3 ms·

Nah. DF became popular because it's free. That is a huge part of the allure.

opportune 4y ago
Highly agree, if DF just came out of nowhere and launched their old versions before having enough cachet/community to get studios to help them get it polished, it would at best become a cult classic years later, but most likely just be completely ignored. Without all the slowly increasing cultural awareness and community building leading it to becoming de facto “the most complicated game that is also a simulation and art” it just looks like a really complicated, technologically anachronistic game for neckbeards. Which it still is, but it’s had time to build awareness that it’s also exceptionally interesting, and that that niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also they wouldn’t have been able to keep it a single-person programming project focused almost entirely on expanding the core games features and simulation aspects if they released earlier. Way more time would have been spent on productionization and getting it good-enough rather than done, and more hands would be involved, making it less of a passion/art project of an inventor, and just a regular old commercial endeavor.
bombcar 4y ago
DF became popular because of the stories it created - and being free helped that expand because people could try-before-buy. As it was, the risk would have been way too high for most people to pay tenbux or whatever BEFORE playing it (many have "donated" way more than that after playing).
- pixl97 4y ago
  Also being free let the developers work on whatever they wanted to rather than the "I paid for this and this bug happened therefore I'm going to yell about it on the internet". I work in enterprise software, the pressures from paying customers are immense. Sales loves to short circuit processes to get new features in front of the line. Large customers love to short circuit the process. Eventually your processes become customer driven rather than creation driven. And that's fine if you want to make money, but it ain't great if you want to create.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And even so Tarn has been pretty responsive to major bugs (and even minor ones) - but it is really nice to have the expectations set.
- kilgnad 4y ago
  The free part was super important because, if the buyer doesn't know much about the game, those text graphics are a huge deal breaker when combined with payment.

Highly agree, if DF just came out of nowhere and launched their old versions before having enough cachet/community to get studios to help them get it polished, it would at best become a cult classic years later, but most likely just be completely ignored. Without all the slowly increasing cultural awareness and community building leading it to becoming de facto “the most complicated game that is also a simulation and art” it just looks like a really complicated, technologically anachronistic game for neckbeards. Which it still is, but it’s had time to build awareness that it’s also exceptionally interesting, and that that niche isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also they wouldn’t have been able to keep it a single-person programming project focused almost entirely on expanding the core games features and simulation aspects if they released earlier. Way more time would have been spent on productionization and getting it good-enough rather than done, and more hands would be involved, making it less of a passion/art project of an inventor, and just a regular old commercial endeavor.

bombcar 4y ago

DF became popular because of the stories it created - and being free helped that expand because people could try-before-buy. As it was, the risk would have been way too high for most people to pay tenbux or whatever BEFORE playing it (many have "donated" way more than that after playing).

pixl97 4y ago
Also being free let the developers work on whatever they wanted to rather than the "I paid for this and this bug happened therefore I'm going to yell about it on the internet". I work in enterprise software, the pressures from paying customers are immense. Sales loves to short circuit processes to get new features in front of the line. Large customers love to short circuit the process. Eventually your processes become customer driven rather than creation driven. And that's fine if you want to make money, but it ain't great if you want to create.
- bombcar 4y ago
  And even so Tarn has been pretty responsive to major bugs (and even minor ones) - but it is really nice to have the expectations set.
kilgnad 4y ago
The free part was super important because, if the buyer doesn't know much about the game, those text graphics are a huge deal breaker when combined with payment.