialogues for you to interact with than this other game. Yes. To this game is stupid and slow paced and made for casuals. I think you should skip it. Yeah, that's a huge difference in how games are presented. But more people are going for that ladder. They're like, I don't have to. And the reason why Well, here's the reason why. It's because that ladder is understandable on a much more base level. It's like, okay, well, this game is is like, okay, it's boring. All right, I kind of get that. And so, whenever you watch somebody and this person has the same interest in games that you do, you assume that their emotional response will be your emotional response. And that's the reason why listening to creators for reviews is, I think, more accurate than listening to publications for reviews. Because with a publication, there are multiple people with multiple different types of interests that are all going to think about it slightly differently. But if you lock in on one person that you think that really aligns with you, you're probably going to have more games. Like for example, like there's a few different streamers that I watch that, you know, usually play the games that I play. Like uh Pirate Software plays a lot of the same games that I play. Rich plays a lot of the same games that I play. Um like Chance doesn't. Chance plays a bunch of [ __ ] turn-based games. And so like Nick plays a lot of the same games that I play. Uh let me think besides that, uh XQC plays a lot of really good stream games like etc. Like and so like co Yeah. co- carnage like if he's playing a game I'll think about okay well what what's what's he playing right so I'll Lyric yeah Lyric's another guy like he I'll look at what he's playing so Force gaming force gaming is a great example yeah like if like and so that's the reason I think why time there's too many games just tell me whether I should buy it tell me if it's for me so they find someone they just like and then that person's opinion becomes their opinion exactly um this has a positive side it's easy to find someone who sides with your preferences exactly and therefore is a good guide for you finding new games. And I've talked about that. That's how I look for review game reviewers myself. I look at their reviews for games I already know. If they like the ones I liked and didn't like the ones I didn't like, then I will trust them going forward on reviews of games that exactly what I said. I hadn't played yet. But the negative to this is more and more people seem to be abdicating judgment to that of people they see online. I think you're right. It's totally right. And I think this is a this is a meta problem. It's not a problem with gaming. It's a problem. It's a problem with politics. It's a problem with movies. It's a problem with TV shows. It's a problem with art. It's a problem with um you know like uh video games. It's a problem with music. Like music's another really big one. People keep judging whether music is good based off of how many streams it has. Have you guys noticed this? I think it started really I think that the um the high note for this was uh not like us. I think that that really kind of brought the awareness of it into the mainstream of like the public consciousness is that people were comparing like uh monthly plays of like Drake versus Kendrick. And now I think that you're starting to see everybody do this. I don't want to think about it. you tell me what I should think about it. And I see that sometimes on this channel when I get multiple nearly identical comments, yeah, from people and I realize they're just quoting an online influencer. Sometimes it's a meme, but more often it's, oh, this influencer person said this thing about this and now they're just quoting without any attribution on a in a comment. sometimes even when it doesn't apply which just makes me go are they understanding why the person said that but no they're not other reactions I see happening in the industry because of this trend is designers have become really obsessed with labeling their game it's not enough to say I'm right about this like what they especially this is true with indie devs like where they say it's a rog light you know, deck builder, etc. And like it becomes very uniform. Is it an action RPG? Does it have an open world? Is this going to be controversial if I talk about this topic? They really want to know what the labels are on their games. And so do you guys. You guys ask these questions. Does it have this content? You know, is it hubb is it hub and spoke version of a game? As if I can't think of a game that I hated because it was open world versus hub and spoke. I love both of them and a well-made game can be done in both of Exactly. I And I think that that's how I see it too. It's like people that look at open cuz where's that meme? Do I still have the open world game meme? I don't have it. Where is it? Let me pull it up. Yeah, here we go. This This is I think a very popular joke. Game game open world. It's just everything is farther away. Great. I'm I'm also like But I do think that um open world games can be great, but they can also be garbage if you just filled the open world with like random collectibles and busy work. But this is what a lot of designers go through think about now when they're putting a game together. They also wonder how influencers will react. If there's an influencer who really likes a lot of the previous games made by you or made at the company you made, you may be putting in a feature and think, is he going to like this? Is she going to comment about this nicely? It's probably not a healthy way of designing a game, but I've seen people talk about I think he's right about that. having individual people's preferences dictate the entire market is definitely a problem. I do think that if there is enough of a deviation that it won't matter. So like even if somebody doesn't like a video game, if the game is actually good, that will overrule it. It's gone from how should I make this instead of how do I want to make this? Yeah. And I don't think that's a good way to make games. I'm not doing this. Um, but many people, here's the thing, man, is like he's an Obsidian now. Like you need to talk to the people that work there because that's what they did with Avowed. Like they had a lot of like very unnecessary gamification elements of that that were completely unnecessary. Like for example, like having the levels with the gear and then having the gear breakdowns and the upgrades cost so much. Like there were a lot of things that were inavowed that seemed to be like RPG game best practices rather than things that actually enhance the story or the experience. And I think that I mean like again like it happens with every game, but I think that Avow definitely had a number of those instances and those problems. You're talking game logic, not reality. Well, I think the game logic is the reality. You know, gamers and developers alike, they want me to. They want me to what when they say, Tim, you got to listen to listen to us. You're not you and the other devs aren't listening to me. That's not you telling me to make the game I want to make. That's you telling me to make the game you want to make. And that got to a head when I started when I talked about Fallout and whether it's about capitalism and everybody told me I'm wrong that it is about capitalism. I'm like okay this this he said it's not about capitalism and all the [ __ ] the socialist you know the the seventh grade socialists are like um actually this game is it's not what I intended but you guys want it to be what you want it to be. Mhm. So, it's weird when you then turn around and say, "Well, go ahead and do what you want, but it's not it better be what we want." I think this is, and the the counter example I have for this is Armored Core 6. I think a lot of us that are big fans of like Elden Ring and the Souls Light games, we weren't really planning or hoping for a mech game. A mech game? What the [ __ ] Like, I thought you just just make another Dark Souls, but they made it anyway. and people locked in and they played it and it was great. Here's another example. Overwatch. People didn't know what the [ __ ] Overwatch like what the [ __ ] Blizz doesn't make Blizzard make World of Warcraft. Like why the [ __ ] would they make a shooter but it was Blizzard so people played it? And I think that really it's kind of what I said before about how like you know how I said that I would watch movies based off of who's in the movie. Like if I see that um you know like I don't know like [ __ ] Kristoff Waltz is in a movie like I'm going to be like oh it might be a good movie or Samuel Jackson's in a movie, Brad Pitt's in a movie, Leonardo DiCaprio is in a movie. I think to myself, oh it's probably going to be a good movie, right? And so or or like you know Denzel Washington or Russell Crow like I I could come up with a list, right? And so like I'm not even thinking about it in the context of like what the movie is. I'm thinking about it in the context of like you know who's in the movie. And I think that really he's right that like you know definitely really good developers I think earn that but there should be more of a focus around that. And it's kind of like also something that Josh Strife Hayes said where it's like whenever you're playing a video game sometimes you have to meet the developer halfway and like you don't have to make sure that the game is exactly what you want it to be. And if you try to make that meet in the middle and you try to experience the game the way they intended you to, sometimes you have a better experience overall. I'm curious now because it's 2026 and I have no idea what the 2030s are going to be like. I'm concerned it will go one of two ways cuz the pendulum always swings. either things are going to become even more tightly controlled in bubbles, which means people will stick to I'm this one influencer or this tiny group of influencers and all of their thoughts will be guided by these people. Or maybe the next generation is going to get tired of that. Get tired of all the labeling and the tired of all the placing things in a box. I've defined a box and this game is in this box and I'm not going to view it any other way. I'm curious. I'm curious where that goes. the internet basically allows I think it's going to become more constraining for larger studios because they can't afford to miss unless it's a studio like Capcom or From Software that has such a great internal vision that they know where they're going. But I think that inside of those like lower tier AAA studios and those, you know, like lower tier double A studios, I think that you're probably going to have more of an adherence. And I think outside of that, you're going to have more people making games like Expedition 33, by the way, which is like I think kind of a very like a non-intuitively successful game. The pendulum like that to swing really far and really fast. So, I don't know where the 2030s are going to go, but that's what's happened with game design and online influencers and social media over about the last 45 years. Anyway, Padoni Roso, that was a good question. I hope you like my answer. That's the end of the video. Wow. Well, there you go. And again, I I think that's perfect. I mean, like I uh I I I I people were mad about this. What he said made perfect sense. It was completely reasonable. Yeah. It wasn't like it was not framed at all in the way that it was projected on social media. I think that it was super reasonable. Totally okay. And uh I I like that. I don't think it was bad. Yeah, I thought that was great. I agree with him. I I think he is right. And like worrying about what people think is a huge detriment. It can be. And I think that's where we're going. That's the problem. What game category should be introduced in the game awards? I already said I think the game category that needs to be added is the best optimized game, the strongest and the best optimization. I'd love if they added that as a category, right, for game awards or something like that. They're mad he didn't admit Fallout was about capitalism. Well, I think that also like one good thing about stories is that sometimes when a story is very good, you can make it personal to yourself even if that's not what it was intended for. So, I think that's not even a bad thing at all. Where him are OG's worth listening to. Yeah, exactly. Grand Ambassador Gaming. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you got a guy from the [ __ ] 80s and 90s talking about this like Yeah, definitely. And I'll link you guys a video. Make sure to give it a like. I've watched a lot of Tim Kane's videos in the past. I think that they're really really good.