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After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

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Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#311

Post by GaryPalmer »

Respect to the developers for their effort. But I would never get into dwarf fortress because to me the idea is kind of insane. I get that it is fascinating to try and model complex real-world behaviour into a video game. But the truth is you can spend 100 lifetimes worth of time perfecting these systems that try to appear like a physical world (but really aren't) by trying to preprare for every possible situation the player can get into. And in the end you don't even come close to preparing for 0.1% of the possibilites.

So on one end you are mercilessly sacrificing gameplay for complexity to the point where the game devolves into manual reading. And on the other hand the complexity is never going to be enough.

Maybe in the future AI Networks will be able to come up with convicing game-systems like in dwarf fortress on the fly to offer an illusion of complex emergent behaviour.

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#312

Post by tibbydudeza »

ilyt wrote: post #29
tibbydudeza wrote: post #12

I hope they can handle this unlike Notch (Minecraft) - reckoned becoming a billionaire overnight ruined his life.

It looks more like it showed that he's an asshole to entirety of the world. Ruining he did of his own

Just like Elon - he has always been a racist and homophobic douche but being a billionaire rather amplified it.

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#313

Post by bowsamic »

brundolf wrote: post #182
dabeeeenster wrote: post #76

So 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…

The flipside is that it's a lottery. Steam is overflowing with new indie games every day, and many very good ones die in obscurity. You really have to get lucky and go viral But yeah, the entry fee for that lottery is at a historic low, which is still great (especially for hobby devs who don't care about the rest!)

I don't think it's lottery. I think that we don't want to admit that most people are just bad at designing and developing games. I hang about on /r/gamedev and I've seen a lot of posts complaining about low sales and not a single one of those games was compelling

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#314

Post by DonHopkins »

Herbstluft wrote: post #306
mlindner wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty normal though. Also I wouldn't say they're racist. They'd strongly object to being called racist as well. And this is in a pretty liberal area too.

> They'd strongly object to being called racist as well. Every racist objects to being called a racist.

No post body was provided.

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#315

Post by astrange »

todfox wrote: post #200
dabeeeenster wrote: post #76

So 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…

Isn't the usual advice to never make a game and a game engine at the same time, because you'll only finish one of them?

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#316

Post by astrange »

jack_pp wrote: post #177
throwaway2037 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story sounds like luck. That isn't marketing. It's like hoping that Kim Kardashian will use my new face cream and tweet about it. Another idea: Bribe a popular streamer to play your game and tweet about it. I am sure it is common.

People pay streamers all the time to play their games of course, but I think twitch TOS requires for the streamer to disclose that they're being paid, they usually have it in their title like "Playing {game}, !AD'

In my experience audiences are usually proud they got sponsored instead of resenting it too, though I haven't checked the numbers.

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#318

Post by DonHopkins »

deanCommie wrote: post #298
GuB-42 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sayin…

No post body was provided.

Re: After 20 years the Dwarf Fortress devs have to get used to being millionaires

#319

Post by krzyk »

datalopers wrote: post #6
TrevorJ wrote: post #2

They are definitely in 'set for life if we make wise choices' territory. In another month I'm betting they will be in 'set for life even if we make foolish choices' territory. I'm really happy for them. They really stayed true to their passion and I'm happy to see them rewarded for this.

Are they? 300,000 units * $30 = $9M - 30% Steam tax = $6.3M in a single year take out federal taxes (just gonna call it 36% and ignore SFJ/MFJ), leaves them about $2M each. I'm sure they're some sort of a legal entity in WA state and will owe the b&o tax too. They deserve it absolutely but $2M each does not put them in a position of "fuck you" [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI

And publisher also needs a cut.
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