Tim Cain is a legendary game developer. Most famous for his work on the Fallout series, which he produced, programmed, designed, and is credited as creating, Cain has also worked on games like Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, fantasy MMO WildStar for Carbine Studios, and most recently The Outer Worlds. He’s a veteran of the industry and when he speaks, people listen. Now he’s started a YouTube channel, and his insights are well worth taking ten minutes to tune in to.
Cain’s YouTube channel offers short snippets about his experiences designing games, from discussing the time he almost got Fallout cancelled because he wanted to buy a house, to walking through cut content from the game, to interviews with other OG Fallout devs like Jason Taylor where they share their perspectives of the game’s development.
There’s a lot to like about the YouTube channel. Most videos are about a dozen minutes long – interviews aside – and focus on a hyperspecific element of game design, most often a question from the comments of his last video. That’s how we’ve got videos about how to join the games industry, comments on gaming conspiracies, and many about the creation of Fallout. He covers everything from his personal life to in-depth mechanical discussions, and they’re perfect bitesize chunks of game design stories to sate your appetite for information about the old days of design.
Cain is a natural storyteller, with an incredibly listenable voice. I love finding out the lore reasons why Vault-Tec made the Vaults and his stories about forming his own company, but the best snippets are those of his personal life. His video about his 40-year career as a gay game developer, released at the start of Pride Month, is a highlight, despite it being quite a heavy subject. From growing up as a teenager in the ‘80s with the AIDS epidemic dominating the news, to microaggressions at multiple studios and experiences with homophobic and transphobic colleagues that forced him to stay closeted for decades, Cain gives an unvarnished look at the life of a gay man in the industry during its supposed golden years.
Unfortunately, receiving death threats and getting stalked because of his sexuality forced Cain to close down all his social media, but that makes his YouTube channel even more special. He’s not Hideo Kojima, constantly tweeting inane comments about Minions, and he’s not Josh Sawyer regularly updating fans on his latest projects and sharing insights into old ones. Cain is relatively inaccessible in the modern age – who can blame him? – so his open and honest YouTube discussions are a window into his mind and experiences that you can’t get anywhere else. He didn’t need to create this, he doesn’t owe his fans anything, but I’m glad he did.
Every video is filled with fascinating nuggets of information, and Cain’s daily episodes have turned into a must-watch for me, perfect for a lunch break. I want to know the origins of recipes in his games, why he doesn’t review games, and the biggest influences on Fallout. But more than that, Cain’s perspective on development is an incredibly important one. We have so few veteran developers in this industry as so many burn out and are chewed up by the crunch machine, and even fewer ‘90s devs have Cain’s pedigree as designers or his experiences as a gay man.
Tim Cain’s insights into decades of development are required watching if you have any interest in how games are made and the history of the industry. If you’ve got a specific question, shoot it in the comments and it seems like he may make a video on it soon enough. If you’re a Fallout fan, this is the channel for you, but even if you only have a passing interest in the post-apocalyptic CRPG, it’s well worth checking out.