Fallout creator reveals why he quit development on 'WoW-killer' Wildstar after internecine company in-fighting
Timothy Cain just gave us a porthole view into the development of Wildstar, one of only two games that he quit development on. The video is a 20 minute journey through bizarre office politics, stubborn co-workers, and a meeting where Cain arrived with over four hours of notes to try and set the record straight.
I played Carbine's action MMO in 2014, and was sorry to see it go in 2018—it had fun combat, a zany Ratchet-and-Clank style setting, and some deep problems with its endgame that sank it just four years after its launch. Cain's video, however, tells a deeper story of miscommunication, and a fractured vision that started causing difficulties way back in 2008.
«Carbine was one of the best companies I ever worked at,» Cain begins. «I worked with some of the best people in their fields. Brilliant programmers, brilliant artists, brilliant designers [...] I was working with super talented people, we were working on an original IP, and the pay was phenomenally good.»
The troubles began with an unexpected role change from programming to design in 2008. «We had a really fantastic MMO engine, but, it had been three years, there was still no setting, no story, no classes. The head office was really upset.» They sent out a new studio head who approved of the engine and art direction, then promptly fired almost the entire design team, including the design director at the time.
No one picked up the empty role, and Cain says he was asked to step up: «Design Directors don't just float around looking for job positions, no-one had heard of Carbine, and [while] NCsoft was popular in Korea, I don't think they'd put out any of their stuff [in the US] yet. [...] After about two months the studio head asked me if I would do it, and he
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