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[flabort]

So I wrote a thing. I was having trouble explaining to various people in my life (relatives, coworkers, a random customer) why I don't like or approve of Minecraft. But I'm pretty sure I got some details (especially the dates) wrong, so I'm passing it through your keen eyes to improve it's accuracy...

or maybe for you to talk me out of printing this and showing it to people. But I'm pretty sure it's for accuracy checking.

In the beginning, there was the Internet, and it was sane and boring (except for adult sites, which were still boring). And The Toady One saw this and was displeased. And he created Slaves to Armok, God of Blood, and players explored randomly generated worlds kicking their inhabitants to death in order to make skin pants, and were very confused.
And yea, The Toady One was pleased. And he worked on Slaves, and it's 3D graphics made it difficult to finish. And The Toady One swore to never let graphics interfere with a good game again.
Verily, this lead to the creation of Slaves to Armok, God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. And it was known as Dwarf Fortress, and yea it was good. And players were still confused, and it was good. And the internet was improved by it.
And Toady made the game better, and introduced layers, and the game made the leap back into 3D, without leaving behind it's primitive 2D graphics. And players soon adapted, and it was great and glorious.
And Hidden Fun Stuff was introduced, and Dwarf Fortress grew. Realistic geology and biomes led to newer versions, and the undead and unicorns eventually lead to the 028.181.40d version (known as 40d), and development stalled for around a year.
Yea, in 2008, Notch did come and see this great work, and it was indeed great. He did grow jealous of it's greatness, and he dug up the first Slaves from it's *Legendary Mausoleum*. He stripped it of all it's realism and all that was good in it, and made it square and cartoony. And he added the evil creepers and charged $8 a download for what was still essentially a prototype for DF. And it became popular, and was brought to the attention of players of Dwarf Fortress. And they became angry with Notch and his followers, for they had been enjoying a superior game without paying a cent, and Notch had brainwashed the masses. So the Crusades began.
And Toady did not care about Notch or his misdeeds. To calm his followers, he released v0.31.25 (known widely as DF2010), which was awesome. And so the players of Dwarf Fortress forgot their holy war with Minecraft, for a time.
And Dwarf Fortress did reach version 0.34.11 in 2012, and Toady began work on another great improvement which would take until around November of 2013 to complete. And his players were amazed by the development logs, but grew impatient waiting. And Minecraft, which had not been improved in the meantime, was brought to their attention.
For in order to make more money, Notch had greedily moved on to other games, but was not delivering what he promised. So he had stripped down his game even further to produce a portable demo version of Minecraft, and yea, it grew even more popular and drove even more brainwashed souls to purchase his cruddy prototype.
But The Toady One still did not care about Notch's misdeeds and indiscretions, for he believed that the quality of the game should speak for itself, and the best way to shine was to improve. And so he overhauled the personalities of the dwarves in his game, and they were more detailed, realistic, and random then before. And he showed off this new feature with four extreme examples of what could now happen in the game. Verily, there was a very elfy dwarf, a dreamless sadist, and a dwarf full of himself but who was really worthless in the eyes of society. And he saved the best for last, a potential world conqueror with the dream of ruling the world. And they players were mostly satisfied, and dropped their grudge against Notch in favor of praising The Toady One and his masterful game.
Though there are still some players on crusade against Minecraft, such as I.

Thoughts? Corrections?

[10ebbor10]

I think it overblows the facts. I mean, there never has been a massive rivalry between DF and Minecraft, Minecraft is a copy of infiniminer, not Dwarf fortress. Don't overgeneralize everyone and assume they share your opininion. You're alone in this fight.

In short, it puts the community in a bad light, something we neither want nor need.

[Digital Hellhound]

Agreed. I've never been aware of a 'holy war' or any reasons for such, or noticed anything like that in our MC thread. If the MC forums have some kind of one-sided grudge against us, leave them to it.

[Owlbread]

This is all very unpleasant fanboyish stuff that really gets up my nose. Minecraft and DF are two separate games and nobody in their right mind really gives a damn about any kind of "rivalry" or whatever has been manufactured.

[cerapa]

I must agree with everyone else. There has never been a rivalry, nor is Minecraft anything like DF.

[Asgarus]

Obviously there are some people who wish that there were a rivalry between those two games.
I don't understand why it is so important to tell everyone that one game is so much better than another one.

[GiglameshDespair]

...no.
Just no.

Minecraft is DF but with 3d graphics, no fortress mode, no random generation of civs, different enemies, a final boss, one kind of metal, an ending, no dwarves....
sounds like a clone to me. [/sarcasm]

I never saw anything about a 'holy war', because that's a goddamn retarded idea. And to be honest, I don't think Notch is greedy. He's always seemed quite a reasonable fellow who had no idea that the game he made in his spare time would be such a thing. It was more based on Infiminer than DF, after Infiminer got cancelled.

If you were looking for 'cruddy' clones, try Gnomoria and Towns. That's what you should be critising, rather than Minecraft.

In short:
Accuracy 15/100
Score      5/100     

[Vattic]

According to Notch Minecraft did start out as a game inspired by DF. It was 3D and top-down with minions you told where to dig. After seeing Infiniminer it was turned first-person and the minions were removed.

I was also under the impression Minecraft went down as well here as most other places. We have a fair few hefty threads about it.

[acetech09]

Different games. Comparing the two is trying to argue that a car is abstractly better than a bicycle. Toady at one point did say that he felt Minecraft was "A depressing distillation of my own stuff." I think that was in the NYT article.

Re: the OP. I think you took the lighthearted jest rivalry (think Mac vs PC) and, well, I don't know. Something. But you do seem to be taking comparisons/details too far.

[Sensei]

There's some DF inspiration on Minecraft's side, but... some. That's it. Like others have said.

I mean you're basically off at the first moment you mention minecraft.

charged $8 a download for what was still essentially a prototype for DF

You... you played minecraft, didn't you? The demo at least? Hell, back in those days it had less to do with Dwarf Fortress than it does now. But yeah, the first-person block-building action game has basically nothing whatsoever with the top-down drunkard management city-RPG.

If there's anything in common it's an... attitude, I guess? You might say that some of that has been inspired by Dwarf Fortress. But when you complain about something being derivative, it's pretty much always because it steals specific features without getting the feeling in there, whereas this is the complete opposite- it get some of the same feeling out of completely different mechanics.

Also, nobody here ever crusaded against minecraft. Up until now I don't think I heard it out of you. People general love minecraft here, in fact, there's been numerous minecraft servers and the minecraft thread is 750 pages long, in my more-than-default-posts-per-page view. That makes it the longest running active thread in Other Games right now. As for people on minecraft forums hating DF... well, I don't think there's a significant population of that either, as abhorable as their forum community is for some weird reason.

Edit:

So I wrote a thing. I was having trouble explaining to various people in my life (relatives, coworkers, a random customer)

WARNING: Talking about the differences between minecraft and dwarf fortress to people who aren't interested will actively prevent you from getting laid.

[eerr]

It takes multiple games in the genre to improve shit.
So Minecraft is good for Dwarf Fortress.

Also Minecraft has a pretty good interface.