
What Dwarf Fortress Taught Me About Startups - pigs
https://blog.opsee.com/what-dwarf-fortress-taught-me-about-startups-30800ea98324#.d7jgrjiu4
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vonkow
I'm really surprised that the author didn't get into one of the main ways a
fortress fails. It's humming along smoothly and then suddenly the population
doubles in size when a group of settlers (VC cash) arrives and the whole place
goes to hell from disorganization and growing pains.

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yeukhon
Would love to hear honest story telling from really successful startup
including FB, Dropbox and even some of the smaller players on this.

Would it make sense to just go full hacker culture like FB from the beginning
without any serious management layer and goes small team instead of big team?

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patmcguire
Best you're going to get is a Rashomon-style retelling. Anybody early on has
retold the story so many times - pitching new hires, onboarding the next wave
of employees, and then the next wave, and then the next wave - that they
probably don't really remember the real thing very clearly anymore.

Then there's also the pressure to agree to a similar narrative, not
necessarily in a bad way, just like any couple has agreed on a how they met
story, they've been telling it for so long and had the arguments about "did
that happen?" that the story has been set. Who knows what happened.

You'd have to assemble a collage of The Official Story, some of the weirder
first interviews the group gave in the press, early non-hires who interviewed
and caught a glimpse of a weird snapshot, the inevitable disgruntled folk (who
may not inevitably wrong).

Aside from that, I do like [http://justinkan.com/three-
stories](http://justinkan.com/three-stories) , it's a good series of
disasters.

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supernintendo
Fun analogy. One of my favorite mechanics in Dwarf Fortress is stress. Dwarves
have thoughts which are contingent upon outside influences (fatigue, other
dwarves, etc.) [1]. Failure to keep your dwarves happy results in a loss of
productivity. Left untreated, your dwarves can eventually go insane and
destroy everything you've built [2].

Fortunately, I've never seen this manifest in a startup before my own eyes (at
least in an extreme way), but I'm sure someone else has a story to share.

[1]
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Thought](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Thought)

[2]
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Insanity](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Insanity)

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restalis
_" Fortunately, I've never seen this manifest in a startup before my own eyes
(at least in an extreme way)"_

That's because, however tough the entrepreneurship may seem, the businesses
are part of the larger society which is collectively protected to a high
degree from many society-devastating causes. I've mentioned this before¹: _"
The world around you and your loved ones is relatively safe thanks to
multitude of operating services that make sure that the individuals roaming
free are not that crazy, not that malevolent, not that contagious, and in
short will not have that much of a negative impact on society at large (which
includes you)."_ Of course, the environment of the Dwarf Fortress does not
promise you that kind of protection.

¹
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150147)

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patmcguire
What's great about this analogy is that Unicorns are officially Bad News for
dwarfs, and will frequently gore and trample everyone in your fortress to
death.

~~~
Natsu
They're also valuable.

"Unicorn products are worth four times as much as domestic animals, making
unicorn genocide in the name of profit an attractive proposition."

\- DF Wiki
[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unicorn](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unicorn)

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vinceguidry
> and the gameplay is brutally difficult.

Dwarf Fortress is not particularly difficult once you figure out the obtuse
interface. It's only a little bit more difficult than Minecraft without the
boss fights. I got bored in a few months. Admittedly, much of this was the
tendency of the game to slow my machine to a dead crawl. Once you're
proficient at avoiding the pitfalls, the only really interesting thing to do
is to keep growing the fortress. Sadly, the performance cliff is steep.

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dunstad
There is of course a certain extent to which you can adjust how difficult the
game will be for you, such as where you embark or just restricting your
playstyle, but ultimately coming up with goals is necessary to keep enjoying
the game. I never last very long myself...

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jtolmar
The problem with embark locations is that they mostly just increase the size
of the initial difficulty cliff. The game still settles down to more or less
the same amount of challenge once you've dug in. Maybe your migrant waves are
smaller after wading through the river full of zombie hippos, but once the
survivors get indoors they're as safe as anywhere else.

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outworlder
Interesting analogy.

I'd guess that the average Dwarf Fortress erm, Fortress, and the average
startup fail at about the same rate. For, basically, the same reasons: too
many unknowns, random events and morale.

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kazagistar
1) Name everything silly random things.

2) Have a super complex UI.

3) Cats will end the world.

4) Kill the rich nobles (management) asap.

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rhizome
OT, but for those of use who know kids into Minecraft, is DF a good thing for
them to graduate to? KSP maybe better? Seems like there's a family of games
here that have a progression of sophistication.

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vonkow
Depends if they like starting at ASCII. KSP has a much more familiar interface
and would probably be the better route to go.

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dunstad
There are actually a surprising number of detailed graphics mods you can get
for Dwarf Fortress (although not wanting to fiddle with modding the game is
entirely understandable).

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vonkow
Very true, but even with graphics mods the difference in ease of use between
DF and KSP's interfaces is vast.

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triggercut
There's no Fun that good old fashioned Risk Management can't ruin.

