I would rather be underestimated than overestimated.

This is a perfect pairing with Adam Savages recent take on comparing yourself against your peers.

I really love this stuff…. So much great advice and great stories My whole life I’ve been underestimated and was told I would never achieve anything at school, told I was an idiot, accused of cheating on written work, blah blah blah… I lead a game development team, I travel the world making 360 vr video documentaries, I have meetings with military commanders relating to VR training sims and so on… and still always have imposter syndrome and lack self confidence In my experience, being able to DO STUFF is all that matters and it’s all I consider when I hire people, their education means very little to me. Eventually you get where you need to be

There is a group of people, a group that is too large, who think that being good at something means being arrogant and pushy and telling people how good you are. That means if you don't do that then they assume that you must not be that good instead of that you're just confident enough to not need to spend your time and effort trying to convince other people.

In Australia what you're describing is called "Tall Poppy Syndrome". Especially with people feeling you're undeserving of your success or skills. I've come to realise most people, even people you consider friends, don't want you to be more successful than they are and may come to resent you if you are. If you're secure in yourself, you won't suffer from feeling inferior when other people succeed.

Loved this video! Never really heard anyone talk about the feeling of being underestimated before but I’ve felt this so many times. I always wonder why does it happen, am I too much of a door mat, am I not unique and interesting enough. It’s taken years to learn you can’t change their estimations but instead just don’t let it dull your shine. It’s not up to someone else to decide how much potential we all have, equally not up to us to underestimate other people aswel ❤

Having imposter syndrome while being regularly underestimated sounds terrible. To me you’re a living legend so I’m surprised to hear that.

God ignoring all the noise of people trying to stop you is most of the battle. I’m convinced anyone can be successful in most things if you can ignore the noise of competitive criticism throughout the journey.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I rather like being called a cheater. When you do something so awesome people assume you MUST have cheated.

Totally agree about getting a good group of people around you. I disagree about being humble. There are plenty of people that will put you down. You have to be your biggest fan.

Enjoying my first play through of outer worlds, I love hearing Tim’s voice in the design of the game ❤ Your personality is so distinct and comfy

As a person on the spectrum who has been mistreated by bad managers for 15 years... yeah. I'm no psychologist but management positions absolutely attract sociopaths. A good manager is a rare thing.

I've run into this type of thing in my own life. The pattern I'm seeing in Tim's anecdotes and my own experiences is that above average people by virtue of birth or social strata tend to operate in the world based on their ego and the labels they assign to others. In their minds, they're exceptional and others are just average. When confronted with evidence that contradicts their stories and labels, it creates a lot of strife and resistance. Tim seems very grounded and present... He operates in reality minus the ego story most people tell themselves. It's a contrarian way to live life and it puts him at odds with others.

It's one of the most rewarding feelings in life - to prove yourself in someone's eyes without even trying to prove anything; to let those people know they're not as good as they thought; to let those people boil in their own anger with themselves, wich they don't quite understand yet; to let those people know, that there is always someone better. To teach them this simple truth, to ground them.

It's amazing how many immature A-holes are out there.

Cuh thinks he's Mr. Beast in the thumbnail

People are silly. The world isn't a zero sum game. Be friends with awesome people!

So Tim what advice would you give to people who never want to collage and are starting from zero but still want to get into game development where would you say they should start?

10:25 If you're being underestimated, just git- gud.

I prefer to be underestimated.

From my own personal experiences, I have found that the people that I am most jealous and envious of, or inspired by and respect the most usually are the product of parents that are highly creative and/or professional teachers. Those individuals seem to have a better understanding of life and have more tools get through difficult situations all while being genuinely good people (typically). Also having a kind older sibling to help you along way makes it easier too. From what I remember, you fit into that category. Most of us do not have that level of support growing up. To get to your level at such a young age, the average person had to develop a ruthless mindset to even compete. Or you become bitter about the hand you were dealt and become convinced its all rigged and its the other persons fault for "taking" something you were never offered or earned. I, unfortunately, most definitely fall in the latter category. It's only with the wisdom of time and a bunch of therapy can one suss this out. Now I am dealing with the realization that I wasted so much time being angry at everything and I have to start over... again... which makes me bitter and angry...again. But that is my problem. Maybe this can give you some context (if you read this) to what some of the other people you have dealt with in the past may have been thinking or feeling. I think it will color some of those memories differently. PS. Have you ever thought of becoming a teacher or professor?

Cooking is an art, baking is a science

Meritocracy has always been a myth.

I do have a light hearted question for you Tim. Do you have any horror stories reguarding hygene issues when you worked in the game industry🤣? Thx Tim!

Thank you so much for this, I'm currently in the process of making my first "big" game and this is invaluable info

Tim, have you ever thought about teaching now or tutoring? I feel like you’d be great at it

One of the biggest pleasures in life is to prove people wrong with success.

Not getting into game development but thank you for your videos 😢

This is the same experience I had with baseball growing up. It was always the same kids on the same teams. I grew up being a great pitcher, but was never picked for little league all stars. Middle school I made the team and some kids looked at me like they didn't think I deserved it. Pitched well in middle school. Then coming into high school. Many of the kids that didn't think I was good quit or thought they deserved to be varsity. But I worked my way to being the starting pitcher on the freshman team, JV, then Varsity my last two years and it shut up some people. Especially since the varsity coach as I grew up noticed me. Even if a few upper class men thought I still didn't deserve to pitch or even be on the team because I wasn't their friend. It's frustrating sometimes because I feel you do kind of need their approval or cooperation to be successful as a team and for yourself. That you have to teeter between ignoring it and letting them talk down to you. Because you know what you need to do to succeed even if it puts their ass to the fire or not how they'd do it.

This is why i don't talk to random npcs, they never have anything useful to say

"If you are being underestimated then be humble", thanks for the tip Tim!

My solution to the impostor syndrome has always been to introduce myself, in a new working environment, by stating explicitly that I'm an impostor, that I still have to learn most of the job. Sometimes this came back to byte me later, when I had become an expert (via HARD work, deep direct experimentation, and lots of self imposed study). At times, in fact, some of those who were there before me, who were working at the same hierarchy level as me, have felt entitled in ordering me around, in dictating how things had to be done by their chosen "proper way". I guess that's when the "being underestimated" part of the process becomes relevant. But my direct answer to that (which came after an in depth but completely ignored explanation to why I did things the way I did) never failed me to this day: "Mind your own work and let me mind mine... OR have me fired". (Never got fired...) All of that never bothered me, though. And I think that's because I managed to never be really convinced of this seemingly general belief, when people are supposed to act as if everything is some sort of competition. To me, I see it like this: we all are born, we all live, and then we all die at the end. Well, I don't feel at all pressed to be the first through the finish line, there's no competition as far as I'm concerned! Thanks for your videos!

90% of people don't give a shit about their job they just work to pay the bills. There is no passion to be found there, just a reality check.

Hi Tim! What do think of the Furiosa movie? I thought you'd like it since it has suprisingly many similarities to Conan.

Hi Tim, I just wanted to say thank you for your amazing games, I'm a big fan of your games (Fallout, VTMB, Arcanum, Outer Worlds etc.) and I'm very thankful for this amazing channel. I hope you will continue to be working on some projects in the future and will make more videos for this KZfaq channel. Have a nice a day!

What is the name of the Fallout engine?

If you don't mind me making a personal judgement regarding you... Based on the games you've directed, and your videos, I don't think that it's your ability purely that makes you great - don't get me wrong, you're clearly competent. Not *amazing* in terms of specific skills, but above competent in all fields you apply yourself to - but what makes you great is that you are able to *restrict yourself* - you're able to restrict your projects/designs. People vastly underestimate how important this is. Earlier, you made a video on design scope - and I have a problem where I'm an excellent visionary that can come up with dozens of amazing ideas with ease. But which idea to pick? How far should I take it? You're someone that's shown that he's able to solve those questions well. I've always said Fallout 1 is one of the tightest games which I've ever played. A tight game isn't made just through including good content, appreciable graphics, and such, but also by cutting out the chaff. It's a skill I've been dedicating myself to learning for years, so I admire you for your successes in restricting designs in the past.

You could call it your design language

To be fair to underestimaters, they don't have access to your inner world or lived experiences, and traditional markers of success aren't necessarily indicative of competence. Nepo babies exist, etc. It's still fun to toy with them, though.

This is a kinda common experience for Autistics, like myself (not saying you are, just that I relate to this experience). There was a study done a while back about this, relating to negative thin slice judgements made by neurotypicals about Autistics

As an unpublished author trying to break my way into the industry I really feel this. It’s incredibly exhausting when you make something that you’re proud of and submit it to go no response at all. But I also know that I’m going to keep doing it even if it’s annoying to agents because I know what I have is great.

I had this a couple times, once from one of my science teachers because I got a high distinction award in the standardised tests (while being hopeless at the exams) and he dropped the award on my desk. the second time was at uni, where the smuggest overachiever possible suddenly had a role-reversal with me and I was offput when I was walking them through an assignment because one of the units just clicked with my head and I picked it up immediately...

Here's a thing I've learndd: Feeling bad about something is absolutely useless unless it drives and motivates constructive behavior. In pretty much all cases. You can't always control what emotions you feel, but you can understand emotions will pass. If you feel you're bad at something, and you feel bad about it - try to make improvements or mitigations instead of wallowing or lashing out. "OK, this is the situation - how can it most constructively be improved?" Like Tim's saying: when you're bad at something, you can improve (rectify) and you can cooperate with people who are good (mitigate). Ideally, by sharing what you're good at with them, you can do both at the same time: Mitigate in the moment by drawing on eachother's strengths, while learning and growing together to become better at the stuff you're not. Time is limited but I'd rather be pretty good at a lot of stuff than extremely good at just ome thing and extremely bad at everything else…

holy crap .. man this is feels like people destined to ascend "reference to Cradle" by will wight

Underestimating one's competition can lead to serious strategic and tactical mistakes.

I took 2 years of intro comp sci in high-school and couldn't test out if the first college cs classes. I didn't go in thinking I was better bc I knew more, I go everywhere with basically no ego. It also helped it was in Java which I didn't know at the time.

I think it’s a predisposition of people that are not humble, towards humility. As far as I can tell, they feel humility and honesty as a weird threatening behavior because they don’t have a reference to understand someone that admits flaws or is truly friendly, so their reaction is to defend themselves.

I love when Tim gets a little sassy.

i would love your take on AI controlled NPCs in games. i think it might help emersion greatly! (when its better than now)

Something in my day-to-day life, at home and at work, is that I feel both underestimated for stuff I know while at the same time people assuming I'm good at other stuff despite me saying "I don't know how to do this specific thing". I found it useful to just remind people my specific skills so that they can know what I'm good at and what I don't know shit about. Or just ignore them and try to do my best and show them what I know.