Fallout was a 'B-tier product' that lost both the licenses it was banking on and had its lead dev joking, 'In a week, we’re going to be asking whether people want fries with their meal,' but now he thinks those trials 'turned out to be positives'

Male and Female Vault Dweller holding guns and cresting a hill with ruined city in background.

Fallout's everywhere now, with half a dozen games and two seasons of television under its belt, but it used to be "a B-tier product," as series co-creator Tim Cain recently told Game Informer. A lot went wrong during development and the team didn't have much power to do anything about it, but Cain said that constraints and hardship may have been key to the game's eventual success.

"That sprite engine I wrote had limitations we had to work around, and those workarounds ended up making the game really cool," said Cain. "But it was one of those things that, at the time, it felt like, 'Oh no, another setback,' and it turned out to be a positive thing in the long run. It did help me view things differently years later."