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[Stij]

Yeah, I can't ever see Dwarf Fortress being bought by EA or something, but more publicity/money for Toady would be great. Even if it's just in form of articles on game sites or donations. Yes, that might attract some people who *GASP* don't understand the game at first and have questions, but is that so bad? There are probably plenty of people out there that would love DF if it was easier to get into. I'm not suggesting that Toady should change the actual gameplay, but stuff like easy-to-access help docs, a cleaner interface, and full tileset support would probably win over a lot of new players.

DF is not some secret special club that only you guys are allowed into, you know.

Also:

quote:Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>I assure you, these troglodytes will quickly become bored and confused, and once they wander off we may don our dapper hats and monocles and resume our delightful tea parties forthwith!</STRONG>

I think I love you.

[Willfor]

quote:Originally posted by Slappy Moose:
<STRONG>
Of course, giving Toady a 50 person team and a 5 million dollar budget would be cool.</STRONG>

No it wouldn't. Not a computer in the world would be able to run it if we gave Toady 50 people that he had complete control over. We would have to watch output from the world's greatest super computers listing how many leg hairs were scraped off of the GCS' leg from the precisely calculated sword swipe that our adventurer did. And then watch as it changes the entire weather pattern on the coast of the island 10,740 region tiles to the west.

As much fun as that would be, I like DF able to run on my computer. :[

(I have had problems in the past when people don't know I am not being serious, so this is my general disclaimer that I am not infact being serious)

[Lazer Bomb]

quote:Originally posted by Stij:
<STRONG>DF is not some secret special club that only you guys are allowed into, you know.</STRONG>

Yes it is.

[McDoomhammer]

You know, I know you're right.  It's just hard, having seen what happens as communities grow and change (and also what happens when a beloved old book or game is movified and then advertised in a hundred awful ways), not to be a touch xenophobic, and very much distrustful of the effects of the main stream.

So really it's a good thing that I cautiously share your opinion that it won't happen to DF any time soon.

[Cthulhu]

quote:
I assure you, these troglodytes will quickly become bored and confused, and once they wander off we may don our dapper hats and monocles and resume our delightful tea parties forthwith!  

Hear hear, Professor Noisewater!

I recently procured a fine bottle of 1763 pinot noir, and I'd love to share with you fine chaps and discuss my recent adventures in Marrakesh.

And yes, it is a special secret club.

[ April 14, 2008: Message edited by: Cthulhu ]

[Slappy Moose]

quote:Originally posted by Willfor:
<STRONG>

No it wouldn't. Crysis settings blah blah</STRONG>

Well, technically I said "cool" not "good." But yeah, that's true.

Unless Toady keeps with his current system of good gameplay features rather than CPU hogging.

[Keiseth]

quote:Originally posted by Willfor:
<STRONG>
[The things he said]</STRONG>

Toady would add in a fourth dimension: time. Mountains will be easily climbable by walking forward in time until erosion levels them out. The GCS will also have this ability, and will use it to go back in time before your adventurer set out, and kill him, wiping him off the face of the planet. You would have to be wary of goblin ambushes from the north, south, east, west, past, and future.

Adventurers would be finished quickly, allowing you to raise a family in game. You can use the new dimension to go back in time and recruit a party of your ancestors, and then head into the future to raid high-tech goblin air-fortresses. They have laser crossbows!

(Following Willfor's lead, Keiseth also notes that he is not being serious. But still; laser crossbows.)

[Kalimar]

MANUALS!? MANUALS!? Who needs manuals and a box? The game experience comes through experimentation.

[Lyrax]

Soooo... who would buy this game if it went mainstream?

We've already got the game.  They'd have to add a lot of content to make it worth our while and money.

[Akroma]

I don't know how many of you are familiar to the (franshise?) touhou, because it is a radicaly different genre than Dwarf fortress (anime-style vertical curtain fire shooter)

It's about 10 games, all made entirely by one person, who goes under the name ZUN

like DF, for a long time, it's fanbase was very small, but extremely dedicated. The fanbase never had a boom, the numbers always grew slowly and steadily.
As it started to become noticibly popular, many big game studios and anime studios tried to get the rights for touhou, but ZUN refused, not wanting it to become mainstream.

The result:
One of the most active and most creative fanbases ever. Not only measured by the sheer amount of fanart (which goes into the tenthousands) but also by the amount of mangas (not just the adult-kind) books (not fanfiction, books) and even fan made anime.

Judging by the amount of awesome community stories and the amount of mods, I predict that this is the way DF will go (except maybe for the whole anime and manga direction, ASCII just is too different)

at least I hope so

[thvaz]

This elitism sickens me.

Where are the friendly community who were always ready to help newcomers and wrote a whole wiki about the game? So now we don't want people asking for help here? We are the "chosen few", the only who have the right to play this game? Will you donate in a monthly basis to Toady? I think not.

If you really love this game and want to see it finished, we should help to bring new players.

[LASD]

I too think that there has been increasingly more elitism here recently. It happens on many forums because slandering newcomers doesn't harm the people in "the inner circle". And elitism isn't that easy to notice when you are the one doing it.

But I have to say it totally sucks to be a newcomer when there's many elitists around. It's infuriating when people don't give a shit about posts that are posted by someone they don't know.

I haven't noticed this kind of behaviour much here, but elitism (the former thing especially) caused me to quit one MTG-related forum (pretty much the only one in Finland) and greatly decreased my interest toward that game.

I'd hate to see that happen to some new players of DF.

The amount of elitism here isn't that bad yet, but it's definitely going to the wrong direction.

P.S. This my opinion, I know people don't necessarily think the same way as I do.

P.P.S I do know this is kind of off-topic

[Vengeful Donut]

The cure for elitism is to just not read the names of the people posting.

[Mlittle]

The insanely elitist ramblings have been a part of DF forums as long as I can remember, but no further elitistic behavior ever developed form it. I'd say things have actualy improved since 2d version. It's easier for a new guy to get help, if only because there are more skilled people here, than was back in the days and there are much fewer rants, how teh graphics are going to ruin teh game. The elitism is no more than an occasional outburs of insanity.

 

quote:Would it be a good or bad thing for a big-name publisher to pick up Dwarf Fortress and sell it at <pick> with a shiny box, manual, professional graphics and easy-to-use interface?

That wouldn't be a bad idea as long as the game published is DF and not an attempt on a mainstream version of DF. It is possible to even today publish something that is not mainstream. But a mainstream version of DF I'd never pick as it wouldn't be DF anymore. We all know what it takes to turn something into mainstream and in case of DF that would include removing all the DF-ish elements from the game. As far as halo kids go I'm shure we are numerous enough and being old stubborn farts, we would easily assimilate those few that would choose to stay. And there is enough younglings already assimilated on board, to figh our battles.

[ April 15, 2008: Message edited by: Mlittle ]

[McDoomhammer]

I can see the connection between the phobia of wide publicity and elitism, but I don't think that's the case here.  I've not noticed anyone be refused or derided when asking for help, no matter how basic.  If I see a quote-unquote noob question I shrug, and answer it.  I've got nothing against new players discovering the wonders of DF.

There's just a difference between that and DF entering the mass media machine in a way comparable to, say, LotR, or WoW, or any other generic product.  That inevitably draws so much scrutiny that it's all but impossible to sort out the assholes and idiots, which has an inevitable effect on the rest of the community.  Whereas with methods like word of mouth, and intelligent articles in magazines and sites of good reputation, tend to minimise the number of such people and keep newcomers coming in at a pace that makes them easy enough to deal with when they do show up.

I hope I don't sound conservative.