The Canceling of Fallout Van Buren...And Me 

Very interesting historical tidbit, Tim. Thanks for sharing! I don't think anyone involved in this story is to blame. You gave a realistic timeline, and the VP was correct in cancelling the game, since it would have been cancelled in 2004 anyways when Interplay was $1M+ underwater in taxes and wages. The real root of this problem were all the bad investments and gambles Interplay made over the years, things Brian Fargo admitted since were bad calls.

Well, even though we never got Fallout Van Buren, we did get Fallout New Vegas, which incorporated many of the concepts and ideas of Van Buren, so it all worked out in the end!

Hey Tim, I just wanted to let you know that what you talk about on your channel has inspired me to go and try make and lead a comic book project. I know that most of the topics that you do in videos are mainly for video games and the companies you created/worked for in the gaming industry, but a lot of it applies to other creative industries too like what it's like leading a team and worldbuilding. Probably a weird video to comment this on since you're talking about the downfall of van buren (loved fallout by the way, it's one of my most favorite game series I've played since childhood), but I know that you read through comments sometimes and hope you see this.

Reminds me of a bit of wisdom I heard during my time in the army. "You can do everything perfectly on your end and still lose. Losing is just the end result of factors both inside and outside of your control both known and unknown." Just because Van Buran was lost, doesn't mean that it was a forgone conclusion nor that it even really ever had a chance, from what I can tell, just simply bad timing and nothing more.

Since this is my first video of yours I have seen, don't see how but thanks algorithm, I just want to say I love the fallout universe. I don't care about canceled projects, they still exist in head-canon lol. I ran a TTD20 Homebrew Fallout game, Based in the Sin and Nasty Wasteland, a play on Cincinnati. My friends and I had such a blast playing in the universe, building onto it. Most memorable for me is I made the Kroger building downtown here, the SuperDuper Mart Headquarters. Can't remember specifics, this was circa fallout 3 to New Vegas era.

I absolutely love how all your videos start like an apology video

This just makes me wanna see Avellone's and Sawyer's tabletop papers all the more.

The only possible villain in this scenario would be circumstance. A series of unfortunate events that led to Interplay not being financially stable enough to finish the project.

It sounds like everyone directly involved was making an honest, good faith, best effort. Sometimes things outside a teams control just get in the way. What's that TNG quote? "It's possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That's not a weakness. That is life." - Capt. Picard

Tim. You're a inspiration in other ways than just a game dev. I appreciate your work and your videos homie.

This makes me recontextualize a lot of the speculation I've heard about VB up to now.

There was a time when the Inifnity Engine was being considered (or perhaps just pitched) for Fallout duty. Interplay was well into penny stocks at that point. The writing was definitely on the wall when Torn went the way of the dodo.

Simple question because I've been curious: are the notes you mention every video digital or physical? And how did you manage to categorize so many years of notes that you can consistently find info about specific topics of certain years? Do you have any stories where taking notes helped you in a critical situation? Thank you!

While I love the Fallout 3 we got its always interesting to hear the "what if" on Van Buren (something I quite like on video games such as with the early versions of Half Life 2 and the canceled Doom 4). It sounded like an interesting game with a lot of the concepts being carried over to New Vegas and even some used for 76 (with the BOMB station) and seemingly the tv show too with the NCR all but wiped out. It almost sounds like the game may have been doomed from the start. Between Interplay's shady financial state and the rushed development even if it had came out it might have not done so well, either been outdated on the older F1/2 engine or incomplete if they managed the 6 month timeline somehow to say nothing of whether it was coming to consoles or PC only.

The villain is scarcity!

Yeah there are far too many factors to consider when speculating on something as complex as "why a game got cancelled", and from the landscape you laid out, its impossible to really measure. Obviously financial situations definately hampered the possibility of getting things done end to end (as they so often do), so it just sounded like it was a doomed swan song from the onset. Perhaps had things been different money wise, an early project scope adjustment _could_ have saved things, but that is honestly just spit balling. I can only imagine the colossal hurdles that would need to have been cleared to descope a project like a massive open-ended RPG.

Van Buren getting canned was the right call. After Fallout 2 we got a bunch of middling spinoffs, and even if Van Buren was an amazing game, Fallout would still be a niche IP.

Such an incredible twist! I'm sure someone will make a mod of Van Buren at some point. I mean they made a Fallout 2 mod in 3D. Anything's possible!

Fallout 1 engine was 9 years old when Van Buren was being made Todd Howard: Hold my beer 🤣

I'm curious about these notes of yours. Is it a paper notebook? Do you use a program? Just notepad docs? Do you know have 1 doc per day, 1 doc per month? 1 giant doc for all things?

If Fallout Van Buren hadnt been cancelled, we'd never have gotten New Vegas

Crazy how New Vegas came out in 18 months and they didn't even know the engine.

I.think it was an interesting story and a case study I perspective. everyone could be the villain and at least most people could be considered a victim in this story depending on the narrative you want to tell and your frame of.reference. humans are interesting creatures.

Fallout 3 wouldn't have been cancelled had you not created Fallout in the first place... checkmate

So what I'm getting from this is that somewhere in Tim's notes is a GURPS homebrew system for racketball

Maybe the real villain was the friends we made along the way.

"He had 10 charisma" in Fallout: high praise in d20: mildly boring neighbor

Every time I see a video of Tim I learn as much about project management and how projects are run in a company as I learn about videogame development. These videos should be watched by all that are involved in project management they are highly informative and talk about a lot of the same challenges and hurdles that often come, as well as the thought process, decision making and how in the end it's all about time and money. Thank you very much for this!

Thats a tough spot but really if they need about 18 months amd only had 6 months of funds at that point its out of any individuals hands

Well it seems you and Christopher Lee has something in common. He wanted to leave the Hammer Horror movies as well, but they kept him in by saying "If you leave we will have to fire all these nice people". Christopher Lee was good friends with alot of them and didn´t have the heart to see them fired so he stayed.

Your willingness to approach things in a "there are no villains, or if there are, they're more abstract than you think" manner, very even keel retellings, and generally relaxed attitude really helps to cement the veracity of your recollections and stories. I imagine you could get a ton of views by making a rage-filled rant, or a teary-eyed tale of one lone developer standing against the machine, etc. but it wouldn't be true, or even an entertaining respin of the truth. Instead, you give us honest looks at the inner workings, ones that aren't generally finger pointing (and if they are, it's certainly not rage bait), and help everyone to better understand. I guess, a lot of blah-blah-blah for me to say, thank you for giving us a look behind the curtains that isn't just one large emotional manipulation for clicks and views. It's pleasant, it's refreshing, and it's what has me looking forward to every new video. Well, that, and occasional background dog sightings.😉

Speaking of learning from games... One of the things that playing poker (Texas Hold-em, since it was the thing in the era 2000's) almost every week with my friends during college taught was that, simply, the true villain is circumstance. We played only semi-seriously and most of us were computer scientists, so we were fascinated by the systems involved, the randomness, and odds. Hence, after the official hand was settled, we'd sometimes run out cards, show hands, and break down the play by play from everyone's perspective. Oddly, it was very insightful in understanding why players were playing they way they were, and it taught often that the draw was against you from the start of the hand. This story feels like an example of where "The real villain is circumstance". Simply, Veep asked you to take a look at his hand and the cards on the table. You looked at everything, suggested he bet 18 months to drive off all the other factors playing at the table. Veep only had 6 months of chips and was already feeling like he should fold. No one person was the villain, just the circumstances: Short of chips, maybe decent cards in hand, but bigger factors at play. Some times you got to fold them, hoping for a better hand next time.

I paused the video went "Ooooffff" out loud the moment I heard "Six months"

Hi Tim, Briosafreak here, from the Van Buren days. In those days I talked to Leon Boyarsky about Van Buren but never with you, make a note so we can have a friendly chat later this year, might be interesting. By the way the VP you talked about was pressed against a wall by a developer I know when the game was canceled, and I still love the dev for it.

Huh, kind of a cool story. Had no idea the death warrant for Van Buren was signed by Tim himself! ...seriously though, that's a big ask of you from mr VEEP and speaks volumes of his trust/belief in your knowledge and foresight.

I could listen Tim talking about anything

Something to consider regarding reusing the Fallout engine is that, as Tim said, it was very old. Most notably, it wouldn't have been considered retro-cool at the time. These days someone could do a Fallout 3 in the original engine and I'm sure it would be adored. In the early 2000's it would have been derided as hopelessly out of date with mainstream games. Especially coming from Interplay, which at the time was considered essentially dead.

I agree with Tim that you can't point to a single villain in this story, but the lead up to this can be put to Interplay's management to a certain degree. Interplay lost money throughout almost its entire history, in no small part because they greenlit a ton of projects that had no chance to turn a profit (talking stuff like Messiah, which is delightfully weird but anyone could tell wouldn't sell) and got to the console space way too late. Then in desperation, sold themselves to two of the most crooked, inept business leaders in the industry, the Caen brothers, who are still trying to keep the corpse of the company alive today. You can't even use that specifically as a reason for Van Buren's cancellation, but the state Interplay was in where they couldn't properly fund it can definitely be traced to some management legacy.

Yeah no person to single out, but to have a team start making a demo when your budget is 6 months is just a waste of everyones time

I love Fallout videos from Tim in my morning commute!

I don't leave a lot of comments here, but I wanted to say how much I think you succeeded in telling a "No Villains" story. At the end of the day, most decisions like this one come down to circumstance more than any kind of true animosity. It's important that the people who were involved in these projects tell their experiences before that oral history is lost, and this is a valuable piece of the archeological dig that is Van Buren. And as others have commented, there's no world in which we get something like New Vegas without Van Burn being canceled. In the long run, things worked out ok.

The 2d engine had massive charm. Like, action turn based and its art style was like a gritty storybook. So cool.

Tim, thank you for talking about Van Buren. There's a lot more information about it today, but people are still reluctant to talk about it. And the least is known about it compared to other Fallout games.

I'm a Fallout fan from Italy, I've a RU-vid channel dedicated only to Fallout. I hope that one day you might return to work on Fallout, even if just in a collaborative role regarding choices and storylines for future titles. You have written the history of an incredible saga, and for that, I always thank you!

Alternatively, Tim Cain is (partly) responsible for the series of events that brought us New Vegas and the Fallout TV show and Fallout being this massive culturally relevant series.

As ive gotten older ive learned thet having to make tough and unliked decisions ≠ villain/bad person. Once youve had to be the “villain” in a situation you realize nothing is black and white. Every situation has alot of grey.

If Fallout 76 was cancelled, people would be mad at Todd Howard and saying it would’ve been the best Fallout game ever. When you only see what could’ve been, you’re gonna make it into the best game that never was

The true villain of this story is... Just poor decisions on behalf of interplay and the games market in general, so in a sense 'Luck' is the actual villain. (Descent into undermountain for example, over budget, under sold mess.) You tried Tim, you could have potentially helped the project continue but the writing was already on the wall so you don't have any blame.This is just how some companies go sometimes. Thanks for sharing.

I'm reminded of that part from a Star Trek: TNG episode in season 2 where Data is doubting himself and his decision making, because he lost at a game to someone, and Picard tells him: It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. Many other games have had similar things happen to them, and many more will. Its no one's fault other than the fact that there's not an infinite amount of time and money in the world in which to get things done.

I've been in this position a lot of times - being the kingmaker, or in this context, the king-killer. I always feel gutted, but it is important to do sometimes to protect the team. It is interesting to hear about your roles in the Interplay efforts over the years. 100% sympathize with where you've been, and appreciate your willingness to share it all!

Uncle Tim I hope the rest of the week and weekend is good for you. It's comforting to hear your voice and I really appreciate your videos, because they feel like coming home and listening to the adults talk while I hide under the table. If you ever think about giving up, please know that your videos are helping me, not just with game development, but with life in general. Thank You

Fascinating! The Veep actually sounds like a cool person. He suspected he had to kill it, but he still hoped it could be saved if you could give honest assesment that fit the budget and time. Shame it wasn't further along, I would have liked to play it. But at least we got New Vegas. I wonder, will you tell us about the Fallout IP auction? I remember reading Troika actually put up a bid as well.

People really need to accept that making games is a business and is subject to all the pitfalls thereof.

Oh shit this is a big one

I don't think anyone really comes off as a villain on this story, even on a surface level reading of it. I haven't seen the documentary but my understanding has been for years, from having watched interviews of people that worked on it,. that Fallout Van Buren was cancelled because it would take more time to finish than Interplay had left as a company.

That's actually really sweet. Veep trusted in Tims experience and Tim was happy to help. That has to be a good relationship Veep and Tim had. So cool

The villain here is Capitalism, if there's a "villain" at all.

Tim, what are your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Stats?

Awesome Historical Tidbit, thank you Uncle Tim for your tales. By the way if it's ok to ask, if Troika managed to buy the Fallout IP instead of Bethesda, would you have been able to actually develop a Third installment or some such considering you were also very busy with VTMB at the Time ?

You saved the team a horrible death march and cancellation at the end Sometimes it works out that way, sometimes things are just approaching the end, maybe a gamble would have saved them but that's literally just a gamble They tried to make van buren and it didn't work out It sucks

Welp, it's official. Tim single handedly wrote Fallout: New Vegas in 3-days. We know it was you all along. hehe. A positive rumors for a change.

God I can remember TRAWLING the internet for ANY information about this at the time. Back when the internet was sort of mythical and lightly trodden path you'd find random notes on if you looked really hard, and occasionally meet another "quester" on your travels.

Hey Tim, so I do have a question I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer this, perhaps in a video or if you already have. But do you know the details around the Auction sale of the Fallout IP rights? There has been quite a bit of fighting over the years and accusations at "It was this company's fault, it was this person's fault", but from what I understand the auction was private. And there was accusations of people bidding on Fallout trying to deliberately "Swoop in and steal the rights from the original creators, from Troika, Sierra, they knew the original creators were trying to get Fallout back and snatched it like thieves just as they were about to get it back!" and I wanted to know from someone actually involved, if you knew any details about all that. Was it really a private auction or public, for example. Did they know who else was bidding, like Brian Fargo or Troika? Some of the older fans claim that if Troika got Fallout instead of Bethesda, we would've had "One last real Fallout RPG and would've died with dignity with Troika instead of being despoiled into a looter-shooter! Or even thrived and saved Troika!" and I question some of the validity of this imagined scenario, or the claims that Bethesda knowingly outbid the original devs maliciously.

There's something deeply human about there not being a villian, sometimes it's the outside forces that force actions upon us. Systems of our Role Playing Game are outside our control.

You are absolutely not the villain on this story, nor is the VP, nor is the team, nor are we (the consumers). You were giving your honest opinion, and I feel like it's better that Van Buren was cancelled than to ship a buggy shitty game. I think you're a good guy, Tim.

Eh, I can understand the crunch there, if anything the "bad guy" is somewhere in accounting, and potentially at the bank. Financial management is a key part of any successful company, and at some point you have to find ways of securing more capital to make things work. I don't know the exact state of their financials, but if they're that far into the red, then something has broken down outside of the people making the games.

not gonna lie til this day I thought Fallout Van Buren was like, a fan-o-sphere character like Glup Shitto from star wars

Honestly, no one is a villain here, at the end of the day Interplay didn’t have the money to do the project in the required amount of time and Veep just needed confirmation he was doing the right call and Tim was just giving his opinion on how long he thought it would take, sucks it got cancelled but at the end of the day, it would’ve been cancelled when Interplay went under

Interplay was going down no matter if Van Buren came out or not. I was more afraid of some desperate Interplay executives turning Van Buren into something like Fallout Brotherhood of Steel. Having Titus Interactive buy Interplay was the worst thing ever but I really don't know who could have bought them and actually save the company.

Tim is the evil villain now 🦇🧛‍♂️

It honestly just sounds like as you described, it sounded like Veep had his mind made up about the issue and regardless of your answer it wouldn't change his mind. Interplay was in such a bad way like you said that it just didn't have the strength to carry the project to completion. At the very least it's nice we were able to see some of Van Buren's ideas expanded on in New Vegas. Not to mention the various projects trying to realize as complete a version of the game as we can get with all of the notes left behind from its development.

It's not your fault. If they only had 6 months, you saved them from being 6 more months in debt.

The villain in this story is the same as the villain in every Brennan Lee Mulligan story: capitalism :)

Yeah there’s no great way out of a situation like that. If they don’t have the money, can’t find the funding… well that’s kinda it. Things take time and time is money. I would have 100% chosen the same as you Tim, for the same reasons. But I can’t help idly wondering what had happened to fallout and a lot of other games, if Interplay had been better off financially, and survived in a healthy way. Same with Troika; man that one hurt me back then - and I’m just a fan, not even involved.

Hi Tim, Ian here. It's inexcusable for any decision maker to attach any consequence of their decision to anyone elses inaction, the only answer to that sort of nonsense is "I can only advise, you have to decide". I can appreciate Veep was in a bind, but as the decision maker he was responsible for his decision. It was his place to get the information to make the decision, but to push those consequences onto you was unethical. There are always other people than you who can step forward or offer alternative solutions, when management presents an ultimatum like that it tends to be because they are looking for a way out of decisions (not necessarily their own) that have led to this point. If someone offers A or B, look for C, D or E they may have been missed in the panic. There's no villain. Van Buren was poorly scoped for the remaining lifetime and budget of Interplay. From what I've read over the years I'm fairly certain commissioning Van Buren was the mistake.

Thank you, I appreciate the insight on the tension of that kind of situation. Honestly though the "bad things happen to others if you don't" hurts me to even visualize being in.

Sounds like you were just being honest. It also sounds like some people are too hung up on the past and what might could have been. What happened happened, live in the now and be concerned about that.

I don't know Tim, it sounds like the villain was money all along.

I kind of wish we got the full game, there's a mod sort of and New Vegas uses a lot from that lore. Thank you for sharing Tim, you're a good dude.

I will always be eternally curious just how much asset existed in December 2003. If everything that ever was made leaked, would the OG fans have enough material (using all the scripts and documents they have) to finish the game with 98% accuracy? Maybe….maybe (Also the bad guy of the story is Fallout Brotherhood of Steel. That game is evil I tells ya! Evil!)

Genuinely can’t look at this situation and say there’s a villain. Circumstances were already dire. This was an effort made to try and save the project which you saw would take longer than they had to save it. That’s not villainy, that’s the facts. No one is at fault other than maybe management for letting interplay get so far in the red to where they had to make unrealistic expectations on shipping out the game but so it goes. Not your fault. You weren’t working on it or managing it.

I heard another version of this story somewhere that paints you in a much more negative light. Veep invited you to the studio and told you that the Interplay building's water purifier chip had broken down, and that they only had six months of water stockpiled in the break room's water cooler before they'd have to cancel development. Veep sent you out to find a new chip, but you blew those 6 months dicking around in the northeastern wilderness and 'resting until fully healed' every time you got a scratch even though you had a massive horde of stimpacks you refused to use because you 'might need them later'. I hope finding the alien blaster was worth it, you noob.

What you did gave us New Vegas, so it's not all bad.

1:49 "...for money!". Big Prototstar vibes.

What I would do for you to get your hands on another fallout game

I still like what you did with the engine even if it's 9 years older. I know some people wouldn't bother or the engine isn't in today's standard. There's something that the old Fallout's charm that stays with me, I love modding it, I love replaying it a bunch of times than the modern Fallout of today, but still, I wouldn't have played the older Fallout games if it weren't for the modern ones

Thank you Tim for giving this story to us. I think it is important to the story of why Van Buren was never released.

18 months was optimistic imo. But 6? No way in any universe.

The real evil was me. I used my friend's disc to play Fallout 2!! Heck, even the copy of Tactics I bought was from another Studio/Pub! I helped cause Interplay's demise :O

This video made it into an arstechnica article.

They can get stuffed if they want a game in 6 months, not worth your reputation, your health, your relationship with your team. Interplay like many other companies not in game development or publishing companies, ran out of money because of poor management and cumulative bad decisions made years ago.

Tim I have to say, your Fallout stories are my form of coffee that I need in the morning. Great story, this is a great tale of the past of Fallout. You did what you had to do Tim, I'm glad to see you stay true to who you are.

its sounds like you didn’t kill van buren, you saved a team from 6 months of crunch and sacrifice that would have ended in being locked out of a shuttered office without a paycheck to make up for it. Don’t let anyone rake you over the coals for that.

Van Buren (the demo that floated around) was feeling very unfinished, and kind of early in production. A Fallout with the 2D engine would have been even more outdated at that time. Games like For comparison: games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 came out in 2004.

fair is as fair does, interplay was on its last legs.

I think anyone with any semblance of a rational mind can see that the circumstances around Van Buren were just unfortunate. Like you said there isn't any villain. I think your racquetball segway is perfect, because people make mistakes and we learn from them. I think we get to emotional and mob like when anybody makes one. Are there malicious people out there, o ya, but do people just do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment? Also yes. Great video as always Tim.

You gotta appreciate that Tim is sharing his side of a hidden story as 'the villain.' In history, rarely do you have accounts directly from the main source. And it's especially rare when a person decides to reveal something formerly hidden because that could've been hidden forever. (Not to make it so dramatic tho lol)

Interesting story, the villain is probably just the money lul, I think not having to rely on corporate obligations while having smaller teams/being able to spend less is why indie studios are shaping the industry right now

Still listening, but from the beginning, feel a need to comment - how weird is it that of all fandoms, FALLOUT fans, need there to be a bad guy. 🤣🤣 We're all bad guys. And none of us are. That's the point! And that breaking down the thought process of how people can exploit your kindness if not helping is 100% of someone else's pain... omg. That is too real. We should all be listening to that VERY carefully. That's how they get us!

From the public view, it's disappointing to hear a game getting cancelled. Since it gets shown as "The next thing definitely" up until its not. A similar thing in this way was "Sam and Max: Freelance Police" the planned sequel to "Sam and Max: Hit the Road" adventure game by LucasArts.