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Dwarf Fortress in 2013

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Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#81

Post by damarquis »

axefrog wrote: post #45
dspillett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created. Would people care to experience it if they could? I've always assumed with this (and a number of other things in life) that being a bit of a niche interest (or in this case a lot of a niche interest) in part creates the niche interest. There have been man…

You falsely attribute a niche's draw to the fact that it's niche. I find it unlikely that people would base their interest in a game on its popularity, or lack thereof. If the game is fun, people will play it. If it's not, they won't.

I agree that if the game is fun people will play it. The problem is getting them to try the game for long enough to know if it is fun. Popularity is obviously a factor in achieving that since lots of people associate mass marketed products with blandness, juvenility, etc.

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#83

Post by dspillett »

axefrog wrote: post #45
dspillett wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created. Would people care to experience it if they could? I've always assumed with this (and a number of other things in life) that being a bit of a niche interest (or in this case a lot of a niche interest) in part creates the niche interest. There have been man…

You falsely attribute a niche's draw to the fact that it's niche. I find it unlikely that people would base their interest in a game on its popularity, or lack thereof. If the game is fun, people will play it. If it's not, they won't.

But the game being different in the ways that make it get called niche are usually why people talk about it publicly. It is certainly a major part of the discussion on most occasions when I hear of it.

While the interface puts many people off once they are there, would the game get quite as much discussion if it was much more like other games rather than being somewhat more unique (for better or worse)?

Re: Dwarf Fortress in 2013

#84

Post by derleth »

phantomb wrote: post #50
derleth wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate bad UIs You hate UIs you don't like. Which is a tautology. The interesting part here is that you've managed to convince yourself that UIs you don't like are objectively bad, and that anyone who does like such UIs is wrong in some factual way, as opposed to being 'wrong' in the purely subjective way everyone who disagrees with us on a matter of taste is. Go too far in this direction and you end up with Jef Ra…

In interaction design we say that you can't design an experience, but you can design for an experience. We know quite a bit about humans, the psychology they approach an interface with, their physical abilities to use an interface. With this information and a target experience you want to design for, the design choices follow. We can objectively measure things like whether a user approaching an interface can easily u…

> But we can still say that the DF interface is pretty bad for the vast majority of users who want to play the game.

But instead UI people just say it's bad, period. That's the problem.

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