Speaker A
Hey Patrick, remember how in college we bonded over the Fallout series?
Tim Cain, Fallout creator, shares his journey from early gaming to industry pioneer and discusses gaming culture and representation.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Video games evolved from a stigmatized niche to a respected cultural medium by the mid-1990s.
- Tim Cain’s early exposure to games like Ultima 3 inspired his lifelong career in game development.
- Representation and inclusion in gaming have progressed, with Fallout 2 featuring early queer characters.
- Veteran game developers play a crucial role in preserving the history and knowledge of the industry.
- Cain’s transition to YouTube storytelling shows new ways creators engage with audiences.
What the video covers
- Tim Cain, co-creator of Fallout and veteran game developer, discusses his early passion for gaming sparked by Atari and Ultima 3.
- He reflects on the stigma around video games in the 1980s and how perceptions shifted by the mid-1990s.
- Cain shares his academic background and decision to leave a PhD program to pursue game development full-time.
- He highlights his work history including Interplay, Obsidian, and founding Troa Games.
- The conversation covers the evolution of video games from niche entertainment to a respected medium.
- Cain talks about his recent popularity as a YouTube storyteller sharing game development insights.
- The episode touches on the challenges and experiences of being a gay male creator in the gaming industry.
- Discussion includes early representation of queer characters in games like Fallout 2.
- Cain reflects on the importance of preserving game development knowledge as veteran creators retire.
- The hosts and Cain share personal anecdotes about gaming’s impact on their lives and culture.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Tim Cain's Background
- 02:51Early Gaming Experiences and Influences
- 05:11Challenges and Stigma Around Gaming in the 80s
- 10:52Changing Perceptions of Video Games in the 90s
- 13:10Personal Stories and Industry Reflections
- 17:54Game Development Career and Industry Impact
- 23:09LGBTQ+ Representation and Gaming Culture
- 27:40Legacy and Future of Game Development
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Yeah, and now we're here with one of the original Fallout creators.
Speaker A
Yeah, isn't it great when life comes full circle?
Speaker A
[Applause] Yeah, uh, we have Tim Cain with us today.
Speaker A
And if our listeners haven't seen, heard, or played any of Tim's games, I have a quick little breakdown: game designer, programmer, producer, director, and project leader. I think I got most of those titles down.
Speaker A
Co-founder of Troa Games. I loved Vampire, by the way.
Speaker A
And previously worked with Interplay and Obsidian, known for his work on games like South Park: The Stick of Truth, The Outer Worlds, The Temple of Elemental Evil,
Speaker A
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and of course Fallout, among several others. And most recently, a YouTube star. We have Tim Cain here today. So Tim, welcome. Thank you for being here. And if you want to give a quick intro for our listeners too, go right ahead.
Speaker A
Well, no, thank you very much. I think you covered everything. The YouTube star is probably stretching it. I just decided during the pandemic I would start telling stories every morning about game development, and people seem to like hearing those.
Speaker A
Well, I think 113,000 people like it under a year.
Speaker A
Yeah, that is... I mean, all things that you've done are super incredible, all the things that Jason listed, but even just in the span of a year to have that much of a following that respects you is so...
Speaker A
I was surprised though. I honestly thought it would be a few thousand people and we would just chat about games, and now it's a lot, and there's a lot.
Speaker A
I think on our episode today, we will have plenty of time to chat games, but I think one thing where I want to start the episode is maybe we start digging into life a little more.
Speaker A
And I think one of the reasons why is I don't know very often the great stories of how some of the great people came to be in the video game industry.
Speaker A
So I kind of would love to talk about some of the things in your life that got you into game development or being a gay male creator, especially in the era that you were creating games.
Speaker A
So we have a lot of things that we're going to cover in today's episode, but I think where I want to start with you is just the very beginning, early stuff.
Speaker A
And which video game sparked that passion to become a game developer? Take us back to young Tim.
Speaker A
It's the '80s.
Speaker A
Yeah, ParMag time, bright colors.
Speaker A
Pepsi was clear, or not, that might have been the '90s.
Speaker A
I think... well, I had an Atari console.
Speaker A
No, those CGEs, yeah, they were amazing. It blew young Tim's brain that this one console, you could just pull out a cartridge and put in a new one and it instantly played a new game.
Speaker A
And when I was in high school, like right in my freshman years, I was 14, they got Atari 800 computers. Those also could play games and cartridges, and they were far better.
Speaker A
In fact, Star Raiders was just the most amazing game in my brain.
Speaker A
But Richard Garriott started making Ultimas, his Ultima series RPG, and they came out for the Atari.
Speaker A
And I remember spending an entire summer playing Ultima 3.
Speaker A
Oh man, and I really, really, really wanted to make something like that, but I thought I'll go to college. I know how to code already, but I'll get like a thorough grounding in it.
Speaker A
I really liked college, so I kept going and went to grad school and then finally went back into the game industry because I funded my college, most of my college, by making tools for a local game company and then eventually making a bridge game with them.
Speaker A
And I don't even play bridge. It was... I converted a designer's flow charts into C.
Speaker A
I love that you mentioned Ultima 3 because I'm a little bit of an Ultima fan as well.
Speaker A
I think I jumped in a little bit later. I think Ultima either six or seven was one of my first computer experiences.
Speaker A
But I guess thinking in this era of young Tim and thinking of how games have developed over the years, what would young Tim say about video games now?
Speaker A
Would your mind have been blown or... jumping into the hard questions, Patrick?
Speaker A
Yeah, young Tim's head would explode because it's hard for people to understand it when I put it this way: people thought video games were stupid and a [expletive], and only only children liked them.
Speaker A
So I can't stress how frequently I was told that because I worked... I had in high school, I actually got the job offered to me when I was 15, but they couldn't hire me until I was 16.
Speaker A
So the day I turned 16, my mom took me to the DMV, I got my license, and I drove out to a game company and started working.
Speaker A
Wow, and that is incredible. You would think all my friends were like, "That's so cool."
Speaker A
I had a friend who was working at the Naval Research Labs over in Maryland, and he said, "When are you going to get a real job?"
Speaker A
And you know, I thought it was cool what I was doing, but then I went to college and I was in engineering school at the University of Virginia, and those people were all saying like, "I interned, you know, at this place," or "I worked for some engineering firm," and I'm like, "Oh, during the summer I help make computer games," and they're like, "It just... it wasn't cool."
Speaker A
And it was also very small, it was niche, and telling people that about...
Speaker A
What year would this have been, just so people can have an idea?
Speaker A
I worked there from 1981 to 1986.
Speaker A
Okay, so I graduated college in 1987, and I was supposed to go work for another company making a compiler, and that job fell through, so that was the last summer I didn't work.
Speaker A
Did you... what point do you think that this whole notion of video games as a fad versus an actual hobby or career or just being more than the medium people like in the box that people set it in?
Speaker A
At what point do you think that we saw that change? Because I know Jason and I, being content creators, being gamers for life, like literally I came out of the womb playing, controller was attached basically.
Speaker A
And I know for Jason it's very similar. Like we've had our own struggles with being like nerds and gamers and using nerd as an endearing term, not as a negative term.
Speaker A
But I know for us it was used negatively. So I guess, like, when do you think that transition officially...
Speaker A
No, I'm going to say officially happened because there's always going to be a stigma, but when do you think it started to change where people took video games a lot more seriously as a medium?
Speaker A
For me, it happened somewhere in the mid-'90s, and I say that because I left—I was in a PhD program at University of California, Irvine. I'd gotten my master's, I was working on my PhD, I had a PhD thesis adviser, and I decided to leave in 1991 to go make games again.
Speaker A
He told me I was wasting my life, that I had wasted my time at school. Also, I mean, other graduate students that I was peer level with were like, "What a stupid thing you're doing."
Speaker A
Flash forward to 1996, one of those same peer-level grad students I hired to do the Mac version of Fallout.
Speaker A
Nice flashboards in [Music].
Speaker A
In 1999, my thesis adviser, who's now the dean of the computer science department, calls me to ask me if I will come teach a class on game development at UCI.
Speaker A
Wow, and I did. So somewhere between 1991 and 1999, it completely flip-flopped. The pendulum swung to the other side.
Speaker A
And instead of me wasting my life, I was, "Hey, how can you get other students here interested in doing what you're doing?"
Speaker A
You know, that kind of lines up too because I was like less than 10 years old in that time, but I was playing games like Patrick said.
Speaker A
And I feel like we did see a big move from just your basic Marios and like bleeps and bloops of the Atari and the old NES games into—we talk about RPGs a lot—Final Fantasies, things like that.
Speaker A
And that's towards the PlayStation era of games for people listening in.
Speaker A
And like, you got games that were not for kids, you got games that are very adult.
Speaker A
I know Patrick tells the story about how gaming—well, I think it was Final Fantasy—helped him learn to like read better, things like that.
Speaker A
So games moved from this en...
Speaker A
different and I said I wasn't doing anything different the the six groups or the three groups were wildly different player builds they did different things they reacted to things differently they had different skills in their builds and I said you were sitting there watching
Speaker A
them they just they chose different things they did different things and I just reacted to that and he said could we do that in a game and I went yes but we'd all have to agree you know I I'd
Speaker A
have to get Buy in from designers and programmers and artists and make it a very certain way but we could do it and that's that's what Fallout was can we do what we did on Thursday night DN or GS
Speaker A
night can we do that in a role playing game on a computer so uh every time you talk about the things that you do I always see this like wonderful passionate Style on your face and I really I love it uh just because it
Speaker A
really shows that you care about like what you make and what you do so I want to like pry into that a little bit more and kind of like think about what parts of game design fill your cup like what
Speaker A
what what what is it that like generates that smile and a little like extra addition to that is it the same now for some of the later projects that you've done versus when you first started I'll answer the last one first
Speaker A
it it hasn't changed it's kind of always been the same thing I love I love the brainstorming at the beginning where we're just trying to pick a setting like what is this going to be um it was super
Speaker A
fun to do it for Fallout it was super fun to do it on Arcanum it was fun to do it on all the ones subsequent that I got to do that sometimes when you get an IP and like here's the set setting we just
Speaker A
jump straight to stage two which is okay What story do we want to tell and that's fun and then and that's more of a group thing and then what I really love doing is once that's those things are kind of
Speaker A
pinned down I like going okay now let's come up with some system mechanics that a support the setting and story we're trying to do and B are systemic and by that I mean I didn't I never wanted to
Speaker A
make a game and we started with Fallout and we tried to get better at it I never wanted to make a game where everything was scripted where we had to anticipate everything you did you wanted to do and
Speaker A
then scripted a response I wanted it to be systemic where I just coded a bunch of stuff and okay because that door has hit points and a lock on it if you don't have a lock pick you could you can blow
Speaker A
it open with an explosive that just came out of the game's rules we didn't go okay let's make sure the explosives work on that door um now the first time it happened in Fallout I think the door fell over you blew it and it just fell
Speaker A
over like a dead person I'm like no let's recode that that should just blow open or blow to Pieces but it's like someone run into and it just like one one time there was an ERA where the door
Speaker A
opened and then when it closed it went like this and then it it knew it wasn't back and so it just kept doing that and it ran off the screen a byebye door door I wish I had video back then there
Speaker A
were so many bloopers on the original Fallout but oh I can't imagine how fun it would be to see some of those things even just in an early design some of the stuff QA would find and they sent me an
Speaker A
email saying uh you should try this because you're not going to believe what happens and I'm like oops but yeah that that's what got me going is that what fills my cup is once we got the setting and once
Speaker A
we got the story I love that system mechanics to let you realize all the different things you want to do as a player in that setting it kind of sounds like what you're saying um is good design is backwards design in a way
Speaker A
where like you kind of start with the the um the world the the the big picture what you want people to get out of it um and then everything else kind of like fil based on that notion and I can kind
Speaker A
of agree with that from being a teacher and a department chair we're like well that was one of the things that I would teach new teachers where you might have a lot of things that you want to teach
Speaker A
your students but at the end of the day you need to think of those like bigger picture outcomes and it almost seems like the same thing here where you know if you have this wonderful idea for a world that is the starting point and
Speaker A
then you kind of fill in some of those things whether it's like what does a door look like in this fantasy world and what would happen when you blow it apart with a rocket launcher you know what I
Speaker A
mean or a shotgun or how do these little things impact everything so I think that's like an incredible way to think about designing a world that's great um another thing I wanted to kind of talk about and this kind of goes in
Speaker A
tandem with what your channel is all about you do an excellent job of connecting with aspiring develop velers or maybe current developers about um all of your knowledge and sharing it and one thing that you said in our emails is
Speaker A
that you think a lot of like this institutional knowledge um might be gone in the future is that something that you can kind of elaborate on more yeah I I'm one of the first people to actually retire from a career I've known people
Speaker A
who've done game development for years and then they didn't like it or they thought they could make more money or have better hours particularly somewhere else and so they left the industry but I think I'm the start of
Speaker A
the generation that's going to be retiring after a whole career in it and yes there are things have changed technologically and there are things that have changed in production process and stuff but there's a lot of basic game development knowledge that I think
Speaker A
is just being lost as people start to retire and I tried writing a memoir and what I discovered is I'm really bad at writing a memoir so I forget I think one of the producers I worked with at at obsidian
Speaker A
said why don't you just do a YouTube channel and do little story blocks basically is a memoir right like what you're doing now is yeah more consumable in a way too and also people can um it because it's short 10 to 15 minute
Speaker A
videos and I try to put them in categories you can just jump to what you like if people don't want to hear about Arcanum or they don't want to hear about troa there's I have it broken down by
Speaker A
game by company and then by what process I'm talking about I'm I talking about programming design production I do talk a little bit about art even though I I'm Inc capable of doing art just because I've worked with enough artists to know
Speaker A
what what I and other people do to annoy them nice so I think that is kind of like a great tool for so many people that want or or even just want to pick the brain of like what was it like um do you think
Speaker A
that more of uh like the veteran developers should be doing this I I hope they would do it I've talked to a few because I found out why they're not and some of it is the obvious well the if
Speaker A
you're still working the industry and you're covered under NDA you can't say these stories some of them are they're worried because no matter how I cast my stories some of my viewers want to put everybody into a hero villain role right
Speaker A
even sometimes they put me in the villain role and i' said okay let's do a whole video about things I did where I seem to be the bad guy to a lot of people like I don't think anyone feels
Speaker A
they're the bad guy but sometimes you have to make decisions that people don't like and aren't good for some people but that's just the way things work so I try to get enough of these stories in there that people get a broad range of here's
Speaker A
what it's here's what it was like for me to be just you know a member of a team maybe low on the totem pole here's what it was like to be in charge of the team here's what would like to run a company
Speaker A
so you can get perspectives because I found a lot of people were like employers are horrible you know the employees are always you know every employee great and every employee bad I'm like let me tell you some stories
Speaker A
about bad employees or they they flip pop and go you're right employees are lazy bad people and I'm like let me tell you some stories about bad employers and let me tell you stories about me being bad just because I had to make a bad
Speaker A
decision or I brought something up that derailed things so I hope people see that there's it's not a story of heroes and villains it's a story of people just trying to do their best and trying to get a game out uh and in a in a
Speaker A
environment that's very complex and there's a lot of plate spinning and cogs turn isn't it funny how Wild the internet is and how much for as much as we love our viewers there are always going to be those viewers that will like
Speaker A
vilify someone or vilify you for the smallest thing you said like I haven't told Jason this yet but one of the most recent reels that he made uh it was on Super Metroid had one the slightest thing wrong in it where like something
Speaker A
occurs on a different world and a person left a nasty comment about it and it's like does it does it really matter like does the accuracy of this minute thing this little mistake really matter or uh for for you in some ways
Speaker A
like you're kind of saying just because I'm talking about these things from my perspective doesn't mean I'm doing in a way that you need to take sides it's just for you to like hear a part a part of the story because I'm sure you even
Speaker A
know like every Everything has different sides to a story oh and I've had I've had some people I worked with comment me contact me and say I don't remember it happening that way and sometimes I'm like well I have notes
Speaker A
but at one time we even found that my notes while my notes weren't wrong my interpretation of my own notes might be wrong like yes that person told you a and that person told you B but a didn't
Speaker A
cause B and I'm like oh you're right I may be reading into my own notes um so I just try to let people know I'm telling you these stories so that if you ever want to get into game development cares
Speaker A
a lot of things that can happen they may not happen to you and and you're gon to have your own road but maybe I can help you not be as surprised maybe be a little more prepared you know Tim you bringing up
Speaker A
that you're one of the generations of people that are going to be the first to retire as a career um I had never thought about that and I agree I feel like there's some people that I followed too um I know some people know like
Speaker A
Shara mamoto things like that from Nintendo really big names that are still kind of around but when these people retire there is going to be this sense of a a loss of a style or a way that someone creates a knowledge for sure uh
Speaker A
like what do you feel about that what would the impact be for aspiring developers developers that may look to you already as someone that's a a veteran that they look up to uh things like that I I think when I think about
Speaker A
like me and some other people retiring we we had to figure some things out on how to do them in games so we had to figure out a process that we now know it's very different then for people who
Speaker A
enter the industry later and just get immersed in that process without really understanding why it's that way or why very specific things are in place to avoid no like known problems like we do it this way because if you don't do it
Speaker A
this way these other things happen and I have started to see some evidence of people saying when they after they they make a game or two going well we should do it this way and there's going to be
Speaker A
less and less people around going I'm not telling you not to do that but it will cause this problem so if you don't think you know how to fix that problem I wouldn't do it that way and I'm that's
Speaker A
the kind of knowledge I see going away there are some processes of making games that I don't think they've changed and I I'm just worried about the Next Generation having to go through the same experimentation um to come to the same
Speaker A
conclusion of oh yeah you can't make a game that way right almost as if it's a a waste of time right like you listen to the people that already know so that way you can just make an even greater
Speaker A
product I don't think it it's in a way that you're kind coming across arrogant or a no at all I just truly think like if if you're saying like you said the design um the process of design really
Speaker A
hasn't changed then you you already know what the hurdles are well like I was really lucky I got to meet and talk with Richard garant in 2007 when I was coming on to board on noft and what was amazing to me at that
Speaker A
point was here was the person who made the game that made me want to yeah make games back in the 80s and he and I talked for quite a while in fact someone had to break us up and say hey we're
Speaker A
here for another reason they said can you guys can you guys nerd out later like did he just tell Richard Gary not to nerd out but um it that the kind of thing it's like I really wanted there
Speaker A
was so much stuff I knew he knew and I was like how do I absorb all this in 30 minutes and that's the kind of thing that makes me worried that um everything he learned making an entire RPG series things about making sequels
Speaker A
how to expand the world how to extend character creation but still make these all feel like they're part of the same Ultima Universe gone it's gone so I thought maybe I can help that not happen a little bit I have I have a bit
Speaker A
of a follow-up question to that one too and uh you've been fortunate to work at lots of places you had your own company as well for game design and I am not a game designer so I may be way like off
Speaker A
off on this thought but when when you do have those new hires or or um maybe even veteran designers producers things like that coming in is there like a a I would hesitate to say a training that they
Speaker A
would do but is there a way that we follow something like that's written or is it more so a verbal communication between previous workers that would kind of pass on that that development torch early on um like when we were at troa
Speaker A
and then later noft I would ask people what they've played um just because I not because I I'm like I'm not going to hire you because you've never played any of my game but it was more like do you
Speaker A
understand like what an RPG is with multiple a nonlinear RPG a reactive RPG just so they understood that's what we're trying to make so that's what we're hiring you on to do so if if if all you can you can think of our linear
Speaker A
RPGs before Warren that's not what we're doing later on as teams got bigger I think when people came on board there was they could just look around and see how what people were doing there would be online Confluence pages they could
Speaker A
jump to and see how things were done see what the lore was and there were lots of examples of of quests and stories and NPCs that have already been written for them to look at and I think that kind of
Speaker A
thing just comes naturally when you come on board cool cool makes sense well one of the things that I've been waiting to ask you as the resident homosexual on team RP gamer because Jason of course is a hetero uh after
Speaker A
many years of trying to make him not be in college wow okay um this is a different podcast so yeah um I guess like one thing for me that I always like talking to anyone um on the further side of the
Speaker A
kiny scale and this is only if you're open sharing it um is was there a difference um in the timing when you came out professionally versus when you came out personally and what was that like to have to if if you if there was a
Speaker A
difference in the timing to Teeter those two uh aspects of your life I thought you were goingon to say to Teeter that tot um perfect which oh now I want tater tots tater tots there was a a a slight difference I
Speaker A
came out personally about a year before I came out professionally um maybe even two years because since I owned tra I was very cognizant of the fact that the game industry is somewhat conservative the people in it are very
Speaker A
liberal for the most part but the industry itself was very conservative um and this is stuff I bumped into before when we when I put children in Fallout and they could be killed people were like oh you can't do that and I'm like
Speaker A
well then do we take out the kids do we make them vulnerable it was my game was very much about you act game reacts so you know you can do bad things and the game says you're a bad person so I was
Speaker A
very worried that if I came out publicly while owning troa that we may miss out on contracts Publishers may pass by on us because they didn't want the gay game developer right um and some of this came from I worked with a publisher who asked
Speaker A
us to remove gay content and I finally got them to stop by I checked back to the contract and I realized I could any any changes had to be in writing so I asked them please submit that to me in writing with your
Speaker A
reasons for wanting that character or that Quest or that content removed and then they stopped because no one wanted to be on record of like yeah we hate that gay character but already I found myself going there this particular publisher is very
Speaker A
conservative so I came out personally people knew F my family knew but I didn't do it publicly until after Tri ship it I can't imagine how hard that is um to have this beautiful project that you're working on and to have to worry
Speaker A
about who you are as a person and how that could impact whether someone is going to help you further your art like that is like unnerving there's there's this sense of responsibility um Leonard borki and Jason Anderson and I have all talked
Speaker A
about this we ran troa there was suddenly this added responsibility you have you have at one at our biggest we had like 30 35 people and you're beholden to them they you pay their salaries you you if something happened
Speaker A
and we lost a contract and we had to lay people off you're really messing with people's lives and you feel that in a way you don't when you're an employee and you're like you know oh I may quit and go over here
Speaker A
um that's totally fine and that's your thing but you can't make decisions like that as an employer because you you literally disrupt so many people's lives and what I did not want to happen is for me to go to my two uh business partners
Speaker A
and go hey I'm gay now and let's hope that that doesn't disrupt any of our publisher contracts so I just basically was like okay I'm not going to have that be I'm not going to throw something out there for Publishers to potentially pass
Speaker A
on us sure I guess uh that kind of ties into the next phase of where I kind of want to take uh this is um do you think that there are still hurdles for queer people working in the gaming industry or
Speaker A
uh have they shifted in where they appear or are they still as staunch as things like that I preface my answer think things are better they're a lot better sure um however I still had people when they applied to obsidian and obsidian was
Speaker A
great I had no issues with the cidian the worst problem that ever happened to me at obsidian was they would do a blood drive and people jokingly say to me why aren't you going and I'm like well I'm
Speaker A
not allowed to get blood because I'm gay and and one person got mad about that and said I'm riding the Red Cross but that was the worst thing that ever happened they were great but when people would apply they'd sometimes you know
Speaker A
you go out to lunch with them you know you you you do interviews but sometimes you break in the middle of the day and have lunch and I'd have someone be walking and they'd slow down with me and
Speaker A
let the other people get a little head and then they just go hey I know you're gay I'm gay too is it okay here they really wanted that assurance that yeah yeah and I would tell the gays have a
Speaker A
way to to flock to find each other truly like even if it's someone that you know that you don't necessarily like just the fact that you have that commonality is is so safe yeah some of them had had
Speaker A
issues at other companies um others were like uprooting and moving across country and they didn't want to move here and then find out oh you know this is not a good place for me to be so I got that
Speaker A
and I was glad and that's when I realized wow it's I'm it's kind of good that I'm publicly out because they know to ask me and they I think they'd also trust that I'd give them the right answer even that though there were
Speaker A
people who who were closeted even though they saw me as like even at a director level I was out no no issues whatsoever they still stayed in the closet and I realized you know that's their decision to make some of
Speaker A
them I knew they' confided with me some I just knew um you know and I was like that's their decision to make but I just wanted to make sure everybody knew this was fine this was a safe space company
Speaker A
everybody was great and it was but those kind of things still I mean I don't know what was going on in their personal lives maybe they couldn't come out because of family maybe they couldn't come out because of friends they knew I
Speaker A
didn't know what was going on but at least I could tell people hey obsidian's great and you won't have any issues if you work here what uh time like what era about was that I started at obsidian at
Speaker A
2011 okay um I had been out for at least five maybe closer to seven years before that so no we came out the same year it was a good year yeah it was a good year much later in life for me um I
Speaker A
was in my late 30s when I came out um so I think that for the 10 years that I was at obsidian actually I was obsidian for nine years I mean I still contract with him but nine years as an
Speaker A
employee I would say throughout that time when people would apply um I us I might get asked a question privately just they wanted to make sure everything was cool and how people acted there and I said it was fun is is that
Speaker A
the kind of thing that you would want to see more of for career people working in Industry were like more check-ins from the above or are there other things that you would want to see more of as well oh
Speaker A
yeah I mean I've said lots of times I really wish there had been someone like me back in the 80s and 90s for me to ask questions to um because the road had a lot of potholes in it and a lot of speed
Speaker A
bumps so I'm happy to be able to tell people hey there's a pothole here or it's smooth sailing here I do know I've had people contact me um like I had a transperson contact me and the first thing I said was we're on the same
Speaker A
highway but we're in different Lanes so I don't know exactly what's coming on your lane but let me tell you about some things that you know you're going to have to look for and that helped but I didn't I didn't want to be like hey I
Speaker A
know exactly what your experience is going to be so but it's just nice knowing there's somebody else who's already there and they've done some of this yeah where when I had to do it it was like I I I I don't know anybody who's been in
Speaker A
the industry longer than me because it will be in three months I will be been in the industry for [Music] 40 three years wow but I don't know anybody in the industry who's been in the industry who's gay as long as me or anybody older than
Speaker A
me also I don't want to be too much of a downer but a lot of older gaming there's not as many older gaming because of HIV and AIDS yeah the generation before me was decimated TR truly yeah super sad
Speaker A
time so when I'm when I'm complaining about not having mentors I also understand why I didn't have mentors right but that still doesn't change the fact that if somebody had been around in the 80s or up to the mid90s for me to
Speaker A
ask questions that would have been awesome also I think too just the The Bravery of being kind of touching back way on what we were talking about earlier where uh nerd had such a negative connotation or being interested
Speaker A
in games had a negative uh perspective from other people uh also being gay so being a gay nerd even from when I was in high school like that was almost like two Targets on you and just like you're
Speaker A
saying like I I wish I had known people like you when I was in high school because I feel like it might have pushed me more to careers where I felt like I can be a game developer and gay because
Speaker A
I know now like it seems like everyone is gay not actually but but it's just it's just a lot more commonly accepted um especially in the gamer space where there are tons of gay Gamers but like I didn't find many people like me until
Speaker A
late College um where you know like that were actually into video games and gay like I just I I feel like they didn't exist like we were a rarity the I I went I started I didn't do a lot of
Speaker A
conventions I didn't travel I don't travel well um but I did a couple gay gaming conventions uh a couple in Australia one uh in California and I that's what I felt happening was there were a lot of people were like oh
Speaker A
this is these are my people and what surprises me is so I started my YouTube channel almost exactly a year ago it was a year ago yesterday hey and congratulations it was my year anniversary and I still have people who
Speaker A
come to my channel and find my I have one video just one out of 330 where I say let's I'm going to talk about being gay in the game industry and there people go oh I didn't know you were gay
Speaker A
and I'm like how not that I mean I I I'm not overly surprised but I'm like if you know who I am how did you not know that it's come up a lot um there are lots of videos
Speaker A
about it there are interviews but even then I think there are some people you have to look to find the people who are like you MH it's not always obvious well before we get on to some of the more like casual topics like Fallout
Speaker A
and like fun tips on game design and whatnot I want to ask one more question about just like gay and queer representation in gaming and I think I know you were on uh for a portion of Fallout 2 uh and there are two gay
Speaker A
characters in that game right um did you feel like uh it was hard to push for that queer representation in that game like is that the game that you were kind of talking about earlier where you didn't know if the characters were going
Speaker A
to make it through no actually that was a later game in fact um oh wow the Fallout 2 what surprised me is the whole idea if you're talking about the farmer Son and The Farmer's Daughter I think it's a Davin and Mia are the characters
Speaker A
what and they're what I remember is there was a quest where uh you're at a farm and you asked to sleep you can sleep and hit the barn and then the son or daughter can hit on you and you can respond and it's independent
Speaker A
of your gender so you can be a male and the son hits on you you can be a female and have the daughter hit on you and vice versa they can also the sun can hit on you if you're female and this was
Speaker A
another designer's idea and I love how he handled it because you think that the farmer comes out and finds you in the morning and he's angry yeah and you think oh this is going into something you know gay hate right
Speaker A
but what the farmer says is I don't know what's going on but you don't do that unless you're married so you now have to marry my son and he has a shotgun he's like and you're like oh he's mad that you didn't
Speaker A
have wedlock wock and now he wants you to have wedlock so it was a nice and clever and fun way of handling it that he's not homophobic he's just he wants his kid to be married before they do
Speaker A
marital things and it was and it wasn't my idea it came from one of the level designers um and I like how they handled it and it was I thought it was clever and nice and supportive and it it
Speaker A
the it actually got the remain I think I left about the time that was going in so it got finished up and approved and went through all the testing cycle without me so that was great I love it when uh game
Speaker A
designers pull the rug out under you and things like that when you assume that's what's going on um Dragon Quest 11 has a character that you can assume is gay and a part of his journey is uh his father's
Speaker A
lack of of acceptance for him yeah and you think because he is such a flamboyant character that it's like oh his dad doesn't accept him because he's he's gay uh but truly the dad doesn't accept him because he doesn't want to be
Speaker A
a knight yeah and has basically has no problem with the flamboyancy just the fact that he doesn't want to be a night it's just such like a good moment for people like me or just like for anyone like you're saying oh here's another
Speaker A
homophobic story and it's like no it has nothing to do with at all it's just good storytelling we we actually removed a companion Quest um from Outer world uh because we already had a really cool Ace character written so we didn't want to
Speaker A
make one of the other companions uh Queer as well but there was at one point um one of the one of the female companions she brings home her fiance and it's a woman and her parents get really angry um and it turns out it has
Speaker A
nothing to do with her being a woman it's because they wanted her to marry a doctor or a lawyer oh and they're furious at and it's because everything in the outer world was classist nobody cared about your race your gender your
Speaker A
orientation they only cared about what you did for a living yeah and pretty much how much you made uh well thank you for answering that question because I was very curious about how that was received and it's good to think that a game as early as
Speaker A
Fallout 2 was uh like still had I think probably one of the earliest representations of a queer character like that I think so yeah well I think in terms of the history of Tim and whatnot that wraps up our part
Speaker A
of our conversation here but I'm excited for us to get to part two because you mentioned the outer worlds and I have some questions revolving around that and some other things so Jason why don't you go ahead and take us away for our break
Speaker A
for part one yes yes thank you indeed Tim appreciate it and thank you listeners for being here listening with us we will take a quick break but before we go remember you can uh support us follow us and give us your feedback over
Speaker A
on Twitter SL x uh Instagram atrp gamer and we do have our Discord too so chat with us on Discord we love chatting over there all about games RPGs and anything in between make sure you like comment and subscribe as well so we know we're
Speaker A
doing a good job where we can improve and we will be you right back and that's our wrap on part one of this week's episode we'll be back next week with part two so you can hear the rest of our
Speaker A
gaming related Shenanigans make sure you're subscribed wherever you're listening YouTube Spotify or your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode of RP gamer
Topics:Tim CainFalloutgame developmentvideo game historyRPGLGBTQ+ representationgaming cultureYouTube game storiesIndie gamesTroa Games
