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[SentineI]

As a college student going to school for game and simulation programming, I find myself  unmotivated sometimes to start coding, even though every time I actually start, I have a lot of fun and don't have any problems doing it; so I started thinking about motivation, and started reading around about other developers and their motivations.

As I started reading articles about you and Dwarf Fortress, the question that I wanted answer for never seemed to appear, so I figured I'd ask you or whoever else sees this. What is your (Toady's) motivation in creating Dwarf Fortress? What makes you get up every day and think to yourself, "Hey, I want to code Dwarf Fortress today"?

[Manveru Taurënér]

There are answers to this question here and there. This reddit IAmA for instance has a few noteworthy bits:

What is your biggest motivation on programming Dwarf Fortress?

It was going to be to play the game myself, but that never seems to happen now, he he he. I really like to see how things play out, and how the new features mesh with the old.

Although I'm not a programmer by any means, what I've read of you has been really inspiring. Dedicating your life to anything requires a lot of effort. I'm just curious what its like to be essentially "living your dream."
As a side question to the one above, what has been the biggest obstacle in doing what you want to do for the rest of your life? Is it ever hard to keep going? Do you ever lose faith in what you're doing?

I wasn't very happy as a mathematician, in a job that wasn't right for me. This is definitely a different feeling than that. I'm not happy all of the time by any stretch of the imagination, but it's really satisfying to be able to work on something I care about and see it all come to life slowly (very slowly) as I go.
I guess math was the biggest obstacle. Making the choice there was tough in the end, though I was never going to choose math over games. It's sometimes hard to work when I didn't sleep much the night before, simple stuff like that, but nothing like despair or a loss of faith. I don't know... it's really natural to me, maybe because I've been doing it for so long. It wasn't the same with math at all.

do you ever feel like you've worked too much or not enough? How do you manage to set the pace for yourself after so many years of development?

I think the split of my day into three periods has helped keep things focused (pre-Zach's place, Zach, post-Zach), but adding interesting features to the project is the main motivation. It's cool to see how things turn out. I never end up feeling like I've worked too much, and I think that's caused some other portions of my life to atrophy. I'm certainly not an example of a balanced person who has figured things out.

Might've been more in there, just skimmed through for what I vaguely remembered was in there. I'm sure there's answers in other interview and Q&A's etc as well, just need to find the right ones ^^

[SentineI]

Thank you very much! I searched for a while but couldn't find anything.. I must have been searching for the wrong stuff. Anyway, this helps a lot, and the effort is really appreciated!

[Manveru Taurënér]

No problem! Always nice to be of help, and I just happened to have re-read that IAmA a few days ago so might as well put the fact that it was sort of fresh in memory to use ^^

[neblime]

if you can't find an answer in the ama and still really want to ask you could always email toady at  toadyone@bay12games.com
also, if your question is development related you can always post in the Future of the Fortress thread

[Xazo-Tak]

With digital work, I find my main demotivator being not knowing what to do.
It's no wonder Toady is always on a roll, that game pretty much directs itself.

[Putnam]

With digital work, I find my main demotivator being not knowing what to do.
It's no wonder Toady is always on a roll, that game pretty much directs itself.

Well, and they've always got something to do.

When someone says "planned", this page is what they're talking about.