Video games are a time-consuming hobby, and an even more time-consuming profession. You can't expect a gamer to stay up on pop culture when there are 100-hour RPGs to enjoy, right? Well, some of us can at least take comfort in the fact that we're not quite as out-of-touch as original Fallout lead Tim Cain, who at one point was so wrapped up in the game development rabbit hole that he thought Britney Spears was a weapon somebody had added to his new RPG.
"There was a 10-year period where I didn't do anything but make games," Cain explains in an interview for YouTube channel The Vile Eye. "In most of the 90s and the early 2000s, I would go to work almost every day and work on a game. On the weekends, I might play a game," and then he'd be back to work making RPGs again.
During that period, Cain created the original concept for Fallout, led its development, helped build the sequel, and co-founded a new studio in Troika Games. By the time of Troika's first release, the cult classic steampunk RPG Arcanum, Cain had clearly fully checked out of pop culture.
"Somebody once said to me, 'What do you think of Britney Spears?'" Cain recalls. "And I literally – I was not joking – I turned to him like, 'Is that a new weapon in our game?' This is during Arcanum, and his name was Jesse Reynolds. He just looked at me and went, 'Dude, get out more.'"
Troika was founded in 1998, and Arcanum launched in 2001, which aligns more or less perfectly with the rise of Britney Spears as one of the biggest pop megastars of all time. Tracks like …Baby One More Time, Oops!... I Did It Again, and I'm a Slave 4 U all started their endless loops on the radio and MTV in that period, but I guess they weren't completely inescapable.
"I thought maybe it's like 'Britney' is part of Britain or something," Cain explains. "Like it's a type of spear. It's like, 'Here's an Ethiopian dagger, here's a Britney spear.' I was like 'I don't know! I don't know!'"
