Fallout creator Tim Cain on his past and future as a gay game developer
[Note: This story contains recollections of homophobia and a brief mention of transphobia.] Tim Cain, the designer and programmer for InterPlay's Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, uploaded a video on Friday where he spoke candidly about his experience as a gay man in the video game industry. And speaking to his time at InterPlay, he called it a "near-constant level of homophobia."
"I don't think a day went by where someone didn't use 'gay' to mean 'stupid,'" he admitted.
The 20-minute video gives a candid look at how LGBTQ developers were treated in the early days of the industry, and how things have progressed since. Split across his time before and after coming out, Cain recounts how his coworkers at various studios reacted to out developers over his 42-year time in the industry.
At the start of the video, Cain admitted media coverage of the AIDS crisis in the '80s (which would often demonize gay men specifically) made him worried about coming out. The fear of being stigmatized continued into the 2000s, where he was working at Troika Games, the studio he co-founded.
"I was very worried. A lot of the people in the game industry were liberal, but the industry itself was conservative," he explained. "If I come out and Troika doesn't get a contract, it's always gonna be in the back of my mind: 'did we not get a contract because I was out?'"
Even before then, witnessing homophobia made him more reticent about revealing that he was gay. He recalled an instance where, while he was in college, a fellow college student lost financial support after coming out to his father.
"I’ve never before seen a more absolutely dejected and demoralized person," he said of this unnamed student. "Now he had no idea what he was going to do with his life. I
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