Dwarf Fortress Devs Declined Six-Figure Licensing Offer

[The Madman]

Bloody hell the way people are talking about it in these comments you'd think playing Dwarf Fortress is comparable to some arcane alchemy or theoretical physics.

Maybe I'm just some sort of latent genius when I say it's not that hard to learn. Seriously. I spent an afternoon reading up on Dwarf Fortress and have been playing ever since, it's not that complicated. Would I prefer if the UI were more intuitive? Sure, who wouldn't? But it's still not nearly as bad as half these comments seem to make it out to be which makes me question how many people saying these things have seriously tried playing the game or if they just spent five minutes with it before moving elsewhere.

It's not that complicated people, jeez.

 

[Mahoshonen]

No one would disagree that the UI needs a facelift...

'Cept the developers, for whom if UI updates are even on their radar, it's something they're planning on tackling around 19 years from now, or something like that.

Dwarf Fortress is going to continue to inspire great games (e.g. Minecraft) but I don't think it'll ever become a great game in its own right. That's just not what they're interested in, I guess.

To be honest, I'm perfectly fine with this.

If they want DF to continue to be it's own weird thing, I can respect that.

 

[tokae]

*snipping*

Okay I hear ya, now I see where your coming from. And you sure seem to treat this game as some real serious business, I should warn you though: I don't. I have really fun playing it a few hours every weekend but that is about it really.
Should I based on that be up in arms and promptly ask for better stuff? I guess I could but I honestly do not care that much. You want to know why? Because I think it's a good enough way already to waste three-four hours every sunday night already.
Is it really so wrong for me to actually just enjoy a GAME for a couple of hours every week that you have to trash my attitude for being fine with it as it is?
Please, not everything is worth riots. Try to realize that some things are just hobbies, something you do every now and then for fun. Like watch movies, play football with your mates, going for hikes, listening to music or playing videogames. Or in Tarn and Zach's case: working on Dwarf Fortress.

You continue to trash my attitude saying that I am a sad person for simply being okay with the way I waste my spare-time, and you make assumptions based on exactly nothing to even more drive home your point of what a sad, sad person I am.
You know what? Good for you man. You obviously need to work through these issues, so please go ahead.

But we both have already fallen quite far off-topic, so if you really want to do that you should probably PM me about your issues with my attitude instead, so that we both can avoid continuing to fill this thread with even more off-topic BS.

 

[tokae]

It's not that complicated people, jeez.

Well, You actually said it in your post. You read up on it. Most people do not do that and as such cannot figure out anything.
I don't play to much anymore, a couple of hours every saturday or sunday. I always have the wiki up on another screen to tell you the truth because there is always something I need to look up.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I would kinda agree, I certainly am enjoying Gnomoria alot for those exact reasons. But you also have to take into account that that is not the game DF is trying to be or become. Have you seen the insane depth of the gameplay and the workings in the generated worlds? No other game I have ever tried even comes close to DF.

Yeah, I hate to say it, but I enjoy Gnomoria more just because I can comprehend just what the hell I am doing at all times.
I recall playing it back in 2007 or 2008 and got pretty far before realizing that losing isn't always fun; especially since it's always due to the unbelievably clunky UI. If there is anything I learned from Dwarf Fortress it's this:

1) Depth of gameplay is cheapened by frustration and bad controls. (and no elitist "learn to play" argument will ever change that)
2) The burden of management grows exponentially along with the risk (the dwarves are their own worst enemy)

In terms of gameplay depth, Nethack is probably the closest among what I have played.

 

[Tiamat666]

Really this game desperately needs a graphical update and an UI tightening. Purist will shout no but really how many NEW players actually stick with this game if not actually figure out how it works before they quit?

Unless you have a bunch of spreadsheets on your lap you ain't going far enough in this game to even learn how it works.

Graphical update it both varying degrees [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/List_of_user_graphics_sets] and, IMO, doesn't need.
It could, however, SERIOUSLY benefit from a UI update... when you can go through 3 different menus using 4 different control schemes... ugh...

The controls are really unnecessarily complex and amazingly inconsistent. It blows my mind how someone can have the talent to pull of a game like DF and at the same time fuck up the controls so bad. And it's been this way forever now. Compared to the other stuff Zach and Tarn regularly work on, it can't really be that hard to clean that up.

The other problem is all the noise (information noise). I realize that all the attention to detail is one of the appeals of DF. But when I can't read what items actually are because the adjectives are taking up all the space ("You are wearing a green, worn, bloodied alpaca wool ...?") it's insane. I have to display the details of an item just to see what it actually is, when it should actually be the other way around. The game should show basic item info by default, such as "Wool Coat", and then, if I want the flavor, I hit a button for further details and it can drop all those adjectives on me.

It's an amazing game, but these annoyances are so frustrating because they make the experience so much harder than it should be.

 

[1337mokro]

*snipping*

Okay I hear ya, now I see where your coming from. And you sure seem to treat this game as some real serious business, I should warn you though: I don't. I have really fun playing it a few hours every weekend but that is about it really.
Should I based on that be up in arms and promptly ask for better stuff? I guess I could but I honestly do not care that much. You want to know why? Because I think it's a good enough way already to waste three-four hours every sunday night already.
Is it really so wrong for me to actually just enjoy a GAME for a couple of hours every week that you have to trash my attitude for being fine with it as it is?
Please, not everything is worth riots. Try to realize that some things are just hobbies, something you do every now and then for fun. Like watch movies, play football with your mates, going for hikes, listening to music or playing videogames. Or in Tarn and Zach's case: working on Dwarf Fortress.

You continue to trash my attitude saying that I am a sad person for simply being okay with the way I waste my spare-time, and you make assumptions based on exactly nothing to even more drive home your point of what a sad, sad person I am.
You know what? Good for you man. You obviously need to work through these issues, so please go ahead.

But we both have already fallen quite far off-topic, so if you really want to do that you should probably PM me about your issues with my attitude instead, so that we both can avoid continuing to fill this thread with even more off-topic BS.

Of course, but when did I ever say any of the stuff you are implying?

All I said was that having an attitude of "screw those guys who don't get it" or "it's good enough as it is and it should stay good enough" are sad ways to approach this game.

I never said anything about you being a sad person. I said having a dismissive attitude is a sad way of approaching a game. "Oh it suits my needs so it's enough" is also one of those. What would you lose if the game became more accessible? You would still have your weekend hobby of dwarf fortress, just more people could have the same hobby.

That is really the last thing I will say about this. Just be careful about what you interpret from what people say.

 

[lacktheknack]

That is what is sad here. Not the fact the devs might or might not have plans for the UI, not that it's badness is intentional, but that you seem to want to staple and glue the game shut into it's niche.

That's exactly it, though... it IS a niche of its own.

If you simplify it, you're actively yanking it out of its niche, and leaving nothing in its place.

If you want a middleman to play, there's always Minecraft.

This is a bit like complaining that the combos in Street Fighter are too hard to pull off in the heat of a fight, so they should be made easier. Yes, they're hard... that's what we like about them. You can always go play DoA, Tekken or Mortal Kombat instead (and yes, that IS a valid recommendation).

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

The DF brand priced at 6 figures?

That is quite a fair amount considering its (admittedly large) underground following.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

Whats the bet that the offer was from Paradox for Game of Dwarves.

 

[uchytjes]

I would probably buy a Dwarf Fortress 2 type game. Something with some at least semi-intelligible graphics and is somewhat intuitive. As it stands, I have no real motivation to play the game.

 

[Nurb]

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder."
-George Washington

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

If someone offered me a million + dollars for the rights to an unfinished, barely known, terrible to look at game that *I* think won't be finished for 20 years...I'd sign as fast as humanly possible, in my own blood if there weren't a pen handy.

Seriously, this isn't Minecrack, and you aren't going to have any huge numbers of people clamoring to play this. It simply will not find its way to any platform other than PC, and even then I'm fairly certain that the glorious PC master race prefers to spend their time more often than not playing games that have more impressive graphics than I can produce on a graphing calculator circa 1999.

Word of mouth? "I'm playing Dwarf Fortress, its that game that is ridiculously complex yet presents itself via the most shit poor GUI actually possible outside of Visual Basic." God forbid you are color blind or similarly unappreciative of its ASCII charms.

Anyone actually making LPs of this game on Youtube, ones that anyone actually watches?

Probably, if its on YT people will watch it, but I doubt too many of them feel impelled to go invest more time in the game themselves. I certainly didn't.

So yeah, I'd take the money especially because I don't even know if I've got 20 years left to live. No one does. I DO know that a million in the bank makes a nice bit of interest to live off of (though they would of course be dividing it up among more than one person I assume) or it gets you some capital to produce your NEXT game that will make that money for life.

Assuming they have the talent to do so, if they don't then I'd still take the money and go train to become a nurse or something.

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

A note to the people saying the game needs a better UI: it absolutely does. However, if the developer reworked the UI for every release version, the 1.0 release would be 40 years down the line instead of 20. That's why it's the last thing on the development checklist.

And the people saying the slowdown is a result of poor optimization need to consider how complex doing simultaneous pathfinding for hundreds of units in an open, procedurally-generated map can be.

If someone offered me a million + dollars for the rights to an unfinished, barely known, terrible to look at game that *I* think won't be finished for 20 years...I'd sign as fast as humanly possible, in my own blood if there weren't a pen handy.

Seriously, this isn't Minecrack, and you aren't going to have any huge numbers of people clamoring to play this. It simply will not find its way to any platform other than PC, and even then I'm fairly certain that the glorious PC master race prefers to spend their time more often than not playing games that have more impressive graphics than I can produce on a graphing calculator circa 1999.

Word of mouth? "I'm playing Dwarf Fortress, its that game that is ridiculously complex yet presents itself via the most shit poor GUI actually possible outside of Visual Basic." God forbid you are color blind or similarly unappreciative of its ASCII charms.

Anyone actually making LPs of this game on Youtube, ones that anyone actually watches?

Probably, if its on YT people will watch it, but I doubt too many of them feel impelled to go invest more time in the game themselves. I certainly didn't.

So yeah, I'd take the money especially because I don't even know if I've got 20 years left to live. No one does. I DO know that a million in the bank makes a nice bit of interest to live off of (though they would of course be dividing it up among more than one person I assume) or it gets you some capital to produce your NEXT game that will make that money for life.

Assuming they have the talent to do so, if they don't then I'd still take the money and go train to become a nurse or something.

The developer is one person (and his brother, who just helps with ideas). He appears to be sufficiently set to continue his current lifestyle indefinitely, and making the game is all he wants to do in life. So I don't see why he should throw that away for money he doesn't seem to want or need.

Also, six figures =/= a million.

 

[theultimateend]

Is the brand worth more then 6 figures?
And 20 years to finish the game? Is one of those guys actually Gade Newell in disguise?

I know other people said this but the game is stupid good.

I get into a DF fit about once a year and its a dark terrible place that I love.

Everybody dies.

Always.

Everyone.

Even if you do everything perfectly.

 

[grimallq]

If someone offered me a million + dollars for the rights to an unfinished, barely known, terrible to look at game that *I* think won't be finished for 20 years...I'd sign as fast as humanly possible, in my own blood if there weren't a pen handy.

Sigh. They were offered less then 1 million $ not for the game itself, but for the right to use the name "Dwarf Fortress" for another game(s).

Dwarf Fortress has a cult following because of its uniqueness, so frankly I can't say I'm surprised they declined. If the Adams brothers wanted to make money from their games they wouldn't be making somthing like Dwarf Fortress.

 

[Scars Unseen]

A note to the people saying the game needs a better UI: it absolutely does. However, if the developer reworked the UI for every release version, the 1.0 release would be 40 years down the line instead of 20. That's why it's the last thing on the development checklist.

What. Why on earth would he need to rework the UI for every release version? It's not like it would revert to his original code every time he adds a new subsystem. You create a logical layout for a UI(it doesn't even have to be the "best UI ever." Just make a UI that follows some sort of consistent internal logic), then any future additional options are added according to the same logic. It isn't difficult in the least. He just needs to sit down and do it.

Well I guess he doesn't really have to. But until he does, I will continue to group Toady and ThreeToe with the likes of Derek Smart as developers that could be brilliant if they weren't stuck quite so far up their own asses.

 

[1337mokro]

That is what is sad here. Not the fact the devs might or might not have plans for the UI, not that it's badness is intentional, but that you seem to want to staple and glue the game shut into it's niche.

That's exactly it, though... it IS a niche of its own.

If you simplify it, you're actively yanking it out of its niche, and leaving nothing in its place.

If you want a middleman to play, there's always Minecraft.

This is a bit like complaining that the combos in Street Fighter are too hard to pull off in the heat of a fight, so they should be made easier. Yes, they're hard... that's what we like about them. You can always go play DoA, Tekken or Mortal Kombat instead (and yes, that IS a valid recommendation).

Why would improving the UI be yanking it out of it's niche? You change literally nothing about the game other than the way you control it. Don't tell me bad UI games have now become a niche.

You could have EXACTLY the same game without the clunky menu within menu within menu UI. See Gnomoria whilst still clunky has a much smoother UI where it is labeled under different tabs all accessible with the mouse. MUCH easier, MUCH smoother and really nothing changed about the game itself.

They could have made the same UI as dwarf fortress and the gameplay would NOT have changed in the slightest, but they didn't.

 

[lacktheknack]

That is what is sad here. Not the fact the devs might or might not have plans for the UI, not that it's badness is intentional, but that you seem to want to staple and glue the game shut into it's niche.

That's exactly it, though... it IS a niche of its own.

If you simplify it, you're actively yanking it out of its niche, and leaving nothing in its place.

If you want a middleman to play, there's always Minecraft.

This is a bit like complaining that the combos in Street Fighter are too hard to pull off in the heat of a fight, so they should be made easier. Yes, they're hard... that's what we like about them. You can always go play DoA, Tekken or Mortal Kombat instead (and yes, that IS a valid recommendation).

Why would improving the UI be yanking it out of it's niche? You change literally nothing about the game other than the way you control it. Don't tell me bad UI games have now become a niche.

You could have EXACTLY the same game without the clunky menu within menu within menu UI. See Gnomoria whilst still clunky has a much smoother UI where it is labeled under different tabs all accessible with the mouse. MUCH easier, MUCH smoother and really nothing changed about the game itself.

They could have made the same UI as dwarf fortress and the gameplay would NOT have changed in the slightest, but they didn't.

I wasn't responding to the UI stuff.

I was responding to what I quoted: You're being down on him for wanting the game to stick to its niche.

 

[lacktheknack]

Is the brand worth more then 6 figures?
And 20 years to finish the game? Is one of those guys actually Gade Newell in disguise?

I know other people said this but the game is stupid good.

I get into a DF fit about once a year and its a dark terrible place that I love.

Everybody dies.

Always.

Everyone.

Even if you do everything perfectly.

No no no... ESPECIALLY if you do it perfectly. A perfectly played game of Dwarf Fortress will result in hell rising out of the ground and consuming everything.