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[fishirboy]

Just was looking around the forums or other talk about if Toady will put this on Steam Greenlight.

*If there has been a subject please post a link below would like to know the reasoning behind not just releasing this a free to $5 game on steam*



I personally would enjoy the plausibility behind it. Everyone talks about there game being inspired by DF but I the amount of people that play this game lessened by the lack of ability to find this game. I found before Minecraft even came out (Don't know how I found it. Hell if I will ever know)

 
The main thing would be to get more people to see the game and show how it is all around better then most games that have the same premise.  Now I would never bash another game for being like DF for example RimWorld. That relies on the combat, management of power and trading with trade ships. Were as DF can have depth and character behind every... single... item...


If DF was launched on Steam, even as a F2P game. It will attract the attention of modders, and players that want to play this game. Witch in turn will give the game more fame and be easier to access.



*Again if such a topic has been discuses and closed I would enjoy to read it, I could not find any such post in my 15 mins of searching* (If not. Would love to know what the community thinks about such an idea)

[nenjin]

He has no interest in selling the game for money, and he likes having total control over his project, right down to distribution. So Greenlight doesn't really offer him anything other than more potential donations.

When it comes to a lot of things like this, Toady's attitude has generally been "it would just cut into the time I could be spending in development or make development dependent on something other than me and what I know how to do." After the game became part of the Museum of Modern Art, he had to take some time out to do press, interviews, stuff like that...then he went straight back to work. He makes a decent living doing nothing but what he loves. So when you say things like 'but you could have so many more players!!!' I think his reaction would be like "Hrm, that'd be nice. I gotta go work on this thing though."

It's like his ambition is 100% internal. I can really respect that. He hasn't gone mainstream because I think he just doesn't really care, it's all more noise than he wants when he could just sit quietly in his home and continue to delve deeper. He doesn't want to be rich, or famous. He wants to make DF. Gamers would have made him a Notch-style celebrity a long time ago...but he ain't interested in all that. (For the same reason, he's rarely invested in making the game "accessible", as thousands of threads have basically shouted at him to do so.)

FWIW, this topic is probably also better suited to Dwarf Fortress General Discussion. Folks down here have a slightly different outlook on DF than the upper boards.

[Arcvasti]

This has already been suggested. There's a bunch of discussion on this there and the general consensus, last I checked, was somewhere in between "Nah" and "Hell no."

[fishirboy]

He has no interest in selling the game for money, and he likes having total control over his project, right down to distribution. When it comes to a lot of things like this, Toady's attitude is "it would just cut into the time I could be spending in development." After the game became part of the Museum of Modern Art, he had to take some time out to do press, interviews, stuff like that...then he went straight back to work. He makes a decent living doing nothing but what he loves. For say you say things like 'but you could have so many more players!!!' I think his reaction would be like "Hrm, that'd be nice. I gotta go work on this thing though."

It's like his ambition is 100% internal. I can really respect that. He hasn't gone mainstream because I think he just doesn't really care, it's all more noise than he wants when he could just sit quietly in his home and continue to delve deeper.

FWIW, this topic is probably also better suited to Dwarf Fortress General Discussion. Folks down here have a slightly different outlook on DF than the upper boards.

I assumed as such. I understood his motivations are completely of his own design. I respect him as such, and what I was really shooting for was the community being expanded and more individuals working on mods that could be implemented or help him in the creation of his own game. I also respect his decision for making it completely free for any one to use and enjoy supporting him myself. The goal of the dissuasion is to help him and enhances the experience of other players as well as ease the posses of developing new material by opening the workshop to use.

And I thought as much @Arcvasti

Ty @nenjin

[Flying Dice]

To be honest, I doubt you'd see a significant increase in the permanent playerbase. DF is already fairly well-known in circles populated by the sorts of people who enjoy it. Likewise, every major release is typically accompanied by a brief spike in activity and new players, most of whom quickly stop posting on the upper boards (and, presumably, playing). I'd be inclined to predict that a publicity push would simply exacerbate existing issues--more people complaining about the UI, the complexity, the ASCII (or even the tilesets, heh), &c., as well as increasing the burden of administrating the forums, and after a few months to a year most of the new faces would be gone again.

I mean, of course there are people out there who would enjoy DF but haven't heard of it, but the number who would be reached by greenlight/KS/whatever is insignificant when held against how it would shit up the forums and slow development. Maybe in thirty years or so when we hit 1.0 Tarn will go for a publicized release, but I don't see it happening short of that.

*shrug*

[nenjin]

Workshop integration would help in managing mods, it's true. I doubt it would entice new mod authors to start modding the game (or actually adding something of note to the community pool of available mods.) In this case though, he'd have to sign up with Steam, manage a Greenlight campaign and as FD pointed out, just probably earn himself a lot of flack because DF is not designed or being dev'd for people to just DL and jump in. It'd surely make it through Greenlight just based on the strength of its notoriety. But there'd be a lot of shit comments from people on Steam who, rightly or not, would say the game isn't polished enough to play for the average gamer.

As far as helping Toady goes, he's rejected most people's offers except where it was absolutely needed like with the SDL work. For him it's just one more separation between him and the game. Sometimes, I think that actually includes community management as well. Spending time trying to enhance his community (which has largely formed and done it's own thing without his involvement at all) is just another thing he doesn't have the time or inclination for vs. coding. He's more into letting us know what's up with dev notes and DF Talks, than trying to manage us.

[ChairmanPoo]

My posts in the upper boards have grown unusual over the years, but I'm still a player.

When I've stayed away from DF it has been usually out of performance issues.

[Reelya]

Additionally, kickstarter / early access / greenlight can backfire if you don't start the promotion at the optimal point in development. Showing someone an unfinished product can push people away as much as it pulls them in: "oh <unfinished game>? I played that in early access and it sucked". Then, no matter how much you further polish the game, you have the "that game sucked" posts permanently plastered all over the internet, and people who only ever played the alpha insisting that the game sucks for eternity.

And if people did like it and voted for it in early access / greenlight, well that causes a spike in publicity - but month or years before you have a product to sell!. That spike in interest will die down to a trickle by the time the launch occurs, and thus it will get little media exposure. Most people will already be talking about the next thing on early access / greenlight instead of your game.

Basically, Kickstarter / Early Access / Greenlight should only be considered when a game has all the core UI and playable features ready to roll, and has a great and totally playable demo, where you can say "you can already have fun with this out of the box, but imagine if there were 200 more levels to play, new skins, and more achievements to unlock". So the actual launch will come very soon after the announcement, and from then on any additional content can be rolled out periodically to keep interest simmering.

[RedKing]

Yeah, I can foresee people filling the Steam forum with "I spent $5 and this game sucks! There hasn't been an update in a YEAR! Lying, greedy, thieving dev must die!" kind of shit.

Which should be reserved for the ACTUAL lying, greedy, thieving devs who post shovelware on Greenlight.


Not to mention the "This looks like a 2D ripoff of Minecraft/Towns/<insert DF clone here>, only with shittier graphics" posts. Which would induce me to track down some people, cause imma have to smack a bitch.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, I can foresee people filling the Steam forum with "I spent $5 and this game sucks! There hasn't been an update in a YEAR! Lying, greedy, thieving dev must die!" kind of shit.

Which should be reserved for the ACTUAL lying, greedy, thieving devs who post shovelware on Greenlight.


Not to mention the "This looks like a 2D ripoff of Minecraft/Towns/<insert DF clone here>, only with shittier graphics" posts. Which would induce me to track down some people, cause imma have to smack a bitch.

The best superpower would be the ability to effectively ignore ignorant people saying stupid things, I think.

[RedKing]

Alas, I am merely mortal. A mortal whose pimp hand is strong.