people like complex games as opposed to tunnel runners. and no AAA studio can compete with what dwarf fortress got.
After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
291–300 of 451 posts
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the name of profit and efficiency, all slack as been wrung out of our healthcare systems. Systems with no slack are brittle and prone to failure under stressors. As for stressors... gestures broadly .
Profit? Aren’t all of your provincial healthcare systems publicly run and publicly funded? I feel that there are two issues. One is taxes. Canada already has high taxes, which does not pair well with low salaries and a high cost of living that isn’t too far from either the SF Bay Area or even NYC. The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much power, and they’re the ones c…
Guessing based on how things go in the UK:
> Profit? Aren’t all of your provincial healthcare systems publicly run and publicly funded? I feel that there are two issues.
The directly publicly run parts are only subject to the "efficiency" part. But more and more gets contracted out where it's also subject to profit pressure.
> The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much power, and they’re the ones controlling the healthcare systems which seem to be managed completely differently from one province to another rifht?
That's pretty backwards. Locally managed healthcare tends to beat centrally managed. It also helps inject a bit of competition in, gaining many of the benefits of for-profit healthcare without so many of the downsides.
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#293I'm happy for their success. However, I'm dismayed that it was their inability to pay for healthcare that landed them in this (albeit good) situation. It's not a situation that should be forced on citizens in a modern country, for which this particular example is a feel-good ending, but there are many more (orders of magnitude more) feel-bad endings, so to speak.
They decided to live off 30k a year with no health insurance. What did they think would happen?
Would it have been any different if they did have health insurance? Under the US system I read plenty of stories of people who did everything right - had top insurance and lots of savings - but were still rendered destitute.
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Healthcare and basic income are crucial for moving towards the next stage of civilizaiton. Like you said, I'm really glad it worked out for them but so, so many people don't get so lucky or are willing to take such a big risk. How many more dwarf fortresses could we have if we gave people the safety net to follow their dreams? Instead of worrying about basic necessities like food, shelter, and healthcare.
More people building dwarf fortresses means less people doing whatever they are right now. While some jobs may be completely pointless, I think we would quickly find that we actually need people doing boring jobs because society would fall apart without them and then no one gets to build video games.
Maybe. I suspect the amount of actual work to be done has dropped a lot. Surely it's worth trying a few steps in that direction.
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#295So this happened to a guy that worked for me. Loved video games, super talented front end dev. Made a horror game in Unity at evenings and weekends with his best friend. Launched it on Steam. Very low sales. But he learnt a huge amount about marketing and game design based on player feedback. Designed a second game, put all the marketing learnings into it, 48 hours after launch the biggest streamer on twitch was stre…
After four years working on my retro game nearly full time, and several launches, I still don't understand marketing enough to understand what to do differently. A lot of the advice out there is something like: "create a community" or "go join several communities" or "get to know other indie devs on Twitter". To me, this simply feels fake. I don't really participate in any online communities. I spend enough time in f…
Get Splattercatgaming or somebody in that space to play it somehow.
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it though? Show me a good Steam game that isn't selling well.
Easy: Among Us, for the many months that it toiled in nearly complete obscurity to the point of the development team nearly giving up the ghost and quitting, until one specific streamer picked it up and gave it the critical mass attention it needed to go absolutely huge. Had the developers had slightly less resources and shut down the servers before that crucial moment it would have never happened, even though clearl…
The problem with Among Us is that it's an online game. Meaning you need a certain amount of actual people playing it before it's fun. So it's a chicken or egg problem; it's not fun without players, players won't join if it's not fun.
Most good single player games do well.
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#297Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
So “weirdo” means “not aligned with leftist politics”
I think being against feminism and proud to be heterosexual are perfectly acceptable, if controversial opinions. Being insulting about it is not. Believing in well debunked conspiracy theories is your right, but doing so definitely puts you in the "weirdo" category.
Saying that feminism might be corrupted by grifters who do not actually seek equality between the genders would be controversial, but acceptable.
Saying that homosexual pride was important at the start, but now in most places gay people have the identical rights to straight people, and therefore gay pride is no more meaningful than straight pride would be controversial, but acceptable.
Missing either context by saying you're against feminism ("So you do NOT support equality between genders?") or that straight pride is the same as gay pride ("You do understand that 'pride' in this context is a rebellion against 'SHAME'. People are saying they refuse to be ASHAMED of being gay. Noone has ever told a straight person they should be ashamed of being straight") is not acceptable.
It is bigotry. There are left-wing bigots and right-wing bigots. And there are right wingers who are not bigots.
But there are definitely correlations and trends between bigotry and political beliefs...
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Profit? Aren’t all of your provincial healthcare systems publicly run and publicly funded? I feel that there are two issues. One is taxes. Canada already has high taxes, which does not pair well with low salaries and a high cost of living that isn’t too far from either the SF Bay Area or even NYC. The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much power, and they’re the ones c…
Guessing based on how things go in the UK: > Profit? Aren’t all of your provincial healthcare systems publicly run and publicly funded? I feel that there are two issues. The directly publicly run parts are only subject to the "efficiency" part. But more and more gets contracted out where it's also subject to profit pressure. > The second is your confederation’s central government is weak. Your provinces have too much…
> Locally managed healthcare tends to beat centrally managed
I tend to agree, but the downside to having each province having their own special healthcare system is that it’s hard for them to collaborate like with something as simple as sharing medical records. Also, the central government can’t do things like mandate minimum spending for healthcare and a more consistent floor on salaries for healthcare workers. Overall though I agree with you.
> It also helps inject a bit of competition in, gaining many of the benefits of for-profit healthcare without so many of the downsides.
People would have to be able to easily move between provinces for that to be true. Unfortunately, it’s hard due to the housing crisis and low salaries. Having a private option would increase competition. It might even offload some strain from the public system assuming that everyone still gets taxed for the public option.
Btw since we’re on the subject, how do Canadians mitigate the long wait for everything healthcare related? Is it common to cross the border for healthcare?
Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the wrong impression that the EU’s healthcare system was working well compared to North America. It’s terrible to learn otherwise.
The capitalist European governments that are being elected are privatizing healthcare. The first step for doing that is defunding public healthcare to make people say that 'it doesnt work - its better in private hospitals'. Then you say you have to privatize the entire system. It also funnels people to private hospitals early - when you defund public healthcare and force people into long wait times, they have no opti…
Finite resources don’t disappear when you change economic systems, and neither does corruption. To me, what changes with different economic systems is the currency. With capitalist systems, currency is obvious. However in socialist systems, the currency tends to be political power and connections. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait in lines just like everyone else.
Neither system is perfect and they both have pros and cons