Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says violence will be the default in AAA RPGs as long as we keep buying it: 'Companies don't make them because they feel like it. They make them because they sell'

Fallout Power Armor helmet looking to right with darkened red city in background
(Image credit: Bethesda)

After thousands of hours spent in combat with orcs, androids, and enemy militants, I'll admit that it's gotten harder to find novelty in videogame violence. While Steam overflows with trucks, farms, and city builders for when I've grown battle-weary, violence overwhelmingly remains the basic mode of interaction, even in AAA RPGs that tout player freedom. No matter how fantastic a world big-budget RPGs might imagine, they rarely imagine one where it's not just a matter of time before the swords are pulled back out—and Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says that's not going to change as long as we all keep buying it.

In a YouTube video that went public on New Year's Day, Cain responded to a viewer who asked whether he thinks we'll ever see AAA RPGs move beyond violence as the default way for players to interact with the world. Cain's answer was simple: Big budget RPGs will center combat as long as combat sells best, and nothing's ever sold as well as combat has.

Violence As The Default In AAA RPGs - YouTube Violence As The Default In AAA RPGs - YouTube
Watch On

"Companies make games—and in general, products—that people will buy," Cain said. "That's it. It means games that sell the most, and I'm not even talking about review the best, just sell the most, will dictate future games."

Cain was conscious to limit the scope of his response to AAA RPGs, particularly because the production demands of mainstream game releases have grown exponentially. "If you have a company and it's trying to make money and there's one game type that sells millions of copies and another one that sells 100,000," Cain said, "which one are you going to do if they both take just as much time and money to develop?"

In RPGs, Cain said, action RPGs like Diablo, broadly speaking, tend to outsell CRPGs that might feature more dialogue or pauseable combat, in part because combat is simpler to market. "When you watch a trailer and you see people actually doing things—jumping, climbing, shooting, punching—it looks like, 'Whoa! Look at all the things you can do in that game,'" Cain said.

As a point of comparison, Cain explained that during his time as game director on The Outer Worlds, Obsidian ran into difficulties finding a marketing strategy that would highlight its non-combat elements in preview trailers.

"How do we show that this game has a really good story? How do we show that it has fantastic dialogue? How do you do that in a trailer that may only be 15 or 30 seconds long?" Cain said. "You have to reduce this wonderful narrative that's super creative and nuanced that has a huge arc down to a soundbite."

Cain underlined that he wasn't saying noncombat games don't sell, noting classics like Myst and more recent games like Life is Strange and the explosion of farm sims clearly "sell well enough to keep making them." Action games just tend to sell better.

"If you look at the Steam top 50 or top 100, you see an awful lot of action, violent-oriented games," Cain said. "The companies don't make them because they feel like it. They make them because they sell."

In an earlier section of the video, however, Cain urged viewers not to feel like voting with their wallets is useless.

"There are products and stores and entire companies that I will not buy from. I don't think they care or even notice, but I do," Cain said. "It's just one of those things that you have to draw the line somewhere and everyone draws it in a different spot."

I think we'd all have to draw a pretty thick line to make a noticeable mark on the market share when those multimillion dollar marketing budgets are in play. Cain seems more optimistic, however, that "companies will listen" if enough players decide they'd like a bit less combat, please.

"To not draw a line because you think it won't matter is a way to guarantee it won't matter," Cain said. "It's like when people say, 'I don't vote because my one vote won't matter.' Once enough people think that way, it matters."

News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 11 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

Read more
Fallout co-creator Tim Cain hasn't made sequels to his other cult classic RPGs because they didn't sell well: 'You should have bought it'
Will Shen headshot
Former Starfield lead quest designer says we're seeing a 'resurgence of short games' because people are 'becoming fatigued' with 100-hour monsters
Fighting a raging chef-bot in Judas.
Ex-Bioshock lead Ken Levine says the problem with AAA games is how risk-averse they've become: 'If you don't innovate, especially in games, you start losing people'
The envoy from Avowed takes a dreamlike rest amongst a glimmering city.
I don't care about being able to kill everybody and steal the Mayor's pants in an RPG like Avowed, and I'm tired of pretending it's mandatory
Avowed - The Disappointer unique pistol location
RPGs like Avowed need to stop letting me steal everything that isn't nailed down
Skyrim intro cinematic skill - Hey, you. You're finally awake.
Obsidian vet Josh Sawyer says that while 'it's not that important' if players never finish an RPG—after all, who finishes Skyrim—'we can kind of chill out' on size
Latest in RPG
Avowed art showing companions having a picnic together under sunny day
All the Avowed ending choices and epilogue-affecting decisions
The creepiest guy leans in front of an NPC mid-conversation in Starfield.
Starfield promises it still exists as silence drives fans to space-madness, but it mostly just annoys everyone: 'They are deliberately choosing not to communicate more'
Dry Devil holds a torch and grins.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's upcoming 1.2 update has a ridiculous 34 pages of patch notes
An image of toasted bread with dripping, melted cheese on top, from Monster Hunter Wilds.
Monster Hunter's food looks so tasty it's apparently driving up demand for cheese naan in Japan
Dark and Darker - A player swings a sowrd at a mummy in a torchlit dungeon hall
Dark and Darker delisted again, this time from the Epic Games Store
A man shouting while waving his sword in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and BioWare have to offer
Latest in News
Doom: The Dark Ages art
The sickest gun from Doom: The Dark Ages' trailer is called the 'Skullcrusher' and does such horrible things to demons, the game's lead dev boasts id has 'the best gore in the industry'
Monster Hunter Wilds palico
The next Monster Hunter Wilds update is set to launch on March 10 and will ensure that when you chop off monster parts, the right monster parts get chopped off
A pack of real life Balatro cards.
The official Balatro Timeline documents the history of 2024's biggest game as its developer went from 'obsessed' with making it to 'shocked' at the reception
the next battlefield
Battlefield playtest gameplay is leaking all over the internet, and fans seem cautiously but genuinely excited: 'Okay, we might be back'
Milla Jovovovovovich pointing a sawed-off shotgun at something offscreen, presumably a monster or zombie or something
The Resident Evil movie reboot bidding war is over, and the winner is… Sony, who did every one of those other pretty terrible Resident Evil movies
Judge Dredd promotional image in Warzone
Half-a-dozen 2000AD games were in the works before fizzling out: 'The games you get to see are a tiny representative of the number that get started—sadly'