Carbine raises Cain

About this time last year, NCsoft was for the first time talking about its newest development outfit, Carbine Studios, which had been working on an unannounced massively multiplayer online game since 2005. Carbine Studios was notable in particular due to the high-profile names housed within, such as Kevin Beardslee, a former lead developer on World of Warcraft; Jeremy Gaffney, who cofounded Turbine Inc.; and Tim Cain, lead designer on the original Fallout and cofounder of Troika Games.

In an interview with GameSpot following the studios' unveiling, Gaffney addressed the good fortune of having Cain on the team, saying of the imminent designer, "Tim's kind of a triple threat...We'll go give him a raise after this talk." It's unclear whether or not Cain's raise materialized, but he has received recognition for his work. NCsoft and Carbine announced today that the former Fallout lead has been promoted to design director of the aforementioned MMOG.

"It's great to have Tim Cain heading up design at Carbine," commented Gaffney in a statement. "Tim is one of the most respected guys in the business and his track record of creating hit products is well documented. Having Tim at the helm as design director makes an already strong team that much better."

Save for a handful of concept shots, little has been revealed of Carbine's first project. From those initial shots, the game appears to maintain the third axiom of Clarke's Three Laws, which contends that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The game also appears to have a postapocalyptic bent, playing off of a sci-fi-meets-fantasy aesthetic not entirely unlike Flash Gordon.