16 ms·

If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

78 points by Impossible 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
senectus1 8y ago
i mean.. that's nice. but damn. If they dont qualify as deserving to reap their rewards... I dont know who does! Edit: It seems like they may be vaguely referencing Markus "Notch" Persson's cash flush success after selling Minecraft. I think just being self aware enough to be worried about how "money" might change them should be enough to settle their worries. Notch had a rough time for a while, but he was always a very public person... these guys are a lot less public and I'd suggest less susceptible to being led astray... but who knows I guess.
- MrGilbert 8y ago
  > these guys are a lot less public and I'd suggest less susceptible to being led astray They were in a niche, staying away from the "big players". Now that they join Steam, they'll be inevitably dragged in to "public" (if you'd like to call it that way). I really hope that... - ... they can handle it - ... they can deal with the negative reviews of that kind of player that don't understand the concept of the game. For a newb, this can be a really frustrating game. I keep my fingers crossed.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    i'm sure the review section will be a battlefield just like any dark souls review section is
- drjesusphd 8y ago
  What better reward is there to reap than doing what you love?
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    Being paid to do what you love
- pvg 8y ago
  Why do you feel it's alluding to Notch? There are plenty of game developers who've struck it rich and the Dwarf Fortress authors' concerns about sudden wealth seem pretty specific to them.
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    >Plenty of game devs who've struck it rich Source? Why is notch held up as the primary example if it's as common as that?
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    They both rely on procedural generation to build worlds and give users some degree of creative control to build things. But one became a billionaire and spends his days on twitter whining about how hard it is to be white.
    - pvg 8y ago
      I don't see anything about that in the interview.
jmts 8y ago
I've considered this issue before. How much is 'enough'? It certainly depends on what your preference is (are you okay with second hand cars, or do you want to try a Lamborghini for size?), but $5M in the bank is 50 years at $100K a year (ignoring interest, etc). Towards the end of your life you probably don't need that much, but if you didn't want to have 'too much' and were disciplined enough to leave most of what you have in the bank and just give yourself an 'allowance', $5M would not be an unreasonable sum.
- NikkiA 8y ago
  The decision to monetize DF came after a cancer scare, so it might be reasonable to assume 'enough' would be 'enough to ensure that both of us are comfortably able to handle such a medical emergency'
  - dom96 8y ago
    I'm sure you've heard this already, but it would be far more practical to move to pretty much anywhere other than the US that has free health care. The US is crazy when it comes to this.
    - NikkiA 8y ago
      Tell Tarn and Zach... but presumably they like living in the US for some reason.
  - jmts 8y ago
    I'm aware of that. I also noted that they mention multiple cancers are not unlikely over time (I'm unable to access the article at this time so I can't quote directly), and they specifically pick the $5M figure as a value that they are uncertain about. I'm suggesting that $5M is probably a reasonable figure to remove any uncertainty.
GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago
I'm just glad that Tarn is finally looking concerned about his own health, considering he has (according to interviews) been living like a hermit and subsisting on red bull and soft drinks...
ndnxhs 8y ago
Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.
- Pimpus 8y ago
  Yeah, the idea of it is attractive, and learning the crazy UI is half the fun, but once you really get into it you realize that there is no there there. It's nowhere near as complex as it seems, and full of bugs, some decades old. Trade is so easily exploited that there is nothing exciting about the elves coming. You can kill them and start a war, but the combat is so unbalanced and exploitable that they pose no threat. Trade being pointless makes half the items in the game worthless. I recently played until FPS death kicked in making it impossible to continue, and didn't feel engaged enough to start a new fort. The problem is that the brothers do not play their own game, and it clearly shows.
  - Smithalicious 8y ago
    DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. If you try to play in an "optimal" way by exploiting the ridiculous trade values of some items and giving your fortress just one entrance with a drawbridge you won't have as much fun indeed. The solution is to simply not do that and set your own rules and goals. I'd even say that trade and combat being exploitable is a feature, not a bug, since sometimes I simply don't want to bother with those aspects of the game.
    - lawlessone 8y ago
      >DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. That's exactly why i stopped playing Elite Dangerous, devs making empty universes and all the fan boys saying to make your own fun.
    - Pimpus 8y ago
      I understand that it's a sandbox game, but the list of self imposed restrictions you have to follow to have fun is quite long indeed. Don't wall yourself in, don't use the OP traps, don't farm indoors, don't make bone/stone crafts (really high trade value despite bones and stones being waste goods), don't build using multiple floors (stairs have no movement cost last i checked), etc, etc, etc... The devs really don't care about making a fun game. I guess their principles don't align with mine, but I won't reward them for leaving bugs unfixed for a decade plus.
nextstep 8y ago
A truly American story, basically the only developed country in the world where you can be bankrupted from getting sick.
- baud147258 8y ago
  Huh? I'm pretty sure you can get bankrupted by illness in any country
  - Illniyar 8y ago
    No, you can lose your job or means of making money in some countries, but you can't get bankrupted by paying for treatment in countries with universal healthcare (or even close to it). Most developed countries also have some measures of social security in cases where you lose your job so that even that is rare.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      There are just a few (under 5) countries in the world where you will get the same treatment for "free" as you'd get in the US. The price is >65% taxation. In most of these "universal healthcare" countries, it's not that easy - a healthcare "insurance" is deducted from your wage, if you don't work, you have to pay it out of pocket (mandatory, but cheap - around $100 monthly). Social security programmes are useful just for literally homeless people, other people aren't getting much, really (you will not get anything if you have a job). In other countries with universal healthcare, the law says that you will get only "medically necessary" treatment, amd everything else needs to be paid out of your pocket - and in these countries, no private insurance usually exists, so have fun with that. Another point is quality of hospitalization care, again - there are less than 5 countries in the world where you'd get the same thing as in the US. In other countries you will share room with 5 other people, and be aware that usually at least one family member per patient is always present. Treatments such as colonoscopy are done in your room, btw. There usually is just one male and one female toilet and shower per ~10 rooms, of course used by the family members as well. The food is literally uneatable 99% of the time, 1% of the time you're lucky and it's plain bread and tea (nothing to screw up on that). Prepare yourself to be screamed at regularly by doctors and nurses. Prepare yourself to be bellitled at every opportunity. And prepare yourself that your family members might die because noone listened to them, and the only compensation you can get is the sentence "well, that's just the system, the government really didn't want that" - correct, no monetary compensation, no fines, no prison. Did I mention that there is no way to go private other than paying out of pocket, and of course who would run a medical company in a country with universal healthcare? Source: my whole life in a "universal healthcare" country. Edit: Let the downvotes flow, I just stated my experience, definitely a downvote-worthy comment, lol. Dumbass me thought we would discuss. Seems interesting tho. Almost every time I write my experiences with universal healthcare, I'm immediatelly (within 5 minutes) heavily downvoted, without any discussion. Hard denial? Universal healthcare definitely helps pharma and medical companies (they can overprice a lot, just like with any other governmental project). Lobby?
akuji1993 8y ago
> " [...] at the point where Zack and I would both have like 5 million dollars, and I don't know what that means,” he says. “Is that going to corrupt my morality somehow and turn me into a strange person?" [...] The fact that he thinks about it this way, already tells me, that he shouldn't be so worried about it. Put it in a few different banks with a good track record and just let it sit there if you don't want to interact with it. It's there when you need it then :)
corodra 8y ago
Everyone is always above money until they’re looking at a stack of it in front of them. The only folks I know that have the willpower to turn down a pile of money is someone who has their eyes set on a mountain of money.
- gilleain 8y ago
  Some people have burned it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_...
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Bill Drummond from the KLF has since said he regrets doing that stunt. "Of course I regret it - who wouldn't!" Drummond now says. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3667901.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3667901.stm
    - etrautmann 8y ago
      I enjoyed reading about the soup line in that article.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    I prefer what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund did with their unexpected fortune.
    - corodra 8y ago
      They gave away money, in the public light, to attract more donations... to take off the top. More donations, more “top” to take from. Just because it was bitcoin, doesn’t mean they aren’t human. I think the past few years of bitcoin has proven that bitcoin isn’t magically immune to human corruption.
  - Asooka 8y ago
    A bit offtopic, but I've been wondering - is it possible to destroy money in any way other than literally burning banknotes. With electronic money you can only transfer them between parties, so while you can give away all your money, the money still exists in the system - you can't call the bank and ask to have 100k deleted from your account. Am I missing something or is there no way for money to ever disappear from the banking system?
Grue3 8y ago
Don't buy it on Steam. Cut the middleman and donate the creators directly.
- earenndil 8y ago
  Buy it on steam. Leave a positive review so other people see it and buy it.
fbnlsr 8y ago
DF seems amazing but the learning curve is so steep it's discouraging. I've yet to find a base building game that feels fair and does not put so much pressure on the player. Tried Prison Architect but my prison got burnt to the ground because guards were on strike (and they announced it 3 hours before while it takes 5 hours to be able to offer them a raise). Tried Oxygen Not Included but the water behaves SO erratically that my whole base got flooded because one of my minions stepped on the wrong tile (and it seems like the water keeps on expanding like a gaz, not like a fluid) and they were all frozen. Tried Don't Starve and Banished, and these felt so unfair (I hate dying because I didn't plan for something I couldn't guess 140 turns before). Base Building Games are hard to program, I agree, but I don't feel they should be hard to play and enjoy.
- empath75 8y ago
  You want factorio.
- philo23 8y ago
  I'd highly recommend giving Rimworld a go. It's like a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress but with a space theme. The controls are much more friendly and there's a huge number of mods that can completely change the way you can play the game. It definitely doesn't have the level of depth that Dwarf Fortress has (there's no z-levels for example) but it'll still suck hours of your life away if you're not careful.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    dungeon keeper is within the same space as well and thematically closer
    - LoSboccacc 8y ago
      damn I got my names confused, I meant keeperRL
- rscnt 8y ago
  You'll like Rimworld [1] and Factorio [2] 1: https://rimworldgame.com/ https://rimworldgame.com/ 2: https://www.factorio.com/ https://www.factorio.com/

78 points by Impossible 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

i mean.. that's nice. but damn. If they dont qualify as deserving to reap their rewards... I dont know who does! Edit: It seems like they may be vaguely referencing Markus "Notch" Persson's cash flush success after selling Minecraft. I think just being self aware enough to be worried about how "money" might change them should be enough to settle their worries. Notch had a rough time for a while, but he was always a very public person... these guys are a lot less public and I'd suggest less susceptible to being led astray... but who knows I guess.

MrGilbert 8y ago
> these guys are a lot less public and I'd suggest less susceptible to being led astray They were in a niche, staying away from the "big players". Now that they join Steam, they'll be inevitably dragged in to "public" (if you'd like to call it that way). I really hope that... - ... they can handle it - ... they can deal with the negative reviews of that kind of player that don't understand the concept of the game. For a newb, this can be a really frustrating game. I keep my fingers crossed.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  i'm sure the review section will be a battlefield just like any dark souls review section is
drjesusphd 8y ago
What better reward is there to reap than doing what you love?
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Being paid to do what you love
pvg 8y ago
Why do you feel it's alluding to Notch? There are plenty of game developers who've struck it rich and the Dwarf Fortress authors' concerns about sudden wealth seem pretty specific to them.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  >Plenty of game devs who've struck it rich Source? Why is notch held up as the primary example if it's as common as that?
- lawlessone 8y ago
  They both rely on procedural generation to build worlds and give users some degree of creative control to build things. But one became a billionaire and spends his days on twitter whining about how hard it is to be white.
  - pvg 8y ago
    I don't see anything about that in the interview.

jmts 8y ago

I've considered this issue before. How much is 'enough'? It certainly depends on what your preference is (are you okay with second hand cars, or do you want to try a Lamborghini for size?), but $5M in the bank is 50 years at $100K a year (ignoring interest, etc). Towards the end of your life you probably don't need that much, but if you didn't want to have 'too much' and were disciplined enough to leave most of what you have in the bank and just give yourself an 'allowance', $5M would not be an unreasonable sum.

NikkiA 8y ago
The decision to monetize DF came after a cancer scare, so it might be reasonable to assume 'enough' would be 'enough to ensure that both of us are comfortably able to handle such a medical emergency'
- dom96 8y ago
  I'm sure you've heard this already, but it would be far more practical to move to pretty much anywhere other than the US that has free health care. The US is crazy when it comes to this.
  - NikkiA 8y ago
    Tell Tarn and Zach... but presumably they like living in the US for some reason.
- jmts 8y ago
  I'm aware of that. I also noted that they mention multiple cancers are not unlikely over time (I'm unable to access the article at this time so I can't quote directly), and they specifically pick the $5M figure as a value that they are uncertain about. I'm suggesting that $5M is probably a reasonable figure to remove any uncertainty.

GiuseppaAcciaio 8y ago

I'm just glad that Tarn is finally looking concerned about his own health, considering he has (according to interviews) been living like a hermit and subsisting on red bull and soft drinks...

ndnxhs 8y ago

Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.

Pimpus 8y ago
Yeah, the idea of it is attractive, and learning the crazy UI is half the fun, but once you really get into it you realize that there is no there there. It's nowhere near as complex as it seems, and full of bugs, some decades old. Trade is so easily exploited that there is nothing exciting about the elves coming. You can kill them and start a war, but the combat is so unbalanced and exploitable that they pose no threat. Trade being pointless makes half the items in the game worthless. I recently played until FPS death kicked in making it impossible to continue, and didn't feel engaged enough to start a new fort. The problem is that the brothers do not play their own game, and it clearly shows.
- Smithalicious 8y ago
  DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. If you try to play in an "optimal" way by exploiting the ridiculous trade values of some items and giving your fortress just one entrance with a drawbridge you won't have as much fun indeed. The solution is to simply not do that and set your own rules and goals. I'd even say that trade and combat being exploitable is a feature, not a bug, since sometimes I simply don't want to bother with those aspects of the game.
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    >DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. That's exactly why i stopped playing Elite Dangerous, devs making empty universes and all the fan boys saying to make your own fun.
  - Pimpus 8y ago
    I understand that it's a sandbox game, but the list of self imposed restrictions you have to follow to have fun is quite long indeed. Don't wall yourself in, don't use the OP traps, don't farm indoors, don't make bone/stone crafts (really high trade value despite bones and stones being waste goods), don't build using multiple floors (stairs have no movement cost last i checked), etc, etc, etc... The devs really don't care about making a fun game. I guess their principles don't align with mine, but I won't reward them for leaving bugs unfixed for a decade plus.

nextstep 8y ago

A truly American story, basically the only developed country in the world where you can be bankrupted from getting sick.

baud147258 8y ago
Huh? I'm pretty sure you can get bankrupted by illness in any country
- Illniyar 8y ago
  No, you can lose your job or means of making money in some countries, but you can't get bankrupted by paying for treatment in countries with universal healthcare (or even close to it). Most developed countries also have some measures of social security in cases where you lose your job so that even that is rare.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    There are just a few (under 5) countries in the world where you will get the same treatment for "free" as you'd get in the US. The price is >65% taxation. In most of these "universal healthcare" countries, it's not that easy - a healthcare "insurance" is deducted from your wage, if you don't work, you have to pay it out of pocket (mandatory, but cheap - around $100 monthly). Social security programmes are useful just for literally homeless people, other people aren't getting much, really (you will not get anything if you have a job). In other countries with universal healthcare, the law says that you will get only "medically necessary" treatment, amd everything else needs to be paid out of your pocket - and in these countries, no private insurance usually exists, so have fun with that. Another point is quality of hospitalization care, again - there are less than 5 countries in the world where you'd get the same thing as in the US. In other countries you will share room with 5 other people, and be aware that usually at least one family member per patient is always present. Treatments such as colonoscopy are done in your room, btw. There usually is just one male and one female toilet and shower per ~10 rooms, of course used by the family members as well. The food is literally uneatable 99% of the time, 1% of the time you're lucky and it's plain bread and tea (nothing to screw up on that). Prepare yourself to be screamed at regularly by doctors and nurses. Prepare yourself to be bellitled at every opportunity. And prepare yourself that your family members might die because noone listened to them, and the only compensation you can get is the sentence "well, that's just the system, the government really didn't want that" - correct, no monetary compensation, no fines, no prison. Did I mention that there is no way to go private other than paying out of pocket, and of course who would run a medical company in a country with universal healthcare? Source: my whole life in a "universal healthcare" country. Edit: Let the downvotes flow, I just stated my experience, definitely a downvote-worthy comment, lol. Dumbass me thought we would discuss. Seems interesting tho. Almost every time I write my experiences with universal healthcare, I'm immediatelly (within 5 minutes) heavily downvoted, without any discussion. Hard denial? Universal healthcare definitely helps pharma and medical companies (they can overprice a lot, just like with any other governmental project). Lobby?

akuji1993 8y ago

> " [...] at the point where Zack and I would both have like 5 million dollars, and I don't know what that means,” he says. “Is that going to corrupt my morality somehow and turn me into a strange person?" [...] The fact that he thinks about it this way, already tells me, that he shouldn't be so worried about it. Put it in a few different banks with a good track record and just let it sit there if you don't want to interact with it. It's there when you need it then :)

corodra 8y ago

Everyone is always above money until they’re looking at a stack of it in front of them. The only folks I know that have the willpower to turn down a pile of money is someone who has their eyes set on a mountain of money.

gilleain 8y ago
Some people have burned it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_...
- onion2k 8y ago
  Bill Drummond from the KLF has since said he regrets doing that stunt. "Of course I regret it - who wouldn't!" Drummond now says. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3667901.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3667901.stm
  - etrautmann 8y ago
    I enjoyed reading about the soup line in that article.
- majewsky 8y ago
  I prefer what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund did with their unexpected fortune.
  - corodra 8y ago
    They gave away money, in the public light, to attract more donations... to take off the top. More donations, more “top” to take from. Just because it was bitcoin, doesn’t mean they aren’t human. I think the past few years of bitcoin has proven that bitcoin isn’t magically immune to human corruption.
- Asooka 8y ago
  A bit offtopic, but I've been wondering - is it possible to destroy money in any way other than literally burning banknotes. With electronic money you can only transfer them between parties, so while you can give away all your money, the money still exists in the system - you can't call the bank and ask to have 100k deleted from your account. Am I missing something or is there no way for money to ever disappear from the banking system?

Grue3 8y ago

Don't buy it on Steam. Cut the middleman and donate the creators directly.

earenndil 8y ago
Buy it on steam. Leave a positive review so other people see it and buy it.

fbnlsr 8y ago

DF seems amazing but the learning curve is so steep it's discouraging. I've yet to find a base building game that feels fair and does not put so much pressure on the player. Tried Prison Architect but my prison got burnt to the ground because guards were on strike (and they announced it 3 hours before while it takes 5 hours to be able to offer them a raise). Tried Oxygen Not Included but the water behaves SO erratically that my whole base got flooded because one of my minions stepped on the wrong tile (and it seems like the water keeps on expanding like a gaz, not like a fluid) and they were all frozen. Tried Don't Starve and Banished, and these felt so unfair (I hate dying because I didn't plan for something I couldn't guess 140 turns before). Base Building Games are hard to program, I agree, but I don't feel they should be hard to play and enjoy.

empath75 8y ago
You want factorio.
philo23 8y ago
I'd highly recommend giving Rimworld a go. It's like a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress but with a space theme. The controls are much more friendly and there's a huge number of mods that can completely change the way you can play the game. It definitely doesn't have the level of depth that Dwarf Fortress has (there's no z-levels for example) but it'll still suck hours of your life away if you're not careful.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  dungeon keeper is within the same space as well and thematically closer
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    damn I got my names confused, I meant keeperRL
rscnt 8y ago
You'll like Rimworld [1] and Factorio [2] 1: https://rimworldgame.com/ https://rimworldgame.com/ 2: https://www.factorio.com/ https://www.factorio.com/