First, as mentioned in the article, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC will be featuring Dwarf Fortress as part of its "Talk to Me" exhibit. The exhibit will be open from July 24th through November 7th. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1080
Tarn has The Fisherman Parable philosophy and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. Doing what you love, no matter the "sacrifice", above everything else. He's probably the biggest reason why I've been working on the side to try to create my own games, so I can get the heck out of finance and do what I wanted to since I was 6 years old. Until that works out for me, I send a monthly donation to ensure that at least someone can fulfill their dream.
Very interesting: "Tarn sees his work in stridently ethical terms. He calls games like Angry Birds or Bejeweled, which ensnare players in addictive loops of frustration and gratification under the pretense that skill is required to win, 'abusive' -- a common diagnosis among those who get hooked on the games, but a surprising one from a game designer, ostensibly charged with doing the hooking. 'Many popular games tap into something in a person that is compulsive, like hoarding,' he said, 'the need to make progress with points or collect things. You sit there saying yeah-yeah-yeah and then you wake up and say, What the hell was I doing? You can call that kind of game fun, but only if you call compulsive gambling fun.' He added: 'I used to value the ability to turn the user into your slave. I don’t anymore.'"
Completely agree with Tarn. I would go further, and describe certain types of games as evil. Social games, in particular, I believe have evil game design.
FWIW Bejeweled [Blitz] requires skill. I'm moderately good, second in my circle of friends and I go off the boil if I've not played it for a while, it takes time to get back into the groove. That said they do manipulate the scoring a lot and there is a lot of pressure to buy, buy, buy to get a higher score (that I've resisted, that's not my thing).
Bejeweled is a very well constructed Skinner Box that has been effectively optimised over time. TBH it should be part of a course on addiction psychology, it probably is.
Interesting comments nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah right. Every game triggers OC tendencies and desires in people like me. I've regretted binging on both Minecraft and World of Warcraft.
The real reason for tension seems to be this: game designers see Zynga et al achieve the same level of player engagement without careful polish and production values (seemingly).
In other words, it's the age old plight of the artisan who invested time and money into details and craftsmanship, just to see it lose market share to cheaply-produced slop.
In that sense, old juggernauts like EA, who spend many millions in budgets on games, should be concerned too.
First, these guys are the real hackers. Not Carmack, Woz, Bill, or Zuck, or all the super-cool guys that made the bucks and then coasted (technically). These guys are living the life just because they love it. They're a much better representation of the inner hacker in all of us than those stories of riches and fame. I got the impression they would continue doing this no matter what their financial circumstances.
Second, they've done their time. Somebody should set them up with an annuity so they can a) continue, b) learn to live without worrying about money, and c) tell stories to kids 40 years from now about how it all came together
Third, this article left me gobsmacked. I'm left with one conclusion: this is art. If you're collecting these crayon receipts? Save them. They're going to be worth something one day.
Of course, just like the game plays out, it might all amount to nothing. If I had to bet about the value of their work, I'd say it drops off short-term (next 20 years) then becomes super valuable around 2030 or so. This seems to be the pattern with semi-famous labors of love with cult followings. Seriously. Save whatever you can get from these guys.
I wish I could have ignored you saying that John Carmack is not a real hacker, but I couldn't.
Carmack has consistently pushed forward multiple industries on multiple fronts, and remains to this day a far better programmer than any I've ever worked with. He revolutionized computer gaming while living the life just because he loves it. He's not famous because he has Ferraris; his Ferraris are famous because they're his.
He doesn't need anyone to set him up with an annuity--maybe because his love was more mainstream than theirs, or maybe because his skill was far greater than theirs--but that in no way diminishes what he has accomplished or his motivations for accomplishing it.
Sorry. I hear what you're saying and I think you are deeply wrong. (Oh no, someone is wrong on the Internet! :)
Carmack, Gates, Zuck and Woz are the real deal. Saying they aren't because others toil in obscurity is some hopeless romanticism about hacker culture. A heart warmer, maybe?, but not justified.
Just because financial outcomes are not matched to your hacker ideal doesn't invalidate either approach. The rich famous hackers were also good at business and publicity. Not everyone wants that or is good at all three, which is the case with Dwarf Fortress.
Money is not the scorecard. Read the article. That point is addressed.
I don't know where you are coming from saying Carmack 'coasted (technically)' after he made his bucks. He is about a hard core coder as they come. Its not like he took some CEO desk job after Doom came out. From the first commander keen all the way through probably Quake 3, the stuff he wrote was all cutting edge.
I've never seen other games where people use that as a reason to study geology, farming, beekeeping or whatnot. One person, not satisfied with the material properties of Saguaro wood and unable to find good data online went so far as to track down a sample and measure them.
One person even mentioned that they neglected to study for their geology test and played Dwarf Fortress instead. They got an extremely high score because so many of the questions were relevant to DF, such as asking for the names of common iron ores. Any good DF player can list at least magnetite, limonite and hematite without any trouble.
I know of several people who have gotten history degrees because of an interest sparked by the Europa Universalis series (usually either EU2 or EU3), and of course some people have become fighter pilots after playing flight sims. But the sheer breadth of DF is different from anything I've seen.
Don't miss the chance to read through the "Boatmurdered" Dwarf Fortress succession campaign:
Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while documenting its colorful descent into oblivion. (After a vicious elephant attack: “A single untrained marksdwarf stands ready to defend the crossing, but I doubt he’ll be enough.”) Boatmurdered spread across gaming sites and made the front page of MetaFilter, a popular blog. “That did a lot to make people aware we existed,” Tarn says.
My teenage son - who, raised right, grew up on Nethack - absolutely loves this game, and will occasionally stay up all night and be found still feverishly working on some elaborate construction in the morning. From what I have seen, it is ASCII crack.
If you're ever worried that a feature will be too complex to implement, take a look at the ridiculous number of things Dwarf Fortress keeps track of and simulates some time. The article briefly touches on it, but like any look at Dwarf Fortress, it bared dips its toes in the water. Just a quick list off the top of my head...
In world gen, it simulates geology and erosion, climate/biomes, growing civilizations, politics, war, trade, attacks by various "megabeast" creatures and their battles (in which injuries down to losing a tooth will be kept track of), migration and refuges as a result of war, (I believe) deforestation as a result of logging, and probably a lot more that I'm forgetting. That's just in world generation, before you're actually playing it.
Remember, what one person can program when they're truly dedicated is a pretty incredible feat.
Dwarf Fortress has a level of micro-complexity that I wish Civilization had.
I think there is a niche -- albeit probably a very small one -- for more super-hardcore strategy games in a variety of settings and genres. Folks like me would love to play a game like Civilization and have incredibly rich, complicated diplomacy and trade and other issues that simulate, as closely as possible, real-world geopolitical issues. (In some ways, for instance, I'd love to be able to fight a cold war with an AI opponent, rather than an actual war).
Remember, what one person can program when they're truly dedicated is a pretty incredible feat.
And I wonder if the level of dedication he has demonstrated requires Asperger's. He has all of the classic symptoms, down to the the involuntary rocking. I've worked hard, and I've sacrificed a lot of my time to my work. But I'm not willing to sacrifice as much of my time as he has. And it's quite likely his life's work will be both larger in total and have more impact than mine.
That all leads me to my question, which is if his level of dedication requires Asperger's. Before people bring up people like Einstein and Feynman, consider that they had personal lives. They pursued personal lives.
I wonder how he manages to balance all these elements. Even in much simpler games balancing the strengths and weaknesses of all the actors can be very difficult. With so many interlocking factors it seems it would next to impossible to avoid inadvertently making one tactic or actor too powerful.
For example, in the early Civ games the optimal strategy was to just build up to chariot technology and then go 100% on the offensive.
For those of you who are seeing this for the first time and have any love for games like Minecraft, Civilization, etc... please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake. It is truly a work of art.
please take the time to break through the very steep learning curve to give this game a fair shake
I don't know, I don't think we have the same attitude towards games. I already spend hours a week sitting in front of a computer doing really difficult stuff with screenfuls of ugly text for non-obvious rewards. It's called "work", and it pays me in real-world money and real-world glory. I don't have much desire to do the same sort of thing in my spare time.
Nope, give me a beautiful, overproduced and shallow game any day.
Having never been really involved with the Dwarf Fortress community/cult, but having played the game quite a bit, this exposé on the creator is extremely interesting. I always thought it must have taken a certain level of cleverness to build such an impressive simulation, but I honestly didn't think he'd be a Stanford Ph.D. Also, I'm honestly surprised they get that much in donations. It's very well deserved indeed and I'm happy to hear that they do.
What's interesting is that they could likely be making notch-like levels of money if they went the minecraft route; some public server code and subscriptions would yield a huge amount of revenue. Honestly, I don't think they want it. If they were interested in doing that, they'd have found a publisher, and started segmenting up the game for sale.
If we could pause the world, would it be unethical to do so? It's not the same as destroying the world. I'm just responding to the implicit reference to pausing-ai-being-unethical. pause != destroy.
If I had to choose a single game to play for the rest of my life, Dwarf Fortress would be an easy choice. The ability to build massively complex systems in a massively complex world appeals to the part of my brain that made me an engineer. There is so much potential in this game. So many things... hidden. So many stories to share.
Just watch out for the Elephants. Or Carp. Or Badgers. Or the random, world-swallowing bugs.
DF does have very impressive depth and game mechanics. Unfortunately, its interface is one of the worst of any game I've ever played.
It's a pity that DF isn't open source either, as then its interface problems would have long since been fixed. But, as it is, its lead (and only) developer doesn't seem to care enough to fix it himself.
The interface for DF is actually not bad at all. Once you learn the keystrokes the interface disappears, and you don't even need to have the side menu open at all except on context menus where you need to scroll up or down. I find it to be vert fast and efficient and would hate the game it I had to use point and click or some other slower method of manipulating the world.
Being a Nethack fan who has also lost countless hours managing civilizations, space fleets, cities, insect colonies, zombie apocalypse survivors' camps, I have three words to say:
I have always had an inkling that video games should be considered as applied math. According to Tarn, the author of Dwarf Fortress, who also has a Ph.D in math, making games "scratches all the same itches" as math. That sounds just right to me.
Just as an aside, a game like this with deep algorithmic complexity but trivial graphics seems like a natural fit for a functional language like Scala or Haskell. I wonder why Tarn chose C++ instead. Was it just out of familiarity? With his background in math I'd imagine he'd be very comfortable in an FP language.
"Dwarf Fortress unfolds as a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating setbacks that lead, no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin."
Soooo.... One can play this game, or one can be in charge of a real country's economic policies. Same outcome. ;)
[+] [-] MrFoof|14 years ago|reply
First, as mentioned in the article, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC will be featuring Dwarf Fortress as part of its "Talk to Me" exhibit. The exhibit will be open from July 24th through November 7th. http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1080
Second, for those looking to get into the game, the two recommended video tutorials are SippyCup's (humorous) http://www.youtube.com/51ppycup, and Captain Duck's (down to business) http://www.youtube.com/user/captnduck#p/a/u/1/yn1iW1QN7_s.
-----
Tarn has The Fisherman Parable philosophy and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that. Doing what you love, no matter the "sacrifice", above everything else. He's probably the biggest reason why I've been working on the side to try to create my own games, so I can get the heck out of finance and do what I wanted to since I was 6 years old. Until that works out for me, I send a monthly donation to ensure that at least someone can fulfill their dream.
[+] [-] jgfoot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hostile|14 years ago|reply
Here's an interview with the somewhat controversial but always interesting game designer Jonathan Blow: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/15/jonathan-blow-interview-so...
In the second half, he talks about social game design. I'm very much with him on this.
[+] [-] Produce|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|14 years ago|reply
Bejeweled is a very well constructed Skinner Box that has been effectively optimised over time. TBH it should be part of a course on addiction psychology, it probably is.
Interesting comments nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.
[+] [-] mmatants|14 years ago|reply
The real reason for tension seems to be this: game designers see Zynga et al achieve the same level of player engagement without careful polish and production values (seemingly).
In other words, it's the age old plight of the artisan who invested time and money into details and craftsmanship, just to see it lose market share to cheaply-produced slop.
In that sense, old juggernauts like EA, who spend many millions in budgets on games, should be concerned too.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|14 years ago|reply
First, these guys are the real hackers. Not Carmack, Woz, Bill, or Zuck, or all the super-cool guys that made the bucks and then coasted (technically). These guys are living the life just because they love it. They're a much better representation of the inner hacker in all of us than those stories of riches and fame. I got the impression they would continue doing this no matter what their financial circumstances.
Second, they've done their time. Somebody should set them up with an annuity so they can a) continue, b) learn to live without worrying about money, and c) tell stories to kids 40 years from now about how it all came together
Third, this article left me gobsmacked. I'm left with one conclusion: this is art. If you're collecting these crayon receipts? Save them. They're going to be worth something one day.
Of course, just like the game plays out, it might all amount to nothing. If I had to bet about the value of their work, I'd say it drops off short-term (next 20 years) then becomes super valuable around 2030 or so. This seems to be the pattern with semi-famous labors of love with cult followings. Seriously. Save whatever you can get from these guys.
Very cool story.
[+] [-] jemfinch|14 years ago|reply
Carmack has consistently pushed forward multiple industries on multiple fronts, and remains to this day a far better programmer than any I've ever worked with. He revolutionized computer gaming while living the life just because he loves it. He's not famous because he has Ferraris; his Ferraris are famous because they're his.
He doesn't need anyone to set him up with an annuity--maybe because his love was more mainstream than theirs, or maybe because his skill was far greater than theirs--but that in no way diminishes what he has accomplished or his motivations for accomplishing it.
[+] [-] sunir|14 years ago|reply
Carmack, Gates, Zuck and Woz are the real deal. Saying they aren't because others toil in obscurity is some hopeless romanticism about hacker culture. A heart warmer, maybe?, but not justified.
Just because financial outcomes are not matched to your hacker ideal doesn't invalidate either approach. The rich famous hackers were also good at business and publicity. Not everyone wants that or is good at all three, which is the case with Dwarf Fortress.
Money is not the scorecard. Read the article. That point is addressed.
[+] [-] angrycoder|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pnathan|14 years ago|reply
Disagree. Read up on him.
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Natsu|14 years ago|reply
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=77736.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=82309.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76007.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=80022.0
I've never seen other games where people use that as a reason to study geology, farming, beekeeping or whatnot. One person, not satisfied with the material properties of Saguaro wood and unable to find good data online went so far as to track down a sample and measure them.
One person even mentioned that they neglected to study for their geology test and played Dwarf Fortress instead. They got an extremely high score because so many of the questions were relevant to DF, such as asking for the names of common iron ores. Any good DF player can list at least magnetite, limonite and hematite without any trouble.
[+] [-] m_myers|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpritchett|14 years ago|reply
Perhaps most fascinating are the stories that fans share online, recounting their dwarven travails in detailed and sometimes illustrated narratives. In a 2006 saga, called Boatmurdered, fans passed around a single fortress — one player would save a game, send the file to another player and so on, relay-race style — while documenting its colorful descent into oblivion. (After a vicious elephant attack: “A single untrained marksdwarf stands ready to defend the crossing, but I doubt he’ll be enough.”) Boatmurdered spread across gaming sites and made the front page of MetaFilter, a popular blog. “That did a lot to make people aware we existed,” Tarn says.
http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/
[+] [-] MrFoof|14 years ago|reply
* Bronzemurder: http://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder.html
* Oilfurnace: http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace.html
[+] [-] pohl|14 years ago|reply
edit: I guess it's modified code-page-437 crack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
edit again: This article really is a very interesting story behind the development. Even if you don't play, it's worth reading.
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokermatt999|14 years ago|reply
In world gen, it simulates geology and erosion, climate/biomes, growing civilizations, politics, war, trade, attacks by various "megabeast" creatures and their battles (in which injuries down to losing a tooth will be kept track of), migration and refuges as a result of war, (I believe) deforestation as a result of logging, and probably a lot more that I'm forgetting. That's just in world generation, before you're actually playing it.
Remember, what one person can program when they're truly dedicated is a pretty incredible feat.
[+] [-] jonnathanson|14 years ago|reply
I think there is a niche -- albeit probably a very small one -- for more super-hardcore strategy games in a variety of settings and genres. Folks like me would love to play a game like Civilization and have incredibly rich, complicated diplomacy and trade and other issues that simulate, as closely as possible, real-world geopolitical issues. (In some ways, for instance, I'd love to be able to fight a cold war with an AI opponent, rather than an actual war).
[+] [-] scott_s|14 years ago|reply
And I wonder if the level of dedication he has demonstrated requires Asperger's. He has all of the classic symptoms, down to the the involuntary rocking. I've worked hard, and I've sacrificed a lot of my time to my work. But I'm not willing to sacrifice as much of my time as he has. And it's quite likely his life's work will be both larger in total and have more impact than mine.
That all leads me to my question, which is if his level of dedication requires Asperger's. Before people bring up people like Einstein and Feynman, consider that they had personal lives. They pursued personal lives.
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
For example, in the early Civ games the optimal strategy was to just build up to chariot technology and then go 100% on the offensive.
[+] [-] astrofinch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshklein|14 years ago|reply
Please note that the Wiki helps make the game playable: http://df.magmawiki.com/
[+] [-] hugh3|14 years ago|reply
I don't know, I don't think we have the same attitude towards games. I already spend hours a week sitting in front of a computer doing really difficult stuff with screenfuls of ugly text for non-obvious rewards. It's called "work", and it pays me in real-world money and real-world glory. I don't have much desire to do the same sort of thing in my spare time.
Nope, give me a beautiful, overproduced and shallow game any day.
[+] [-] eru|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imeikas|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvzink|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vessenes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterMerkin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghotli|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onemoreact|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|14 years ago|reply
If we could pause the world, would it be unethical to do so? It's not the same as destroying the world. I'm just responding to the implicit reference to pausing-ai-being-unethical. pause != destroy.
[+] [-] cydonian_monk|14 years ago|reply
Just watch out for the Elephants. Or Carp. Or Badgers. Or the random, world-swallowing bugs.
[+] [-] bcl|14 years ago|reply
This looks very cool, and there are versions for Linux/OSX/Win
[+] [-] exratione|14 years ago|reply
http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php
Here's the wiki, which has some quickstart guides:
http://df.magmawiki.com/
[+] [-] gnosis|14 years ago|reply
It's a pity that DF isn't open source either, as then its interface problems would have long since been fixed. But, as it is, its lead (and only) developer doesn't seem to care enough to fix it himself.
[+] [-] NathanKP|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technomancy|14 years ago|reply
I don't get that. It's totally donation-supported. Is it a pride thing? A control thing? I have already tried it out if it were in apt.
[+] [-] praptak|14 years ago|reply
Must... not... play...
[+] [-] rhdoenges|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aycangulez|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bh42222|14 years ago|reply
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics;
[+] [-] devindotcom|14 years ago|reply
http://www.metafilter.com/63759/All-go-no-show
[+] [-] jl6|14 years ago|reply
How Dwarf Fortress cured me of my Dwarf Fortress addiction once and for all - even though I've never played it:
http://james.lab6.com/2010/05/25/withdrawal/
[+] [-] LakatosI|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShardPhoenix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmanser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anactofgod|14 years ago|reply
Soooo.... One can play this game, or one can be in charge of a real country's economic policies. Same outcome. ;)