It's a little late to be posting predictions, but whatever. I have looked into my !crystal glass window!, and seen the future of Dwarf Fortress. Crytek will cut a deal with Toady. Dwarf Fortress will be developed on the Crysis engine to ensure that they will have a published game with system requirements beyond the scope of any high end home computer. The forums will be deluged with pictures of the new ideal Dwarf Fortress hardware setup: a garage packed with clustered high end machines, commercial rooftop cooling systems jury-rigged to compensate for massive over-clocking, and secondary power generators to compensate for the local grid's inability to meet their power needs. After a spate of garage fires the game will be outlawed in most countries, but find a new home in Russia. Dwarf Fortress Crysis will become that nation's unofficial past time, and the influx of foreign immigrants eager to get their Dwarf Fortress fix legally will significantly boost their economy. Eventually the US will "find" evidence of WMD's in Russia and invade, but by then it is too late. The combination of large numbers of clustered computing networks and advanced AI algorithms will give birth to new machine-based life. The war between man and machine will be bloody, but at the last moment a hero appears with a plan to defeat the machines. After several gratuitous fight scenes, love scenes, and a fight/love scenes(who knew a dildo could be a weapon and a toy in a PG-13 setting?) the hero and comrades manage to set the machine's booze stockpile on fire and save Earth. The hero is then cryogenically frozen in case something vaguely similar happens, but not his comrades because that would cost too much money for the sequel next catastrophe. Happy New Year.