Most gamers likely associate the name of Tim Cain with the creation of Fallout, but he also worked as the programming director and then design director of the MMORPG WildStar back in the day too, so he obviously would have some input into why the game didn’t land with players after it released back in 2014 – and in the last few years, he hasn’t been shy about sharing that input.
Readers will recall that in 2023, he appeared to suggest that the main problem with WildStar’s development was the lack of a singular vision, brought on by drama among the leadership team and interdepartmental chaos that resulted in a “three-way tug-of-war.” Among the people whose leadership (but not names) he blames were studio head Jeremy Gaffney and art director Matt Mocarski.
But now, according to an interview with PC Gamer, Cain argues that the game’s nine long years of development were the key problem with the game, as the MMORPG landscape changed dramatically over the course of its creation.
“They worked on it for a total of nine years, when WildStar finally came out. And that itself causes problems, because games had shifted. What people wanted had changed. Other competitors had come out and showed what you could do. You can make a target and build towards it, but if you take so long, that target’s gonna move.”
While Cain left Carbine Studio in 2011 – three years before WildStar launched – and he reportedly never played the game (around the time gamers themselves, including us, began calling out the obvious design pivots and fretting over the staff departures), he still appears to have fond memories of those he worked alongside.
“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,” he recalls. “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.”
