Ultimately I think the entire point of view of the article can be summerised from this one line,
This is preventing them from actually making a consumer product which would grow gaming, make more gamers, and make these guys into super millionaires
Firstly, although Dwarf fortress hasn't become the next super Mario, it has already done things for gaming. While not every gamer knows about DF, just about every game developer knows about it, and has wet dreams over it. DF has wormed it's way into WoW and Super Scribblenaughts, so it is a super star on the dev front. Inspiring games like Minecraft, Spelunky and Dwarfs?! I dare say DF has grown the industry more than most mainstream games. Dwarf fortress is carrying the same banner that Dungeon Keeper and Populas once proudly raised, turning a real time strategy game into a reality, and DF does it
the best. No really, you can debate best game ever until the sun explodes, but without a whisper of a doubt, DF is the best god game ever made, and it has spread influence over the entire industry.
There is also the massive logical falsity here that profit = influence. No. Take the latest 'Medal of Duty: Halos of war' game. Did that change anything? Anything at all? No it did not! It sold a lot of copies, but who the hell cares? Innovation doesn't sell, it just attracts a few fringe players, before somebody takes the idea, distils it, and makes it marketable (See Minecraft for examples) so you can't have your cake and eat it too. You don't get to innovate and make your billions, and when you do it is not to be predicted. Take Portal for example, nobody at value thought it would do well at all! It was an after thought, just to fill in half an hour. So yea, you can do bold and make money from it, but it works so little of the time that when when Valve was sitting on pure gold they didn't know, just because it was new.
Secondly, Dwarf fortress will
never make more gamers, for the same reason that Demons souls will not make new players. They are not new players games. Games need to have a target market and a difficulty level to match. If dwarf fortress was made to be simplistic enough to draw in new players, then it
wouldn't be the wonder that it is! It is like saying university should be easy so more people can join in, if you do that, it will lose it's value. Dwarf fortress is a deep, complex game, and we love it for that, but those features will overwhelm anybody new to gaming.
Finally, if the author thinks Toady should make more money, then he can
donate instead of bitching. Men who choose art above cash are few and far between.