Fallout's Tim Cain spent 6 years working on defunct MMO WildStar, twice as long as any other game, and thinks that might have something to do with why it failed
Of all the MMOs that fell by the wayside, pushed into the dirt by the relentless popularity of World of Warcraft, Carbine's WildStar stings the most. A fast-paced sci-fi romp exploding with colour and character, and a setting brimming with potential, its development team boasted not only WoW vets, but legendary RPG designer Tim Cain.
«When I started, I think there were only nine or 10 people working there,» Cain says. «Almost all of them had worked on WoW, or some other really good stuff. And it was such an interesting team, because there was so much potential … We had some really, really great people there. And it's hard to make lightning strike twice. It's hard to capture it in a bottle. We could have done it, I can say that.»
WildStar's development kicked off way back in 2005, but it didn't launch until 2014, after Cain had already left the studio. A mere four years later, it was cancelled. It took more than twice as long to develop. Even though Cain left before the game was finished, it's still the longest he's ever spent working on a game. Double the length of any other project, he says.
«That was kind of the style of the designers, they wanted to test a lot of things. And it seemed like we had an endless runway. But we didn't. What's interesting is, I spent three years as the programming director, and then three years as the design director, and that was six years. And until that time, the longest I had ever spent on a game was three and a half on Fallout.»
Of course, MMOs are a more complex prospect than singleplayer RPGs, even considering the rather elaborate ones that Cain often works on. But nine years of development is still an incredibly long time, and comes with some massive risks.
«I remember going to my boss, going, ‘This is not gonna be done for at least another year or two.’ And it wasn't, for three more years,» he recalls. «They worked on it for a total of nine years, when WildStar finally came out. And that itself causes problems, because games
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