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[croniev]

Hey everyone!
I'm in the process of collecting anecdotes from people who have played (a lot of) fortress mode for a little study on "real world experiences using video game analogies" I'm conducting for a seminar in two weeks.
My interest lies in ways in which having played this game may have provided you certain perspectives, intuitions, mental pathways, associations, attentiveness, etc. that you employ when interacting with the real world. While I do find philosophical insights like "the world also is random" and "we are all going to die" fun, I care more about a conceptual, strategical, perceptive stage.
I don't want to guide your answers too much, so I'll just leave some examples I found in the forums to give you an idea. (But no dreams please, I have a lot about dreams already 😅).
Thanks in advance, I'm really looking forward to your insights and am ready to answer any questions you may have!

Examples:
"Makes me think of more efficient workflows at work. I start thinking in terms of 'if we arranged these tables/workstations/etc like this, I bet we could make the process more efficient'"
"Asking questions about things I've never thought, having internal revolutions, opening up pathways to new areas of life and my mind.."
"nobody would describe faces the way they are described in dwarf fortress, so when I look at people now, I start thinking 'That person has a short head that's quite broad,' or 'that person has a very tall head'"
"I'm outside mowing the yard while my wife+kids are inside watching Cake Boss... |In my head I'm thinking: |Idlers:  3"

PD: Has DF taught you anything about the advantages and disadvantages of taking on a macro- vs. a micro-perspective when managing a complex, unforeseeable system?

[pganon]

Not sure if that counts, but last time in the supermarket I noticed a jar of beet root and for a split second considered buying it for my duke whose favorite food that is... Nobody in my family eats beetroot, though...

Guess that's just an indication of me playing too much DF

[Mungrul]

A lot of my real-world job involves designing and maintaining post production workflows; I think my ability to do this is helped by the amount of planning required to build up the various industries in DF, as well as adapt them on the fly as circumstances change. It's also knowing that even the tiniest thing could break the whole chain, and being able to pinpoint exactly which component of a complex workflow is going wrong, much like an incorrectly configured minecart in a quantum stockpile.

To be honest, it's kind of a two-way thing; the troubleshooting skills I've picked up in my career have fed back in to successfully playing DF, helping me resolve sticking points as and when they arrive. While any workflow may have nonlinear components (such as where along the chain an item will enter it), the path a particular thing takes through that workflow will be linear. And once you know that, you can mentally reconstruct its journey and find out where it's going wrong.

Which I suppose also touches on something else: the ability to visualise things based on abstract information.
I worked telephone support for a long time, even before remote desktop control apps like TeamViewer were a thing, so I had to be able to visualise a customer's problem based on the information they were giving me over the phone. That meant that I had to be intimately familiar with the location of elements in programs and operating systems. That in turn feeds back into conceptualisation in DF (and other games), allowing me to plan something out in my head before implementing it in the game. But those "mental pathways" were already quite well established from being an avid reader; this just strengthened them and allowed me to reuse them for a new purpose.

Something I've become increasingly aware of recently is that DF and other games with complex procedural elements have spoiled more traditional, linear, scripted games for me. I struggle to even complete most single-player FPS games these days, despite initially loving the feel of the systems. They eventually become too formulaic, with little room for creative expression. Whereas DF is more akin to a creative pursuit like music, where you take established rules and improvise within those structures.

[tonnot98]

I install and mount TVs and I've had the thought at least once:
"Tonnot cancelled job: Mount TV - Not enough TapCons in stockpile!"

Another time I went about writing down the list of needs in the game and trying to figure out which ones I haven't fulfilled recently enough, in hopes that I could become more focused. Turns out, I just needed some Ritalin