
If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away - Impossible
https://www.pcgamer.com/if-dwarf-fortress-sells-millions-on-steam-its-creators-will-give-the-money-away-as-fast-as-possible/
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ndnxhs
Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui
and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game
but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and
messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend
hours reading a wiki to get started.

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Pimpus
Yeah, the idea of it is attractive, and learning the crazy UI is half the fun,
but once you really get into it you realize that there is no there there. It's
nowhere near as complex as it seems, and full of bugs, some decades old. Trade
is so easily exploited that there is nothing exciting about the elves coming.
You can kill them and start a war, but the combat is so unbalanced and
exploitable that they pose no threat. Trade being pointless makes half the
items in the game worthless. I recently played until FPS death kicked in
making it impossible to continue, and didn't feel engaged enough to start a
new fort.

The problem is that the brothers do not play their own game, and it clearly
shows.

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Smithalicious
DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. If you try to play in an "optimal"
way by exploiting the ridiculous trade values of some items and giving your
fortress just one entrance with a drawbridge you won't have as much fun
indeed. The solution is to simply not do that and set your own rules and
goals.

I'd even say that trade and combat being exploitable is a feature, not a bug,
since sometimes I simply don't want to bother with those aspects of the game.

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lawlessone
>DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game.

That's exactly why i stopped playing Elite Dangerous, devs making empty
universes and all the fan boys saying to make your own fun.

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akuji1993
> " [...] at the point where Zack and I would both have like 5 million
> dollars, and I don't know what that means,” he says. “Is that going to
> corrupt my morality somehow and turn me into a strange person?" [...]

The fact that he thinks about it this way, already tells me, that he shouldn't
be so worried about it. Put it in a few different banks with a good track
record and just let it sit there if you don't want to interact with it. It's
there when you need it then :)

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fbnlsr
DF seems amazing but the learning curve is so steep it's discouraging.

I've yet to find a base building game that feels fair and does not put so much
pressure on the player. Tried Prison Architect but my prison got burnt to the
ground because guards were on strike (and they announced it 3 hours before
while it takes 5 hours to be able to offer them a raise). Tried Oxygen Not
Included but the water behaves SO erratically that my whole base got flooded
because one of my minions stepped on the wrong tile (and it seems like the
water keeps on expanding like a gaz, not like a fluid) and they were all
frozen. Tried Don't Starve and Banished, and these felt so unfair (I hate
dying because I didn't plan for something I couldn't guess 140 turns before).

Base Building Games are hard to program, I agree, but I don't feel they should
be hard to play and enjoy.

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philo23
I'd highly recommend giving Rimworld a go. It's like a simplified version of
Dwarf Fortress but with a space theme.

The controls are much more friendly and there's a huge number of mods that can
completely change the way you can play the game.

It definitely doesn't have the level of depth that Dwarf Fortress has (there's
no z-levels for example) but it'll still suck hours of your life away if
you're not careful.

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LoSboccacc
dungeon keeper is within the same space as well and thematically closer

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LoSboccacc
damn I got my names confused, I meant keeperRL

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corodra
Everyone is always above money until they’re looking at a stack of it in front
of them. The only folks I know that have the willpower to turn down a pile of
money is someone who has their eyes set on a mountain of money.

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gilleain
Some people have burned it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation#The_K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid)

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Asooka
A bit offtopic, but I've been wondering - is it possible to destroy money in
any way other than literally burning banknotes. With electronic money you can
only transfer them between parties, so while you can give away all your money,
the money still exists in the system - you can't call the bank and ask to have
100k deleted from your account. Am I missing something or is there no way for
money to ever disappear from the banking system?

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jpetso
Money is created when debt is taken out. By repaying debt, the allowed maximum
amount of loaned money (i.e. arbitrarily created money) is reduced. If all
debts everywhere were repaid, all money would stop existing.

Therefore, if you give your money to people who use it to pay off their loans,
you effectively do the same thing as having it "deleted". The other question,
of course, is how to keep those people from taking on new debt now that they
have some breathing room.

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GiuseppaAcciaio
I'm just glad that Tarn is finally looking concerned about his own health,
considering he has (according to interviews) been living like a hermit and
subsisting on red bull and soft drinks...

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jmts
I've considered this issue before. How much is 'enough'? It certainly depends
on what your preference is (are you okay with second hand cars, or do you want
to try a Lamborghini for size?), but $5M in the bank is 50 years at $100K a
year (ignoring interest, etc). Towards the end of your life you probably don't
need that much, but if you didn't want to have 'too much' and were disciplined
enough to leave most of what you have in the bank and just give yourself an
'allowance', $5M would not be an unreasonable sum.

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NikkiA
The decision to monetize DF came after a cancer scare, so it might be
reasonable to assume 'enough' would be 'enough to ensure that both of us are
comfortably able to handle such a medical emergency'

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dom96
I'm sure you've heard this already, but it would be far more practical to move
to pretty much anywhere other than the US that has free health care. The US is
crazy when it comes to this.

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NikkiA
Tell Tarn and Zach... but presumably they like living in the US for some
reason.

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Grue3
Don't buy it on Steam. Cut the middleman and donate the creators directly.

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earenndil
Buy it on steam. Leave a positive review so other people see it and buy it.

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senectus1
i mean.. that's nice. but damn. If they dont qualify as deserving to reap
their rewards... I dont know who does!

Edit: It seems like they may be vaguely referencing Markus "Notch" Persson's
cash flush success after selling Minecraft.

I think just being self aware enough to be worried about how "money" might
change them should be enough to settle their worries.

Notch had a rough time for a while, but he was always a very public person...
these guys are a lot less public and I'd suggest less susceptible to being led
astray... but who knows I guess.

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pvg
Why do you feel it's alluding to Notch? There are plenty of game developers
who've struck it rich and the Dwarf Fortress authors' concerns about sudden
wealth seem pretty specific to them.

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lawlessone
They both rely on procedural generation to build worlds and give users some
degree of creative control to build things.

But one became a billionaire and spends his days on twitter whining about how
hard it is to be white.

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pvg
I don't see anything about that in the interview.

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nextstep
A truly American story, basically the only developed country in the world
where you can be bankrupted from getting sick.

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baud147258
Huh? I'm pretty sure you can get bankrupted by illness in any country

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Illniyar
No, you can lose your job or means of making money in some countries, but you
can't get bankrupted by paying for treatment in countries with universal
healthcare (or even close to it).

Most developed countries also have some measures of social security in cases
where you lose your job so that even that is rare.

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TomMarius
There are just a few (under 5) countries in the world where you will get the
same treatment for "free" as you'd get in the US. The price is >65% taxation.
In most of these "universal healthcare" countries, it's not that easy - a
healthcare "insurance" is deducted from your wage, if you don't work, you have
to pay it out of pocket (mandatory, but cheap - around $100 monthly). Social
security programmes are useful just for literally homeless people, other
people aren't getting much, really (you will not get anything if you have a
job).

In other countries with universal healthcare, the law says that you will get
only "medically necessary" treatment, amd everything else needs to be paid out
of your pocket - and in these countries, no private insurance usually exists,
so have fun with that.

Another point is quality of hospitalization care, again - there are less than
5 countries in the world where you'd get the same thing as in the US. In other
countries you will share room with 5 other people, and be aware that usually
at least one family member per patient is always present. Treatments such as
colonoscopy are done in your room, btw. There usually is just one male and one
female toilet and shower per ~10 rooms, of course used by the family members
as well. The food is literally uneatable 99% of the time, 1% of the time
you're lucky and it's plain bread and tea (nothing to screw up on that).
Prepare yourself to be screamed at regularly by doctors and nurses. Prepare
yourself to be bellitled at every opportunity. And prepare yourself that your
family members might die because noone listened to them, and the only
compensation you can get is the sentence "well, that's just the system, the
government really didn't want that" \- correct, no monetary compensation, no
fines, no prison.

Did I mention that there is no way to go private other than paying out of
pocket, and of course who would run a medical company in a country with
universal healthcare?

Source: my whole life in a "universal healthcare" country.

Edit: Let the downvotes flow, I just stated my experience, definitely a
downvote-worthy comment, lol. Dumbass me thought we would discuss.

Seems interesting tho. Almost every time I write my experiences with universal
healthcare, I'm immediatelly (within 5 minutes) heavily downvoted, without any
discussion. Hard denial? Universal healthcare definitely helps pharma and
medical companies (they can overprice a lot, just like with any other
governmental project). Lobby?

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peteretep
You’re being downvoted because you’re wrong, and anyone with any familiarity
at all with the other systems knows you’re wrong.

Let us consider:

> Did I mention that there is no way to go private other than paying out of
> pocket, and of course who would run a medical company in a country with
> universal healthcare?

Like many people here, I’ve held private insurance in the UK. The last time I
paid for it, I think I paid £150/m for it, but I’ve had several employees
cover it.

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TomMarius
UK does not have a universal healthcare system in a comparable way to
continental Europe. It is excluded from what I said, but it's not much of a
change - that makes it sixth in the world. Out of 195.

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DanBC
How does the UK not have universal healthcare?

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TomMarius
Sorry I was mistaken, however: Every commenter here is talking about their
experiences in private clinics. These are not a part of most universal
healthcare systems and it's polar opposite of what the USA liberals are
proposing. That's why I didn't want to count UK in, however other commenters
have proved to me that it was a mistake - if any homeless man is able to get
such treatment, I have to agree it's universal - but is this true? Noone here
confirmed that yet.

