Tim Cain, the creator of Fallout and a lead developer on games like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Outer Worlds, and The Temple of Elemental Evil has started a new YouTube channel, and it's shaping up to be a treasure trove of great development stories.
Cain posted the first video on the channel Cain on Games on April 27th, and since then has covered a number of fascinating stories about his time at Pegasus (later Cybron), Interplay, Troika, and Obsidian. Some of these topics include an explanation for why he left Interplay during the development of Fallout 2, his experience of being a gay game developer working in the games industry, what it's like playing and developing games with a rare form of full-spectrum colour blindness, and Troika Games' various unrealized projects including a "Lord of the Rings" demo.
In an FAQ video, Cain explained why he is only doing this now and hasn't done so sooner:
"I did try writing a book. It was over 500 pages. I had a few people read it. Apparently, it’s a bit of a downer. What I learned was I could write one of these stories and the feedback I get from people is it was confusing, it was disjointed; sometimes it was mean-spirited. But then when I tell the story, people are like, ‘Wow, that’s really positive, I like your take on it.’ I don’t get that. Other than I think I’ve had to learn the lesson again that I’m not a good writer. Apparently, I storytell better than I storywrite, so you’re getting videos and no book."
He also later went on to give a much more personal reason in the same video:
"I’m now 57 years and 9 months old. That was the exact age my father was when he passed away. I was 24 when he passed. […] The reason I’m doing it now is because I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is when my dad passed away, I’ve got all these stories and they’re just sitting around. I would like to get them documented somewhere.'"
Considering Cain isn't really an active user of social media like Twitter or Facebook, it's great to see him share stories like this, and it's incredible to see the speed at which he's uploading them (which is pretty much daily). The channel currently has 30k subscribers, but if you haven't already, we recommend subscribing to it now over on YouTube.