Here's a question about Dwarf Fortress: I play a lot of roguelikes, which are a genre of similar games, insofar as they're relatively complex, keyboard-and-ASCII oriented games made by geeks for geeks. Like Dwarf Fortress, these tend to have accumulated a lot of developer-hours, and like Dwarf Fortress, these developer-hours tend to get channeled into adding complexity to the game rather than superficial polish, like graphics and interface.
But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)
Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?
I think Dwarf Fortress falls squarely on the Nethack side of things. The motto of Dwarf Fortress is 'Losing is !FUN!' (exclamation points on either side of an item indicating it is currently on fire, a common occurrence in DF.) The fun and the !FUN! in Dwarf Fortress is because of complexity, not in spite of it.
> Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?
I stopped paying attention to DF development around the time Toady One started focusing in depth on history and cultural generation - apparently nowadays, you can have temples, bards, all sorts of stuff that seems like it only impacts the Adventurer Mode, and will have some impact on Dwarf preferences, history, etc.
None of this strikes me as anything I need to know about when playing the Fortress mode of the game, and seems like just something that Toady enjoys working on.
But for all I know, there's someone out there who's going to love all of this stuff, and it's going to make gameplay much better for them.
But they vary in terms of their approach this complexity: some seem to always want to add more, seeing more complicatedness as always better, and end up feeling like they contain everything but the kitchen sink - complexity for complexity's sake. (Nethack, I'm looking at you.) Others add it only where it's justified by producing interesting gameplay decisions. (Brogue and Sil are rigorous about stripping out unneeded complexity and getting the maximum amount of subtlety and nuance from a stripped-back set of mechanics. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is more complex, but seems aware of the trade-offs around complexity, and is known for removing features as often as it adds them.)
Which of these camps does Dwarf Fortress fall into? There's a lot of complexity, features and mechanics there. Is it all justified, in terms of adding interest to gameplay? Or is just for complexity's sake?