Learning Lessons From Failure

Hah! I use that exact phrase to explain peoples' behaviors. "Everyone is the hero in their own story."
It's a very good thought experiment to understand some of the dumbest shit I've seen people do. :)

I will play Temple when I finish a couple others on my list.

Regarding the sense of ownership of decisions in a project, David Fincher communicated it well in that ultimately you take authorial credit for everything including failures. It eliminates members of a team wanting to be involved in a fair weather fashion - the risk being the potential loss of great direction from those who do have a strong ego.

first he wrote fallout, then he started studying, I didn’t understand it.

Yes, there are no REAL rules for 'objectively' good taste, but there are rules in aesthetics that are hardwired into all of us, like symmetry, patterns, and color dynamics. There are combinations that simply work better than others to the human eye; otherwise, the entire beauty and art industry wouldn't exist.

I think the real problem is that some people have neutral taste (meaning they don't really care or can't tell the difference), a handful of people have good taste (meaning they either went to school or have honed their eye through years of observation), and a vocal minority who have very BAD taste (meaning they grew up with a garish stuffed animal and have a sentimental attachment to an otherwise poor aesthetic) who will defend a bad idea to the death. People who don't know any better amplify this sentiment because they want to defend a game they otherwise like but for the wrong reasons, and people who look at the medium objectively or analytically are seen as THE ENEMY who only nay-say someone else's experience.

That's the real frustrating part, because even though the people who know better are arguing for a better experience, they're having to fight an uphill battle against idiots and sycophants. As a result, real artistic merit is downplayed and mob mentality gives way to any meaningful criticism, even if the game has glaring faults. It is extremely aggravating.

there's a saying about this, think it went something like "Failure is the mother of success" or something.

Well, I love you no matter what Tim <3. Thanks for the video

I’m convinced that learning is only possible after a failure. You need to be wrong to adopt new behavior by learning, else there is no learning involved whatsoever.

Let's be real here, crashes and bugs have not stopped amazing games, especially new groundbreaking games that are unique.

I've played and seen others playing buggy, crashy games, like dayz, pubg, tarkov, Mount & Blade...
Crashing NEVER means a game is bad or good. It just means it's broken/unfinished

I actually really enjoyed Temple besides the bugs. I think I've liked every game you have worked on Tim. Can't say that about like... MOST people in game Dev.

I don't remember who it's from, but there's a quote I really like: "the worst thing that can happen to a game designer is be part of a successful game, because they might start to think they had something to do with it"

I'm baffled people not realizing they are contradicting themselves when arguing taste is subjective..

I liked Temple of Elemental evil too <3

Thanks for all this sharing Tim!
This is talk pretty human and lovely

If a crash-prone game is enjoyable in spite of that extremely disruptive problem, it means it is really, really good. I would say that proves a game is objectively good, as opposed to objectively bad. Some people have very narrow perspectives and lose sight of what is actually fun in games, and life itself. They let technicalities ruin a good time that they would otherwise enjoy if they did something as simple as save their game more often. Nobody ever said, "Wow, do you remember how fun the stability of that game was?"

I dunno Tim about 5he taste thing being entirely subjective. You'd fall into Relativism/Nominalism and everything would be objectively tasteless.

Really looking forward to the Arcanum video you teased in this (related to the subject of "not everybody has the same vision of the game" aside).

I was one of your beta testers for that. Really loved the community and the development of that title.

Its weird, I loved Temple of Elemental Evil, specially the village. It had such a vibe, brought me back to playing Baldurs Gate 1. The animations, the music, the combat was really fun too. Not so much the temple itself, but the open areas were so beautiful.

Great talk!

The crashing points reminds me of my experiences when Cyberpunk launched. Oddly didn't have too many game breaking crashes and saved the game alot and loved playing it thoroughly multiple times. Yet the outrage was loud indeed as we all know.

Also thank you for all the videos you make. I love watching them all!

Absolutely loving all your stuff. Thought i'd leave a comment at this point when i have been watching a plethora of your videos!

I don't have as many years under my belt in the industry as you do but when i was ever invited to talk as an alumni to new game dev students i used to give a talk about all my failures and what i learned from them and there has been plenty of them :D

Games take a long time to make and are expensive, it's hard to fail a couple times to learn from it. I've failed at designing software systems, though, which I then had to redo. Cost much less and maybe learned more than just how to do that system better.
Thank you for sharing!

we know its you boss

I'm a little late to the party here, but to be honest the bugs were one of the things that attracted me to fallout in the first place (I started at 3 and worked my way back). Full crashes aren't fun, but I find it incredibly entertaining when a game glitches in a way that is not game-breaking. Part of the reason I love Bethesda is for their backwards-flying dragons, inhuman character model glitches, and ragdoll physics gone wrong. you can say that it's objectively bad, but if it worked perfectly as intended I'd like them less. I love games that let me do more, that allow me to interact with the world in ways that make sense, and of course anything that in-depth is going to get some wires crossed, and when they do cross it's usually pretty funny.

When Fallout 1 was released in 1997 I was 7 years old. However, I did not play it or even know it existed until 2014 when GOG gave it away for free. I am here to say, I am the sole reason for that game's success. Everything that is Fallout and its positive reception and revenue and marketability? All me. No need to thank me.

I might have mentioned this before but I didn't find characters or writing in ToEE bad, it was good enough at least :D the game combat though was pretty hard though. Otherwise, that's a very valuable topic you brought up in this video, thank you.

Such an honest representation of your journey of growth and self-discovery Tim. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

Kenshi crashes a lot, hella good game.

About the “bad game” argument. We can say that a good game that crashes a lot is a good game, but good game doesn’t necessarily mean good product. When I see a good game (especially AAA pricey games) that has stability issues, predatory micro transactions, poor optimization… for me that is a bad product and I will not spend money on something like that. And the bottom line is that a game is often judged by how well it sold.

What if I told you... the writing in ToEE game wasn't bad

I'm so grateful for these videos you've been uploading. As someone studying illustration, I'm finding myself looking for knowledge I can extrapolate and apply to my own practice. Recovering from major surgery and these videos have been great company :-)

Hey Tim, just wanted to post a comment saying that while I know you don't consider yourself a gifted dialogue writer, you're an extremely good story-teller. You, of course know that many content creators use edits and cuts in their videos, meanwhile you do a single-take almost 19 minute video and convey an easily followed, interesting stories regularly. Give yourself some props for that!

Always look forward to your videos 🙂

I'd argue some of the charm Arcanum might come from that "too many cooks" turmoil. That game blew my mind for player choice, if my epitaph required a top 5 it would be in it. It sounds like it was very tumultuous, but very potentially instructive.

Thank you for your videos, you beast

Reminds me of the quote. Good decision making comes from expirience, expirience comes from bad decision making.

Tim, Just wondering if you could talk about how you came up with power armor and the weaponry used in Fallout, thanks.

The courage and presence of mid to analyze and learn from one's own failure is all too rare in general.
Wish they teach you this in school instead of just giving participation trophies left and right.

In regards to people who insist that their subjective opinion is objective, I think it is never about the objective truth.
"Subjective opinion" is seen as less valid, and so they just want to be labeled "objective."
I would usually have to triple assure them that their opinion is "valid and no one can take away" for them to get over it. lol

I think this might be one of my favourite videos from you. What you said at the end is very quotable too. Helps keep you grounded in what you're doing and helps you pay attention to your successes and failures. Especially the failures.

I love Temple too, Tim. It's pure DnD in PC format.

Love these videos!

Not to blow smoke but I also thought of Temple as a great game, but I agree that the dialogue is weak. But maybe from having played so many tabletop games like Shadowrun, DnD, Rifts etc. I always thought of the dialogue as sort of placeholder for your own imagination.

This is terribly short sighted but having a turn based 3.5 system was just so great to me.

Maybe especially from working as a nurse but I rather learn wrong than perform right ignorantly. Within parameters of course and hopefully not on a living person. Doing something right and not knowing why it's right is just a setup for disaster. Love all the insight you provide here.

Lots of good lessons here.

At their heart, video games are art, and art is by definition subjective.

As you mentioned, this will make some people cranky because they believe that their opinions are facts. It 'feels' better if you believe you are defending an objective fact in a disagreement. I am right, and you are wrong. No 'feelings' about it. This position will kill creativity, and thus, will kill art.

Working in a team to accomplish anything can be hard. Working in a team that creates art is almost immune to any attempt to objectively define any part of the process. It works, or it doesn't. The word that is used in my field of art (music) is chemistry.

You can't fake chemistry. You have it, or you don't. You can't make a plan for it. There are times you will have FABULOUS artistic chemistry with people you might not think that you even LIKE very much, and times that you can't create with people you love and respect.

Thus, the beauty of a team (or a band). Treasure those people you can create with. Protect them. Reward them generously. Do all you can to stick together. Chemistry actively avoids attempts to duplicate it with 'replaceable' 'plug & play' pieces.

Keep doing what you are doing. In this guy's opinion, you've made a TON of great stuff (yes, ToEE is great) and The Outer Worlds is one of the BEST and most COMPLETE games to come out over the last decade, and right up there (in my opinion) as one of the best you've been involved in making.

Rock on. Create art. Have fun. :)

Your channel continues to be outstanding. Thanks so much for doing these, Tim!

As a developer, I have to disagree with you on the crashing bit, Tim. I get what you're trying to say: That the rest of the game 'without' the crashing can still be good, and you're right. But that isn't what games are. Unless you make them purely for yourself, games are a 'product'. They are a combined experience for an end user. If a game crashes "a lot," which is to say "too much," then the experience is constantly being interrupted and reset. The more slow-burn or repetitive a game is, the worse this is every time you have to reset, right up to the extreme of bricking entire saves. It doesn't matter if the final boss battle is the most masterful, tear-jerking, cinematic extravaganza in the universe: If the experience has been start-stop-start-stop-reset-start-stop, then most people are going to give up and never experience it anyway. The player experience is everything, and if it's constantly interrupted, that interruption 'is' the experience. It ruins progress, it ruins immersion, and most of all it wastes precious time in our short lives. As a 'product' it will be panned as a failure. I'd suggest being more discriminating with how you discuss games as an art form vs. games as a product. People who still buy into buggy games are either admiring the niche artistic points or are hapless consumers, but by and large such games are failures for a reason.

the love i have for you and your channel is immense. these daily videos always make my day brighter, and are endlessly rewatchable for me. :)

Learning from a mistake is an important thing in life for sure.

As for objectivity it reminds me of a tv series i once watched (cant remember but may have been the good wife) where the judge wants the lawyers to add the line "in my opinion" after every statement they make. Ofc it is in their opinion who else?

Fallout is a great game. Arcanum is a great game. If noone else likes Arcanum it doesnt matter to me. I love playing it. I love the world. The dialogue. The skills, stats.

If the whole world loved outer worlds i still dont like it. It doesnt matter if everyone else think it is better than sliced bread.

We can say if Fallout created an IP that has entertained millions or not. But that doesnt make me love Fallout more or less. If I had to pick the best settings in all of entertainment id pick Fallout and Arcanum (with Fallout being nr 1 just a tiny bit above).

In my opinon. Or is it objective absolute truth? Maybe. Yeah probably....no wait im only human so I guess i cant share the opinions of billions of people. Luckily only i have to be entertained when i play so what they think doesnt matter one bit.

In my opinion the hallmark of a truly great game is a game people love despite its flaws.