Timothy Cain

Developer BIO

Tim Cain has worked in the game industry since 1982 and is best known as the producer, lead programmer and designer of the RPG Fallout. While working as a programmer for Cybron, Inc. on Grand Slam Bridge (published by Electronic Arts in 1986), he completed a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering at the University of Virginia. He then moved to California to complete M.S. in Computer Science at the University of California at Irvine.

Cain returned to the game industry in 1991 at Interplay Productions. He was the lead programmer on The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991) and Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation (1993), and performed additional programming on Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (1992) and Stonekeep (1994). He also designed and programmed GNW, a user interface and OS-abstraction library utilized in many Interplay PC and Macintosh games, including Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1997), M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration (1996), and Atomic Bomberman (1997).

After completing Fallout and the design for Fallout 2, he left Interplay in 1998 to form Troika Games, where he could work as a programmer, designer and project leader. Three role-playing games followed: Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura was shipped by Sierra in 2001, The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure by Atari in 2003, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines by Activision in 2004.

Cain joined Carbine Studios in 2005 as their Programming Director, and in 2008 he was promoted to their Design Director, where he worked on the MMORPG Wildstar.

He appears to have left the company in July 2011, prior to the completion of the game, and he is now a senior programmer at Obsidian Entertainment.

In his spare time, Tim has lectured at the University of California at Irvine on the game development process and written a chapter in a textbook on programming artificial intelligence in games.

Also Known As

• Tim Cain

Websites

• Matt Chat 68 -- Video interview with Tim Cain, mostly about his games developed at Troika

Games Credited

• Fallout: New Vegas (2010), Bethesda Softworks LLC
• Fallout 3 (2008), Bethesda Softworks LLC
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (2004), Activision Publishing, Inc.
• The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure (2003), Atari, Inc.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (2001), Sierra On-Line, Inc.
• Fallout 2 (1998), Interplay Productions, Inc.
• Atomic Bomberman (1997), Interplay Entertainment Corp.
• Fallout (1997), Interplay Entertainment Corp.
• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (1997), Interplay Productions, Inc.
• M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault & Exploration (1996), Interplay Productions, Inc.
• Stonekeep (1995), Interplay Productions Ltd.
• Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation (1993), Interplay Entertainment Corp.
• The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991), Interplay Productions, Inc.