# Tim Cain

Timothy Cain is an American video game developer and YouTuber best known as the creator, producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of the 1997 video game Fallout. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.

## Early life, family and education

Cain attended college at the University of Virginia, followed by graduate school in California. During this time, he helped a friend, programming a card game, Grand Slam Bridge, for CYBRON Corporation which was released in 1986. In 1989, he received a Master's Degree in Computer Science at University of California, Irvine.

## Career
### Interplay Entertainment

Cain began working at Interplay in 1991. For a couple of months in 1994, he served as the only employee working on a game that would later become the post-apocalyptic role-playing video game (RPG) Fallout. He laid out the basic concept based on the GURPS system and began programming the isometric game engine. He took over the producer role from Thomas R. Decker who had to supervise multiple other projects at the time. With a development cycle of three and a half years, Fallout was released in 1997. During this time, he was also a programming consultant on Stonekeep (1995) and helped with coding for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1997).
In an interview, he criticized the bigger influence from sales/marketing department during Fallout 2 development, saying, "We were losing part of the game to a larger group who had bigger plans for it." Cain corroborated further in May 2023 that he left the company bitter after he was forced to work on Fallout 2 and did not get the bonus pay that was agreed upon after completion of the first game.

### Troika Games

Cain was among the founders of Troika Games in 1998. His next game reunited him with Thomas R. Decker, the original Fallout producer. As project leader and lead designer he produced within 20 months the Dungeons & Dragons game The Temple of Elemental Evil for publisher Atari in 2003. While he loved making the game, he was disappointed that it did not result how he wanted it to be.
After Bethesda Game Studios secured the Fallout license from Interplay Entertainment in 2004, Cain expressed disappointment.
   I was hoping that Troika would get the license, but we were massively outbid. But in the end, they made a good game.
Cain had mixed reactions to Fallout 3, praising Bethesda's understanding of Fallout lore as well as the adaptation of "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." system into a first-person shooter role-playing video game (FPS-RPG), but he criticized the humor and recycling of too many story elements from the earlier Fallout games.
He helped out programming the last Troika game, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, a horror RPG for Activision in 2004. He also worked on a post-apocalyptic roleplay game for which he could not convince any publisher to fund. As consequence he had to lay off most employees in late 2004 and shuttered Troika Games in February 2005.

### Carbine Studios

Cain joined Carbine Studios when it was formed in 2005 as its programming director working on a fantasy MMO game for NCSoft. He was promoted to design director October 7, 2008. Cain left Carbine Studios in July 2011.

### Obsidian Entertainment

In 2011, Tim Cain joined Obsidian Entertainment as senior programmer. He worked on Pillars of Eternity, which was funded through Kickstarter. He was also a co-director for The Outer Worlds. Since June 2020, Cain is no longer employed by Obsidian as a full time employee, but still works for them on the sequel to The Outer Worlds as well as for two other companies on a contract basis.

## Personal life

Cain is affected by hereditary color blindness, stating in a Gamasutra interview that he "[can now] see less than half the spectrum of colors". He enjoys cooking, particularly Japanese and Chinese cuisine, and his favorite dishes are garlic chicken fried rice and chicken karaage. Cain came out as a gay man in the early 2000s after concealing his sexuality throughout much of his early career. He married his husband Robert Land on July 14, 2011.

## Games

| Year | Title | Role(s) |
| 1986 | Grand Slam Bridge | Programmer |
| 1991 | The Bard's Tale Construction Set | Designer, programmer |
| 1993 | Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation | Programmer, additional design |
| 1995 | Stonekeep | Programming consultant |
| 1997 | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | Programmer |
| 1997 | Fallout | Creator, producer, designer, lead programmer |
| 1998 | Fallout 2 | Designer, additional programming |
| 2001 | Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura | Project lead, lead programmer |
| 2003 | The Temple of Elemental Evil | Project lead, lead designer |
| 2004 | Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines | Programmer |
| 2014 | South Park: The Stick of Truth | Programmer |
| 2014 | WildStar | Additional design, additional programming |
| 2015 | Pillars of Eternity | Programmer, additional design |
| 2016 | Tyranny | Programmer |
| 2019 | The Outer Worlds | Director |
| 2025 | The Outer Worlds 2 | Creative consultant |