It´s insane to me that Tyranny wasn´t more popular. It´s a great game!

The Data shows me that you're a solid game developer! Most of these games are noteworthy in the PC RPG space!

Not many legendary gamedevs sharing their experience like this. I hope all you youngsters appreciate and spread the love accordingly.

I'm just glad that we now have a specific link to refer people to when they ask about the lack of correlation between review score and sales figures.

Arcanum is my favourite rpg of all time. Profoundly impacted me

Hi Tim, it's me, a very long-time admirer of your work. I wanted to thank you personally for making these videos, because they help in more ways than I think you realize. In one of your previous videos, I think you mentioned becoming aware of how something you did helped someone, without you even knowing. If I could apply anywhere and get hired, it would be Obsidian. For now, as I follow your advice and make my own game, having you talking about something I am genuinely interested in, and that has some level of intimacy to it in recalling your life, has been calming for me. It lets me know how human this world really is, in the end. I am coming from IT, and that culture is not an artistic one. We may never meet, but the solitude of working on a game alone has been made much more bearable because of your reflections, since we share the experience of the games, at least. Thank you for being, Tim. Thank you for being Tim.

I freaking love this channel. I hope you never stop Tim. Some of the most fascinating game industry content on the web. Thank you so much for sharing!

The perceived 'short' development time of Fallout 2 is a bit distorted, considering it extensively leveraged Fallout 1's technology and world-building. Analyzing specific areas of where the development went into could reveal more insightful correlations than just looking at the overall development time. That is obviously more hard to do or possibly even impossible given that the data is likely not available or even easily measurable at best case scenario. But I believe it could give interesting results.

This was interesting. I had wondered how Arcanum fared vs Fallout 1/2 because I hadn't heard of Arcanum until relatively recently.

Hi Tim, I just want to tell you that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is a great game. I had/have so much fun playing it and I still play it every now and then. It is really sad that the financial situation was so dire and that it lead to the game being rushed to release (or atleast that is what I have had heard) , but luckily there are talented modders who have patched the game and by now even expended the game with originally cut content. This is so awesome. In my opinion the graphics are still great although it is so old. The game has great atmosphere visually and through story telling, characters etc. And the player has so many choices how to play or how to progress in the game. I stumbled across your channel a few weeks ago. I like that you are so calm in your videos. It is kind of relexing, but never boring, to listen to you.

Hi Tim! It's us, everyone!

Hey Tim I love the uploads, I listen to each during building my settlements in Fallout 4 Thanks a lot!

Tim- I loaded up a new character in Starfield tonight. I picked my background as “Ronin.” Lone sword for hire. After the opening sequence I tried to back out of going with Vasco- “no way! I’ve got nothing to do with this.” I was brushed aside. “Don’t you get it? You’re part of something bigger now.” Then, when I lifted off, I disabled the shields of a crimson fleet ghost and boarded it. When I took it over, I turned my guns on the frontier to rid myself of this loose end…only to find that it was invincible. I thought to myself, “you know, in a Troika game, I could have blown up the constellation ship and gone my own way, and stayed true to my character’s backstory.” Alas for flashy set pieces coming in and player agency going out! We can render a photorealistic file folder and pencil for my inventory but not my free will.

Hi Tim! About a week ago, you made a video on grey morality and I was wondering what your thoughts are on morality systems as a whole. How do you decide what kind of morality system to use and what are the pros and cons of the different systems from a design perspective. For example, comparing Baldur's Gate 1 which featured a D&D alignment system to the most recent game which had a more narrative driven system.

Arcanum is your best game; it let you have sex with a sheep, segregate mages on the train, its main villain had sensible motivations, and one of its quest lines ended up in a massive orgy... it's just hard, factual, objective data 😀 Thank you for video Tim. I wish there was a nice, clean metric to measure influence of a game. I bet on those metrics each of your games would be off the charts!! Have a great day!

Great video as always Tim :) really interesting to see this information

Small teams for a longer time = space for ideas to to be pondered, incubated, realized

Hi Tim, You are a ray of sunshine in an otherwise cruel and capricious universe. Thank you for doing what you do for us aspiring gamedevs, and may the universe bring you nothing but love and happiness.

The sales figures on Tyranny make me extremely sad, it was such an awesome and interesting crpg and I had hoped to see more like it

Thanks for the awesome data, Tim!

Fallout 2 is an outlier. half the soundtrack was from the previous game, as was the entire engine, assets, etc.

Imagine a world where one didn't have to think of the numbers.

I'm suprised Vampire didnt sell more. That was really good

you can easily tell that sales and good games don't correlate, cause ppl buy the same fifa, call of duty, [long time game series releasing every year for full price AAA] over and over and over again while the review scores fluctuate between 50 to 80.

Could you talk about save files? Specifically, how you approach handling state, how much you include within a save file, do you limit saved to certain times for gameplay reasons or is it ever for efficiency/reducing save file size etc. thanks!

What was the code you contributed to Starfleet Academy? And perhaps more importantly -- what did you think of that game, and/or the other FMV games of that era? Were you ever tempted to do anything live action FMV sequences back then?

I didn't know you worked on Tyranny! Such a neat idea for a game

Your shirt in this video is hitting me with crazy optical illusions

This gave me a question: How do these sales balance out over time? For example, my modding guide for Arcanum definitely received spikes of interest, one of which seemed timed to this channel, and the biggest was shortly after SsethTzeentach's famous review. A bunch of people definitely picked up the game during those times. So, specifically: have any of your games sold more after the first two years than during? Are there any spikes that stand out particularly to you? Also, how do later sales impact sales data when it comes up in business conversation?

ToEE at only a 71 Metascore is a crime.

It's incredible how all the curves basically look the same. It makes sense, but still!

Hi Tim! How would you go about assembling a team to start a big game project in 2024, meaning what traits/skills should a team have to start a project from scratch? Are there any good/known strategies to assembling such a team and evaluating chances of succeeding? Would you go with external (VC) funding or bootstrapping? Kind of many questions in one, but the underlying theme is: how to start from scratch and build an initial team to work on a medium-sized game (something between III - AA)

I think I may have lost the manual, but I still have the original jewel case and disc(s?) from when Bloodlines came out. I used to lend it out to friends who didn't get the opportunity to buy it, but were into Vampire. So yeah, I was one of those sales back in the day. (Arcanum too. tbh, I've bought most of those games over the years)

Well, another chart with bugs on release in those games would be interesting. I think bugs do not affect the final scores much, but they can tank the initial sales (which bring the most money). And may be adjust total sales for PC only, both OW and Stick of truth were released on the consoles. And IMO those two were the least buggy from the 9 discussed (i have all of them).

Hi! Im playing The Outer Wotlds for the gird time, thank you for making some very fun games. Be well

Man I enjoy this. BioWares Anthem is such a fascinating case to me because it sold well but reviewed so poorly that EA straightforwardly backed out of the promises they made to support the game. So it’s like publishers ended up CREATING a relationship between reviews and development time, ie since is common for development these days to continue after launch, if the early access or initial launch doesn’t review well (even if it sells well) the publishers just cancel the game. Yet other data suggests if the let something cook for longer it’s more likely to review better.. so it’s like they shoot themselves in the foot by cutting development early. I understand the financial side but man it just feels so scummy for a publisher to decided they don’t even have to keep their promises to us.

Have you ever tried making your own chocolate? Ever tried making it COMPLETELY from scratch? People here on youtube have bought the fruits and done the whooooole thing from scratch, and it actually worked well from the looks of it. As a chocolate connoisseur that could be fun!

Very interesting video. But I assume some of these older sales numbers are relatively out of date, not taking into account stuff like GoG or later on Steam sales?

Hi Tim, i was wondering if you could give some insight in a future video on the topic delays. Specifically why they happen or why they dont and what factors influences them that the regular person might not understand. Also what chain store you think has the best or the worst chocolate? Love the channel, love your games, keep being awesome.

Vampire tMB is a good example of how reviews aren't always a good way to gauge if you might like a game. A lot of people can't look past the buggyness/faults to see the absolute beauty of a game underneath. I can, so why should I listen to reviews that put down that game for things I can look past? I've seen people massively criticize games(and give negative reviews) because one texture you encounter once is a bit low resolution...

Don't mind me. Just binging all your content. I'm developing a game, so far as a solo developer in Unreal, as a squad-based RTS with RPG elements and a player controlled bombardment mechanic.

Crazy the criticism for Outer Worlds in these comments.. that game was incredible and I didn’t even know Tim was involved. I wish your choices had more impact and actually made significant changes in the story but still I can’t wait to get back to that world.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on KPIs from across your career. What are the modern indicators of success in your opinion? Do you have thoughts or opinions on the 'steam review score' system? It's importance, how the system is implemented, can be abused etc?

I think fallout 2 is an outliner because it was a sequel while all others are originals. It could not have been made for that money/team/time without Fallout (1). Or it could be used for the conclusion that a sequel seems to be doing well when you compare budget and time to score.

According to steam charts, average concurrent players over the last 30 days for Fallout (original), and Fallout 3 are: 138 and 86 respectively. I find it interesting that that more people are going back to the OG Fallout over Fallout 3, which is the game that introduced the series to a much wider audience.

Would have loved to see numbers for marketing $s spent. Impressive list of games, aside from Temple of Elemental Evil, I've played every single one ... surprised that PoE didn't generate many more sales.

You should do the budget in constant dollars. Given inflation Fallout was more expensive than you think.

Just chilling with my phone while my best mate is playing Arcanum. He is in Shrouded Hills. Disenfrenchised gnome background. The music is so good. Maybe time for another Arcanum run soon. Just started another new vegas character though. Built to destroy and fast shot.

Hi Tim! It’s me, the universe. Observing itself observe Tim.

Nothing proves nerdiness more, than a use of spreadsheet charts to prove your point!

Hi Tim, you've mentioned that you don't consider any of the games you've worked on a "Triple A". In your opinion, what's the difference between a double and triple A RPG, and what design/system would you consider adding if you could work on a Triple A RPG?

played all of them, many several times. im surprised you weren't in the torment dev team

Data is one of my love languages

Since a few people point out longtime sales, cause it seems most publisher measure a success of a game within the first weeks of sales (full price) against its budget. Tim might have a bit more insight here (especially from Troika times).

I have many, many issues with the thesis and arguments proposed here 😏 I'll keep it short. Starting with implying that because that data is the most objective, it makes it objective. "most" in that sentence does a tremendous amount of lifting. Then, issues with specific arguments: - Team size: "development team" is not defined... does it include actors for example? Composer? And of course, a team of 20 with 300 contractors is a very different beast than one with no contractors or freelancers. Also, a dev team that has to handle certification, all of QA, all of testing, localization, by themselves is quite different than one with a publisher doing that work. - Sales number: doesn't take into account the explosion of the size of the market. Selling 5m units in a 1 billion potential customers market is very different than selling 500K units in a 15 million customers market size. Also, sales are impacted by previous titles, advertising budget and how competently is was put up. Unless all your games have a flat total ad/marketing budget (including things accounted for in publisher overhead) percentage, it's extremely hard to compare sales number. - Critic score: also quite a different market. Customers, especially the most active ones, are much more informed nowadays than they were during the 1990s. Also, to take an example, every customer on Steam has their user recommendation rate front and center before they make a purchase. That is extremely different than blindly buying boxes from a store shelf; including for mainstream customers (non "hardcore gamer" type, gosh I hate that term). Also, there's more product offering now. Someone might not like Fallout but it may have been the only recent-ish crpg of that year. While nowadays there's an unbelievable amounts of games released every week, month, year; and even for niche taste one can look up games from the past 5+ years to purchase as those past games are not meaningfully different in presentation than more modern ones. To sum it up, interesting numbers, but I don't think anybody can claim over-generalized opinions or trends or conclusions from it.

Super interesting

I loved your video on imposter syndrome, and just wanted to ask a followup question to it: How do you help others with imposter syndrome? Particularly those you manage or even have close relationship ties with, not just work colleagues. Do you ever find that imposter syndrome is severe enough to actually hamper somone's ability, perhaps ironically fulfilling their doubts but out of their own doubts rather than a lack of ability. Thanks!

I think Fallout 2's dev time should be considered as Fallout + Fallout 2 dev time, as it uses lots of content created for the previous game.

Very interesting. Have you tried making team size over time the normalizing factor. So we acknowledge that newer games have bigger teams, and just say that's how it is, and see if we can pick out additional info from that?

I've always assumed Fallout 2 was more popular than Fallout 1 ... and I've been wrong this whole time!

I definitely did not think it was 1:10 for devs to everyone else. I would never have guessed that

Tim - "An RPG seems to take between 28 and 35 months" Elder Scrolls VI - "Hold my beer"

Why did the algorithm never tell me Tim Cain made a youtube channel. Now I have 9 months of videos to catch up on.

This data is really interesting. I wonder the relation between team-size, complexity and quality. I assume bigger team means greater complexity, more redundancy in programming resources and higher overall quality.

Hi tim! Is the sales data fixed on a time window (e.g. first year) or lifetime sales? It would surprise me a lot if lifetime as Vampire the Masquerade is a cult classsic, I would expect it to have good sales in the long run. Being the worst selling out of all the games is so surprising. BTW I love it, it was the first game I followed up before launch back as a teenager in school who loved the pen and paper rpg. I still remember a demo video with the church nightclub and cut features, and I even remember the website with info on the clans and all, it was so heavy the computers I used could barely load it. And I didnt even have internet at home or school, I had to check it at other people's houses.

Surely context is important. Would Arcanum be released before Fallout it would get higher scores for impact such game have on the genre.

Mr. Cain, I had a question on Clarity vs. Immersion: There are many phrases, words or inventions that imply a very specific history even if the concept would be universal. For example, in Arcanum, electricity has been discovered so the invention of the Tesla Coil is not that shocking (I couldn't resist). However calling it a Tesla Coil makes zero sense unless the land of Arcanum has a Serbian-American electrical engineer but players would be confused if it was called a Gigilok Coil. How does one draw the line so as to keep things immersive or interesting, but still approachable enough so the NPC's aren't speaking Chaucer? (This question came about when I was DM'ing for some friends and an NPC was telling the players to not get into trouble because the tyrant king had just enacted draconian laws, but if there ain't no Draco of Athens why is it draconian?!)

Do you have any number of person.days? I get that the budget partly reflects that, but one has to take into account inflation and marketing, so I don't think that can give us the figure. Again, time vs. team-size is a thing, but you probably don't have as many people in concept and in pre-release phases. QA won't do much in concept phase, concept artists may have switched to other projects by the end of the production time.

Fallout 2 🎉

I gotta be honest, I'm disappointed this video was not about exploring data structures

I would like your opinion on tv game addiction. What can or should the industry do about it? Regulations on so on.

Vampire Bloodlines selling poorly is downright strange to me. Everyone I've spoken to who has played it loved it, and everyone recommends it to me constantly. I guess most people playing it are doing so illegitimately, since it's impossible to buy in a way that impacts sales numbers so many years after the release..

there are some correlations between the factors but not necessarily causations.

Crazy to me that the early games sold so few copies... would be interesting to see if there is any data on current ownership of bloodlines, fallout 1+2, arcanum etc via steam and gog. I just feel like there are way more than 100k total people who own Bloodlines now, but that could surely be my own bias talking :)

Tim, my apologies if you've already answered this: Do you consider QA to be a part of the development team? I've observed a rift over the years in online QA personalities (Twitter, etc.), where some feel that QA are absolutely part of the dev team, and others at least feel a level of impostor syndrome that has been reported to be reinforced by dev team structure. Do you have any general opinions on this? If so, what are they?

I wonder how people will be able to collate sales data in the future as subscription services expand. For example how many more people have played Outer Worlds on Gamepass given it's free to play on there.

Time is the one thing stakeholders don't want to give you.

Hey Tim, forgive me if you’ve answered this question but I didn’t see it in my search: What’s your opinion on frequent saving and reloading when things go wrong in Fallout (and other RPGs)? Does it detract from the magic of playing by the roll of the dice, even when you can potentially screw up your game completely?

Intuitively I'd expect that both expected level of details and tools for making games have changed. But it doesn't seem to impact the development time. Is that so? If yes, is it because people just consume whatever time they have, or the expected amount of work is mitigated by the development of tools and methodology that keeps the dev time more or less on the same level. (There's Fallout 2 ofc, but how far is it from being considered an expansion)

Hello Tim! I wanted to ask if at any time when developing Fallout you had doubts about your vision for the game and how the vision for the game changed during game development.

Looking at the numbers brought a follow up question to mind: Did console releases have an effect on PC sales?

The sales for Fallout and Fallout 2 seem really low. Is that only counting original sales in the late 90s, and not the re-release by GOG and later Steam? The later sales could increase the numbers of all the Interplay/Troika titles significantly

Wouldn't Fallout 2 taking less time but having a solid score in part be explained by it having the backbones of the first game to work off of? I had assumed a lot of mechanical stuff got recycled but obviously wasn't involved in development.

My subjective conclusion is that Tyranny was awesome and it's __relative__ failure in terms of both scores and sales is a shame :(

Hi me, it's everyone, tim

Intuition says that a developer's reputation has an influence on sales. Just putting "from the makers of Fallout New Vegas" on Outer Worlds must have moved the needle for some buyers, right? I don't have the data science skills to work out how previous scores affect future sales, but I'd expect some correlation.

Many people - even in the core production team - probably don’t work 100% on this one game/project. So I’d be interested in knowing how many MWDs (aka man working days) each game took. How hard has that gone up during the years? 📈 Even a rough estimate would be nice-to-know 🤞🏻😁

I must say, I'm surprised at how big the difference indevelopment time between Fallout 1 and 2 was. Was this a matter of most of the tools you were using had already been built for Fallout 1, and so you were able to "skip" a lot of work with Fallout 2? Also, to critique tour graphs slightly, when it comes to budget and sales, The Outer Worlds (and South Park for sales) are so much higher than everything else that it makes it hard to tell the difference between the lower games. In these cases, I think it might be better to use a log scale.

Thank you for working on Arcanum, Pillars of Eternity, and Tyranny. Those are some of my favorite RPGs to play and replay.

is there anyway to track it with general increasing numbers of gamers, and PC or console vs PC AND console?

Arcanum 🎉

Fallout 1 🎉

Pretty hard to believe that F1, F2 and VTMB sold under a million units. What's the cutoff for this data, like the first year of sales?

damn thats shame that such great RPG like Tyranny sold only "few" copies :/

Still amazed how, in my opinion, the game with greatest budget and team size is the worse. Again, for me, others might see it differently. Fallout 1 is playable today in my opinion and would still work as a new release i am sure. Some small tweaks, boom, hit. South Park is super underrated in my opinion. Question: is budget including budget for license or game only? Maybe i missed that...

I really like listening to you man, ive never played any of your games or even anything that’s remotely close to them (I’m a dark souls kind of guy), but I’m in a rut waiting for new Fromsoftware games and a couple indie games so maybe I’ll check some out while I wait!

There is a trend up for team size and dev time, but I was under the impression that the trend was way stronger in AAA. Skyrim was made by ~100 people in ~3 years which isn't much more than the outer worlds. But Starfield was made by 400+ people in 5 years. And you can similar numbers if you look things like Assassin Creed or GTA. So in a way, the trend up is still smaller than what the rest of the industry is going through. I imagine you can't speak much on this but: how come "Outer Worlds" which had a budget and dev time similar to South Park ended up costing much more. And opposite that: are you sure that Pillars only cost 4 millions? From what I see it is what the Kickstarter brought in, but I imagine more money than that was needed no ? The number seems low when you look at team size and dev time.

Tyranny is of the best CRPG's of all time, and my personal favourite, I never realized you'd also worked on that. You have a very good track record mate!

Does Data Science and Game Development ever overlap? Do data scientists or statisticians ever contribute to game projects?

Was surprised you said Data, and not Data.