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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

#341

Post by justadolphin »

chaostheory wrote: post #277
komali2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep telling us this but we feel it's overblown. When you listen to western media they make it seem like an invasion is just around the corner, whereas over here the relationship with the PRC is little changed. Nobody can know for sure but you can never know if a huge earthquake will hit San Francisco, better not live there. Or if the subway will flood in new York city, better not live there. Or if Berlin will…

I’ve been watching news in Asia, including from Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and the Philippines. It’s not overblown. If I were to guess, people are prone to normalcy bias even when the probability for an invasion is getting higher and higher. The further China’s social order degrades, the higher the chances of an invasion.

I think I'm going to take the Taiwanese person's opinion on the matter over yours, no offense haha. Frankly being a Japanese native in Japan, I can only confirm his opinion. Endless political posturing does not make a war, except in the case of the classic gung-ho American cowboyism.

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

#342

Post by justadolphin »

colechristensen wrote: post #92
cletus wrote: post #60

I'm so happy for these guys. Selling 300,000 copies @ $30 each is life-changing money. Over the years they've accepted donations but from what I've seen it's tended to a few thousand dollars a month. Decent but not a lot for 2 people. I still find DF really inaccessible but this Steam release will prompt me to give it another go. Whatever the case, I'm happy for their success.

Classic DF is inaccessible during the first hour only if you follow a good tutorial. Most anybody willing to slog through that hour will be able to get it. Lots of AAA games these days won’t even have you playing that quick (though for different reasons)

Back in the day the 10hr+ youtube tutorial series was considered prime viewing before even playing dorf fort, for someone without any traditional rogue experience. Even watching a condensed video and starting, I don't imagine the game would feel accessible for many hours for the average AAA enjoyer. My 6yr old however, is able to pick up and finish most any appropriately age rated AAA game. 5 minutes of experimenting with the controls and they are as good to go.

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

#343

Post by justadolphin »

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.

Everyone objects to being called a racist. You clearly talk as someone who considers themselves not to be racist, if someone on the street called you racist you would no doubt object more strongly than an actual racist! But that would implicate you as an actual racist, by your standards. This kind of thinking is why the American education system (from my understanding, not being an American) used to include studying "The Crucible". Faulty witchhunt logic often applies to the person using it, and only leads to trouble. That being said, fuck Notch, but your mindset is almost as dangerous as his.

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

#344

Post by justadolphin »

DonHopkins wrote: post #314
Herbstluft wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Quoted post unavailable.

It is not so black and white. A person may have been brought up racist, no fault of their own and tantamount to child abuse I would say. Your mindset would exclude any chance of re-education for them. At a wider scale it's also very simple to talk big like you are right now online. But as a hackernews regular I rather imagine you are most likely a middling tech worker, perhaps living pay cheque to pay cheque feeding a family (2.5 kids and a dog). You are, much like the average American politician, very likely to denouce racism and support grand action in private - but much less likely to jeopardise your family and livelihood to back the words up. Hopefully you can see the hypocrisy in asking anyone else to do so from behind the glow of your monitor.

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

#345

Post by fragmede »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #334
brundolf wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

Lottery implies its entirely luck based. When in reality, you have a great deal of control. Marketing IS something you can control. Sure, some streamer randomly picking up your game is beyond your control. But you can certainly create conditions that would make it easier for your game to be picked up by a streamer (build relationships with journos, streamers; get paid marketing, etc.) Calling it a lottery is a disser…

Except that creating games and marketing games are two separate things, so calling it a lottery is an insult to marketers, and game developers would do well to recognize that simply building a game and not marketing it should be a conscious decision to shoot themselves in the foot.

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

#347

Post by theduder99 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #269
schemescape wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have any advice, but I will say the art in the screenshots didn’t grab my attention. For what it’s worth, I had a similar experience. I launched a game on itch.io for fun, and got a ton of positive feedback (including “I love this game!” And “I can’t believe this is free!”), but when I launched on Steam (also for free, but now with music people said they liked and new features), it bombed. The cherry on top w…

To be fair, hn submissions are a total crapshoot; don't take it too hard. The first upvote comes down to whether the right person looks at the new submissions queue at the right moment... And I often get the impression that very few people are looking at the queue and trying to separate good stuff from the giant piles of crap...

I wasn't even aware of the New button after years of casual browsing :) When I discovered it one day, I felt bad that I hadn't contributed to sorting through the crap.

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

#348

Post by wongarsu »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #145
theptip wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2m in the bank is enough to easily draw $100k/yr from interest, which fits the GP’s “set for life if we make wise choices” IMO. That is way above median income in wealthy countries. Assuming you don’t try to live in SF!

LOL. Who is getting 5% risk free interest rate on USD? No one. I guess 1% after taxes is a more reasonable expected return. Remember that interest rates on retail deposits were pretty much zero for last 10 years. So, 20K USD per year. But if they can keep it up for next 5 years, then yeah, pretty much can retire on 1% interest rate forever.

Long term (~50 year) average stock market returns on reasonable indexes (like S&P500) is 10% per year.

The only real challenge is a portfolio mix and withdrawal strategy that minimizes the damage from withdrawing during downturns. That's where the 4% rule becomes relevant.

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

#349

Post by KronisLV »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #334
brundolf wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)

Lottery implies its entirely luck based. When in reality, you have a great deal of control. Marketing IS something you can control. Sure, some streamer randomly picking up your game is beyond your control. But you can certainly create conditions that would make it easier for your game to be picked up by a streamer (build relationships with journos, streamers; get paid marketing, etc.) Calling it a lottery is a disser…

> Calling it a lottery is a disservice to the people who actually put in effort to create these games.

I think that both for simple and complex games there are those that nobody cares about and those that end up really popular. Sometimes it's about good marketing, sometimes it's about making what people actually want to play (instead of what you want to make), sometimes it's about developing it really well, other times it's just about being at the right place at the right time.

Those aren't mutually exclusive qualities, for certain titles you might need lots of one of them, or maybe a mix of all of them. In regards to what you actually need, it can indeed be a lottery and thinking that hard work (or marketing) is all that's necessary in ample amounts (or even is a pre-requisite) might be misleading, because it's not the full story.

For an example of how any mix of those aspects can lead to failure, look at the launch of Brigador, a well made game that was a flop: https://youtu.be/qUsuusNLxik

Then contrast that (years of development) with something like Vampire Survivors. Or maybe 2048, or Flappy Bird, or Wordle for examples of even simpler projects that were also easier to make, that still were immensely popular and much more successful.

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

#350

Post by bregma »

bartvk wrote: post #308
ElijahLynn wrote: post #3

Wow, this is such a #goodnews story! > "I'll have to rework… my, uh, whole life, figure out what the heck's going on there. I don't really have any ideas or plans right now. I've just been thinking about dwarf stuff." > "My wife has plans," Zach said. "We live in a tiny little house, so buying a new house, that's a major goal."

I wonder why not he but his wife thought about improving their material circumstances? So content with his life, or so focused on the code, or something else?

I suspect the part of the spectrum he is on provides the ability for very intense but very narrow focus.
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