My Work Pattern For Designing

[@stevebull7105]

Im saving all these design videos into a playlist. They're absolute GOLD Tim!

[@_strife]

Hey everyone just want to remind us all to do something towards making that dream of making a game into a reality.

[@NotFamousReal]

Good coffee is an absolute must for coding or designing. Always enjoy Tim

[@Adasci]

So glad I discovered your channel, you're like game development uncle I never thought I needed. The content is not only entertaining but also very educative and information you share with us is also rather scarce on the internet.

[@ILoveCiniminis]

Starting a day with a nice cup of coffee at quiet workplace is one of the good things in life

[@ScienceDiscoverer]

I say its better to get off coffee and tea as it's a drug that messes up with the sleep cycles. If you are used to it, it will be very hard few weeks or maybe months, but after that you will no be longer depended on this substances!

[@PrettyGuardian]

This is really cool hearing about how you organize your day as a game designer.

[@sinkingrealms]

We love Tim!

[@sandwich2473]

I am steadfastly *NOT* a morning person but whenever I'm working i always always try to get in as early as it's reasonable or take the early shifts as often as possible because the morning vanishes into nothing and i leave work earlier than usual so I've got my entire "real" day ahead of me

[@ruineka_one]

Thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos. They help so much with various obstacles I face as I continue to work on my game!

[@Wishtap]

As a producer, I totally see the dev team roll in around 930 - 10, that was so spot on lol Core hours tend to be 10 - 4 where I work as well!

[@lrinfi]

Don't they call that "flextime" or "flexscheduling" these days? Maybe industry is giving up on excessively regimenting the workforce. Hasn't been completely successful at it to date anyway. :)

[@Wishtap]

@@lrinfi For sure, my company calls it flextime with core hours

[@Me__Myself__and__I]

- Really good, talented people tend to do better in less regimented situations. - Game developers by definition have to be better than average. - Game developers get paid crap compared to the amount of time and effort they put in.

[@ZingFreelancer]

Hello Tim, I work as technical QA with the engine team, what in your experience, makes somebody good or bad at QA? What makes someone fantastic at QA? Thanks for doing these talks, its a treasure trove of experiences and I enjoy learning from them :)

[@Me__Myself__and__I]

IMHO its really rare to find someone who is "fantastic" at QA. Not just because it would be uncommon, but because the skills that would make someone truly fantastic at QA would also qualify them to be a developer and get paid more. They do exist, but are very rare due to that. What makes someone good at QA: - Being highly organized. They have to keep track of each bug separately, collect information about each and never lose track of any. Also leads have to write all the test scripts & training data and organize those. - Being very detail oriented. Its extremely important to get all of the facts exactly correct. For testing the devil is very much in the details, if any detail is even slightly off its harder to find the root cause of a bug and much more likely to miss things or come to the wrong conclusions. - The big difference between average and good QA is being a good detective. Good QA people don't just follow scripts and report deviations, they take the time to learn all the nuances of a system and when there is a bug they research it and not only report the bug but how it surfaces in different ways / situations and ideally what the root cause likely is. Do this and developers will love you.

[@aNerdNamedJames]

The note about this being an industry where so many people simply can't arrive to work on-time is giving a new layer to my personal ongoing joke that it must be the industry with the lowest density of non-disordered neurology.

[@Me__Myself__and__I]

To be a half-way decent game developer you have to be a very good developer. Game development is hard and lots of people want to be game developers so it attracts more talented people typically. They are also generally gamers, so of those I've known if they weren't working coding games, they where playing games. Game developers also tend to get paid rather poorly when you consider how talented they are and how many hours they work. When you have highly talented, dedicated people who aren't paid well - you let the little things slide as long as the results are good.

[@jeremyjohnson9609]

Hey Tim! I'm sure you're aware of the juggernaut that is the grand theft auto series. What are your thoughts on the franchise as a whole? Is it your cup of tea? Why do you think it's been so massively successful? Were there any headlines, technological achievements, design choices, or anything about the game that caught your attention? The first game came out a year after fallout. Was it on your radar of games to check out at the time? Or maybe you've ignored it all together 😅 Just curious about your thoughts!

[@AttemptedUsername]

Great question!

[@HoshoLegacy]

I always roll in 8 minutes late, because public transport means my options are 8 minutes late or 20 minutes early.. i stay 8 mins late to compensate.. =/

[@martinfreeman9127]

Hi Tim. Could you talk a bit about your history of working with Sound Designers or other folks within the audio teams in your games? What qualities do you look for/appreciate in folks working on the these teams in your games?

[@deathsheadknight2137]

Thanks for saying so

[@BuzzKirill3D]

Tim, why do you have such good diction? Is that something you were naturally good at or did you have to work at it?

[@CainOnGames]

Several years of speech therapy in elementary school, followed by years of being chosen as the narrator of every school play. That combination burned any fear of public speaking out of me.

[@Anubis1101]

​@@CainOnGamesyea I was wondering about that too. No way I could do videos like this without multiple takes. You're pretty good at it!

[@fabianmaryanowski2252]

I wonder if it depends on industry or position/department regarding the "being late and getting fired". I work in banking, all positions I had so far (even the first low level analyst job) were with VERY broad core hours or at least no one cared about as long as you did your job. Right now I life in Germany, my team sits in London, no one cares as long as my reportings are in and I am there for the meetings. That said I see very different patterns in our company (I think for what we do we are the biggest company or top 3 on this planet), we have our core times but some people start 2-3 hours before that, others 2-3 after the core times and still everything fits together, thats the important part I think.

[@Me__Myself__and__I]

It depends on managers and management style. Some managers are super strict and micro-manage. Others are more flexible and mostly concerned on the results. Also when teams are spread across multiple sites / work from home it also tends to be more flexible and results oriented.

[@chralexNET]

11:08 it's also the only industry where a person can go nah I don't like doing my job and not get fired apparently, lol. And also, I am one of those guys who came in late a lot, but I also worked a lot of extra hours, and now I am in a job where they don't care when I come in, just that I get the hours done every week.

[@DelfosseFoo]

I was discussing burning out as a programmer with someone and caught myself thinking that you probably never had a video on the subject. I think you've all experienced it at Troika, especially towards the end, but you never quite put it into these terms, and you never discussed the subject of burning out and techniques to overcome it. Would appreciate your insights on it.

[@Me__Myself__and__I]

Burnout is a very individual thing. What causes one person to burn out and not another is specific to the person. Some people can put in lots of hours per day for short periods, some can put in moderate overtime for long periods, some can work 6 days a week without burning, and some crazy bastards can put in lots of hours each day, 7 days a week for many months without burnout. Totally depends on the individual. It also depends on if the person is self aware and good at managing themselves to avoid burnout.

[@yaginku]

Hey Tim, can you talk about how to get funding for a game? I don't know if you were ever put in a position where you dealt with that, but maybe you have experience with talking to publishers/investors etc?

[@HMBreno]

I don't work in the industry, but I think having a nice demo probably helps a lot.

[@yaginku]

@@HMBreno I do. I worked with multiple studios as a designer and also pitched my own game before. However, the worlds of "hey, I'm an indie, here's my game demo" and "hey, I'm an established studio and want to fund my massive project" are a bit different.

[@Wishtap]

You always need a slide deck representing your day and having a playable demo is a major plus. Publishers both big and small see thousands of games a week, so having a polished, straight forward slide deck and an easy to understand / playable demo will separate you from the rest coming in the pipeline.

[@galdersrontgorrth]

a step-by-step of this would be amazing!

[@lrinfi]

No idea if it will help, but I saw a GDC talk about this titled "30 Things I Hate About Your Game Pitch". (I can't fathom for the life of me why I''ve been watching GDC talks and...no comment on the title.)

[@bridgeschromaCN]

sir. Can you talk about how Project Approval Decisions are made in game companies? do they follow the will of a singular lead designer? do they get talked about a lot before any actual effort is put into it? do something akin to military democracy exist in game companies?

[@CainOnGames]

Sure thing! By "project approval decisions", do you mean deciding what project to make, or deciding what features will go into a particular project that is already underway?

[@bridgeschromaCN]

@@CainOnGames the first one, for smaller companies or studios, when they have more choice with their own ideas, how do they pick the right one within the company? what project to make?

[@CainOnGames]

@@bridgeschromaCNI will add it to my queue of video ideas (which is currently about a month long, so be patient).

[@bridgeschromaCN]

@@CainOnGames thanks, you are awesome Cain!

[@xlmncopq]

i have so many ideas, can you make a video on helping nail down into an idea?

[@ViViVex]

Good morning Tim 🙂

[@pirateguitarrr]

Hi Tim, what's the path that one could take to end up eventually being a Technical Systems Designer? I don't think I've ever seen a job posting with a title like this in Europe.

[@CainOnGames]

I am not sure. Where have you seen that job posting?

[@arcan762]

I haven't seen a "Technical Systems Designer" job title specifically before, but "Technical Designer" is quite common all over UK, France, Germany, US, Canada, often with these distinctions: - "Technical Designer": Usually more junior-mid level, which is basically just being a designer with basic scripting skills (i.e. Lua, C#, Unreal Blueprints, or something not super technically in-depth) who can design and then implement basic content like quests, items, creatures, interactions, etc. - "Senior Technical Designer": Sounds like what you are looking for, as it is more technically involved design work that requires having a good understanding of the wider implications of proposed system designs in terms of performance, difficulty of implementation, code maintenance, and helping engineering teams to plan out actual implementations of system mechanics. In other words, a system designer who understands technical constraints and can come up with system designs that are realistic, so the programmers don't have to keep wasting their time coming back to the designer saying "this design isn't going to work because XYZ". In Ubisoft's words: _"As a Technical Designer, you’ll create and implement complex, technical, and systemic design elements in a game._ _You’re essentially a game or level designer recognized for your technical skills on a design or multidisciplinary production team._ _A technical reference within your team, you’ll help, support, and advise your peers as needed. You may also be called upon to become the project's technical expert on a specific element of the game."_ But job titles are often not a good description of what you actually end up doing, so I wouldn't worry about that kind of semantics too much.

[@CainOnGames]

@@arcan762 OK, I think I understand that role. In fact, I think I have done that role, so in my case the path to being a Technical Designer was being a programmer who also was interested in and worked on design documents. But another path would be an artist who bridged the gap between the art being made and how it was used in the game. Jason Anderson did that on Fallout and on the Troika games we made together, from figuring out the best way to turn 3D models into 2D sprites, to working out the best way to make tile sets that could be automatically connected by an algorithm instead of the level designer.

[@JoacoN22]

Hey Tim, I wanted to ask you something, were there supposed to be bigger plans when it came to stuff like psykers and spiritualism in Fallout 2 or the future of fallout? Because the first game has references to a Dark God by Morpheus that they used to server but now The Master was their Dark God, and then we have Hanukin in Fallout 2 who is kind of the opposite, hearing the voices of Earth and using pacifism over violence. Was this on porpouse to show a contrast between how psykers could be? Or just a coincidence?

[@lukic.mark0]

Hi everyone, it's me, Marko. And, today, I wanted to ask Tim if he has played Baldur's Gate 3 and what he would do differently in that game. Thanks!

[@mr.cookie5605]

Did you see the fallout trailer? What did you think of it? Are you scared as I am? I thought it was good photography wise

[@triton8607]

Tim I want to hear your thoughts on the fallout tv show!

[@Anavski]

Can you talk about rendering APIs? How much different is rendering using opengl, directx or vulkan then what was used back in the day

[@NoldoWalker]

Hey, can you answer about VTM for my wife: How did you came to the quest about Zygaena in China town? I mean where did this idea came from?

[@kaihigdon3377]

What do you think of the fallout trailer?

[@namelessalias0007]

How do you feel about the Fallout tv show trailer? I think it looks very promising so far...

[@RastaJew]

Hi Tim it's us, everybody.

[@AyoKeyloGaming]

thoughts on fallout tv show

[@spacemidget9416]

Hey Tim. What's the best way to get a question to you?

[@CainOnGames]

Ask it here. I read every comment.

[@spacemidget9416]

@@CainOnGames Thanks Tim! I'm currently Head of Product for a large software company. What parallels are there between game development and "traditional" software development. I've been a gamer for 43 years (!) and would love to transition over if it's possible. (Was a development for 20 years before moving into Product (design, backlog etc) )

[@CainOnGames]

​@@spacemidget9416​Unfortunately, I cannot answer that. I have only done game development, so I have nothing to compare it to.

[@spacemidget9416]

@@CainOnGames Thanks Tim. Appreciate it x

[@schitzoflink8612]

Hi Tim

[@stormergames4686]

So if I get the gist of it ya come to work drink some coffee get some work done. Watch lazy people come to work late put together meetings with said people to discuss why this game needs more testing/balancing/added or subtracted features. Ouch. I used to watch some guys from Naughty Dog come in Starbucks every morning having those type of meetings and generally came off quite professional while the people down at Riot games not so much...

[@lrinfi]

He said nothing about people being lazy, but perhaps simply not being "morning persons". Very understanding and diplomatic about quirks of personality, that. Must be all that experience talking.

[@stormergames4686]

Sorry did I say something offensive? My bad

[@lrinfi]

@@stormergames4686 Nah. Just pointing out he didn't say anything about laziness and has a very...professional(?)...attitude toward personality quirks. Must be all that experience with personality quirks. :)

[@fredrik3880]

Lol 2.30 ish