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Tim Cain’s storied career includes a bunch of what are likely some of your favourite RPGs, including the first two Fallouts and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Some of the games he worked on became huge mainstream successes, while others—particularly the games developed by his RPG studio, Troika—became cult classics. And people are always asking him why he never made follow-ups to the latter.
“People regularly tell me, ‘Why don’t you make another game like Bloodlines,’ or, ‘Why don’t you make a sequel to Arcanum?'” he says. “They’re like, ‘You made a cult classic.’ And I’m like, ‘The problem is the cult part.’ They didn’t sell well enough for a publisher to go, ‘Oh yeah, we definitely gotta jump on a sequel to that.’ So it’s weird to hear people say to me, in some cases decades later, ‘You should have done another one.’ It’s like, ‘You should have bought it.'”
Because of the enduring love for Bloodlines, it’s easy to forget what a disaster it was. It ultimately resulted in the death of Troika, which Cain co-founded with Jason Anderson and Leonard Boyarsky in 1998. Of the three games released by Troika between ’98 and ’05, when it closed its doors, Bloodlines was the least successful. The three founders had no choice but to end the studio, having let go of every employee by December ’04. It just wasn’t able to secure any deals with publishers.
This was long before the huge indie game development boom and Kickstarter, and Troika’s elaborate RPGs needed the funding publishers provided. And it was just a risky proposition. Its games often reviewed well and got a passionate following, but uneven sales and a reputation for releasing games that featured a lack of polish and lots of bugs must have given the major publishers of the time some doubts.
“I hate to put things so mechanically,” Cain continues, “but sometimes gamers need to put their money where their mouth is. If they don’t like a game, they shouldn’t buy it. If they love a game, they should buy it, and then they’re going to get more of what they want.” He’s adamant that he’s not blaming gamers, though. “I just think the only way to get more of what you want is to buy the things you want and not buy the things you don’t want. Because ultimately, that’s all that people are hearing. If a game comes out and sells a million copies, it’ll probably get a sequel. If a game comes out and sells 50,000 copies, it’s not getting a sequel.”
It’s a miracle that Bloodlines 2 eventually did turn into a tangible project—albeit over a decade later, and without the involvement of the former Troika team. But publisher Paradox largely seems to be regretting taking the risk. It’s seen a slew of delays since it was first given a release window of 2021, is on its second developer, and has pretty much inspired the publisher to never make an RPG ever again.
Publishers love funding sequels, so when a game doesn’t get one, there’s usually a good reason for it, and normally it’s simply because the original wasn’t popular enough—even if, as was the case with both Arcanum and Bloodlines, they were brilliant.
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Kurt Indovina
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