Tim Cain is a gaming-industry household name. The legendary developer responsible for the original two Fallout games (not to mention his work on Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Worlds, and more) has blessed us all with a delightful YouTube channel, where he often goes into granular detail regarding his prolific career.
Most recently, Cain has gone all-in on describing his job routine back in 1995, when the very first Fallout was in active development. To be blunt, it sounds wild. Talk about running oneself roughshod. But it was a personal choice, Cain insists – and yeah, that matters.
It All Starts With A Cat
Tim Cain would wake up at approximately 6 am to a cat laying on his body, not unlike a sphinx. After addressing said cat, he’d shower and head to work. Sounds about right, so far. He’d even bring a loaf of fresh-baked bread. How nice!
He’d return home from lunch, but other than that, he was at his office from around 7 am until 7-7:30 pm. Plenty of coding transpired, but plenty more meetings, too. Coworkers would head to lunch, but Cain couldn’t afford such extravagances, so he’d make food himself. (In fairness, he was paying off the mortgage for a house he’d bought!)
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Cain describes having lived “paycheck-to-paycheck,” which is pleasantly familiar to yours truly. And, undoubtedly, plenty of other people. Even after he got home at night, he’d write down notes on the day’s work, as well as his agenda for the following day. “Because those notes existed,” he adds, “that’s the reason this channel exists.” Decades later, and he’s pulling from what he worked overtime jotting down for our collective benefit.
“I worked on Saturdays, too, even that early, because there was so much stuff to be done.” That’s six days this guy was pulling, and while Saturdays in particular weren’t necessarily 12-hour shifts, he would still be at it talking to people who needed help or had ideas. “On a regular Saturday, I’d tried to be out by 4 pm.” Cain insists this was all his choice, so it’s not quite like the industry crunch we’ve always heard of. But it’s still a heck of a thing.
“The last six months [of development], Saturday and Sunday became all day as well,” he continues. At that point, we’re talking 80 or so hours. “I’d frequently be shopping at two or three in the morning” in order to accommodate that madness. “Some of you are horrified; ‘that’s crunch, that’s abuse.’ All I can tell is nobody was telling us to do this. We wanted to do it. We loved what we were doing.”
Cain concludes by hoping that we can all experience something that compels us so strongly, although he does clearly recognize the difference between the momentum that stems from genuine passion versus the painful burnout from corporate-mandated hellish crunch months.
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