Good lord, this is an awful idea. I've played a ton of Factorio, and I'm a decent engineer, and while the skillsets are similar conceptually, the actual executi

Good lord, this is an awful idea. I've played a ton of Factorio, and I'm a decent engineer, and while the skillsets are similar conceptually, the actual execution and mechanics of them are very very different. Factorio involves a lot of care with spatial layout, tricks to optimize loading the conveyer belts, ensuring that the right ratios of pre-cursors are sent, etc etc. You could get a candidate who perfectly understands design patterns for programming, because they've studied programming and know how to program using programming languages and programming tools, but they don't translate that very well into the spatial environment of Factorio. Debugging and optimizing in Factorio again are conceptually similar to doing so in a programming language, but the actual techniques and patterns available to do so are very very different, and you have to learn them. Most of us do not figure these things out from scratch by ourselves. As others have pointed out, it also is begging for a monoculture. Plenty of people who are good at programming don't give a shit about video games, and will either do poorly in this interview, or will skip it altogether. The result would be hiring one type of person, and not having any other skillsets on your team. Even as someone who would do well in this interview, I would run screaming, as I do not want to work in a monoculture.