作者：Mike Rose

Tarn Adams及其兄弟Zach已经致力于程序生成奇幻游戏《矮人要塞》将近11年了，如果包括《DragSlay》和《Slaves to Armok》的开发也算在内的话应该是超过13年。

尽管你现在可以下载并玩游戏，但其1.0版本还需要很长一段时间才能与我们见面。Tarn Adams最近估计，我们可以期待在20年内看到1.0版本的游戏，尽管他承认事实上可能需要更长时间：“因为我总是会低估发行时间。”

但是Adams兄弟却拥有一个明确的目标，不管时间表。他们两人意识到自己陷入了许多之前的开发冲动中，而他们的解决方法便是将所有的一切摆在面前，并决定哪个将能达到标准。

Adams说道：“我们尝试着尽可能停留在纸上。而当我们完成纸上设计时，1.0版本便算诞生了。不过在那之后还有许多事要做。我的意思是，如果我们现在是50岁，我们将拥有各种各样的生活决策，所以我们也就没有理由去思考在接下去的五年里是否要坚持这一计划了。”

但这只是总体思路——坚持计划但却不会陷得太深。“如此布局一个框架，稍微具体化，但不要像我们在第一个版本所做的那样将所有元素都添加到实体的每个部位，并测试它们真正的闪光点—-尽管到最后我们又回到了最初的《矮人要塞》中。”

30年的计划

关于Adams30年计划的有趣（也许是带有问题的）之处在于设计师是否能够始终专注于占据自己整个成年生活的一个项目。

我经常会与一些开发者聊天，他们会告诉我“我真的非常享受游戏创造，但是我也总是会迫不及待地完成它们而开始致力于新游戏。”那么Adams会始终保持对于《矮人要塞》的热情吗？他的注意力是否会开始转向其它项目？

他回答道：“不见得会这样。我的意思是，如果我们未创造出这样的内容，我想这便会是一种现实的期待。但我们已经投入了好几年时间，所以我有点知道自己现在在哪了。我也知道我能为自己腾出些时间去创造一些其它项目，尽管在《矮人要塞》还不是《矮人要塞》的时候我并未真正发行过任何内容，如《Cobalt Quest》，面向Mac的移植项目等等。”

实际上，Aadms表示自己目前手上有7个其它的大型项目——他说道：“它们是各种各样的大型内容，但是目前我并没有足够的时间去完成它们。当我与Zach在看电视的时候，我便会用自己的笔记本电脑去创造这些游戏，但只是作为消遣。”

他继续说道：“我们并未真正讨论过这些游戏，也未去定义它们到底是什么。我们并不想为它们进行任何选择，因为这是不必要的。尽管知道我们还有其它可发展的理念以及其它可实现的有趣内容是非常有帮助的。”

关于Adams兄弟不会厌倦《矮人要塞》开发的另一个原因是——游戏的绝对范围以及他们可以在任何时候暂停下来的方法。

Adams表示，不管何时当他厌倦了游戏的特定元素时，他便可以离开去致力于其它完全不同的内容。他笑着说道：“就像如果我厌倦了地理，我便在10年内不会在看有关地理的内容，对吧？你只要去做些其它事便可。”

这也是为何《矮人要塞》的开发与其它AAA级或手机游戏设计完全不同的主要原因。一般游戏开发团队也许会花几个月甚至是几年的时间去修改并优化一款游戏，确保它“做好面向市场的准备，”而Adams却认为这么做会使自己失去热情。

“你会在互动开发过程中探索新理念，所以这并不是完全停滞不前的，但是如此你却会逐渐感到厌倦。而对于我来说，‘我将查阅所有的中世纪园艺作物，并学习所有的有关植物的内容！’像最近我便对香蕉有了更深的了解。不管在什么情况下思维引导着你，你都可以进行探索。这就像是在现在尝试着学习《矮人要塞》一样。”

但是Adams并不认为20年将是截止期限——不管热情是否有所减少。夜以继日地坐在计算机面前将对开发者造成巨大的损害，并且他似乎也还不能预见即将到来的10年里世界的变化。

他说道：“我敢保证我们正在一点点不如从前，这并不是因为不再感兴趣了，而是因为我们的身体负荷能力大大不足。在那时，我不知道游戏是否仍然可行—-执行系统是怎样的，人们将戴上怎样奇怪的发带而让他们在手机上看到一些奇怪的东西——可能到那时《矮人要塞》就完全死了。”

他补充道：“谁知道这些内容什么时候能够创造出来。但是如果它们还是很出色，我们就需要将其传递下去，然后我们可能会思考一些能够一起传递的开放源码解决方法，并让人们做任何想要与之一起做的事。我们将提供所有的开发注释等等内容。但这只是空闲时的猜测，对吗？”

他看到了《矮人要塞》的未来与《迷宫骇客》或《地下城爬行》所走的道路相似，即新的开发团队将拾起它们继续创造。

他说道：“到目前为止我们还未放手，但显然并不是永远都会这样。而只要有人愿意去维持它，它就仍会继续下去，对吧？”

费解的

因为ASCII图像风格以及缺少教程，《矮人要塞》从一开始就很难进入。但对于注视着游戏开发这么多年的外人来说，我可以很公正地表示《矮人要塞》算是电子游戏产业所提供的最困难的任务之一。

Adams解释道：“我认为比起2006年的情况，如今的游戏变得更加简单。机制并不是真的非常重要，因为《矮人要塞》中的许多机制都是隐秘的。许多更新也不是很重要—-我的意思是，例如我花一个月时间去养蜂，但是你却不会遇到养蜂业务，所以你就不需要学习如何这么做了，但是如果你想要制作蜡工艺品和蜂蜜，你便可以探索这一领域。”

设计师认为存在不同类型的不可入性，而这都取决于玩家所专注的目标。

他解释道：“存在基本的界面问题，如未使用一致的秘钥。然后使用的图像不是图像，诸如此类的问题（笑）。但幸好的是这样的情况不断好转了。”

“但是当提到像犹豫不决的内容时—–如非目标导向型，或要求人们设置自己的目标等，我想你会认为更多功能将导致这种情况变得更加糟糕。说真的，活着的基本要素并未发生真正的改变。”

“所以我认为持续的时间越长，维基百科将变得越完善，教程会变得越清楚，出现在用户面前的视频会越多，而社区也会变得越大且越有帮助。所以我认为比起之前，现在能够更轻松地进入《矮人要塞》并不存在什么问题。”

当游戏到达1.0版本时，Adams设想了新的教程，更加一致的界面以及一些对上下文有帮助的内容——所有的这些内容都出现在他的纸上，尽管他并不想包含等距，支持或满满的层面或3D界面，这是考虑到《矮人要塞》的社区在视觉方面已经做得很不错了。

实际上，Adams以及尝试着开始致力于游戏的教程，但他也发现这一设计元素有可能阻碍开发进程。

他说到：“我们谈到了图像减慢了开发，这是我们不考虑图像的主要原因。教程也是如此，这是你需要保持更新的另一个元素。但是我却愿意为此做出牺牲，因为我认为它们具有重要的影响，将推动人们开始游戏。”

现在，他很高兴让《矮人要塞》社区帮助自己做这份工作。“现在有很多人致力于帮助其他人进入游戏，如果我将成为他们其中的一份子，这就更好了。我并不是在嘲笑别人的痛苦—-这很难，这都是我的错。当你谈论一些事好多年时，你便会慢慢变得轻率了。”

我问Adams为什么他相信能够给予《矮人要塞》疯狂的深度创造一款游戏，这对于普通玩家似乎更可行。

他回答道：“当然。这是关于快速传达深度。我的意思是，想想《模拟人生》这样的游戏——他们卖出了多少份游戏？这并不是一款复杂的游戏，但却扔有数百万人在玩它。《模拟人生》真的是复杂又具有易用性的游戏典例。”

他补充道：“我的意思是，虽然我从未玩过《我的世界》，但我想如果你愿意玩这款游戏，那么它肯定是具有一些深度的，对吗？”

粉丝流失

对于Adams兄弟来说，拥有一个忠实的用户基础，不仅乐于玩游戏，帮助新玩家进入游戏，同时还愿意投入大量金钱于游戏中，真的是上辈子修来的福气啊。但如果在接下来的几年里买玩家数量开始下降，他们的收入也不能继续维持下去的话会变成怎样？

Adams笑着说道—-尽管他知道事实不会如此：“我可能会加入那些失业人的行列中吧。我认为如果我们开始宣传一个新项目，人们肯定会向我们投来关注。”

他继续说道：“我们可以一直在Kickstarter上贩卖声誉。如今的市场上存在各种各样的选择，所以我觉得我们应该不会沦落到将《矮人要塞》作为兼职，并开始选择一份全职工作的下场。这里有其它选择。而我们仍然想要继续创造《矮人要塞》。”

这并不是Adams经常会去思考的一些事，因为这样的想法太消极了。

他说到：“但这也是一个预料中的结局，不是吗？这也是这些内容的发展。有些内容带有永久的能量，如rogue游戏。但那些社区也分裂过无数次了。所以谁知道最终会怎样呢。”

最近，《矮人要塞》被选为现代艺术博物馆的其中一款历史电子游戏—-这一事件大大鼓舞了Adams兄弟。

他强调：“这让我们认为，即使游戏背后的支持大大减少了，但是我们也并未被彻底抛弃。并且这甚至让我们觉得也许游戏背后的支持并未完全干涸。这真的是个转折点。整个发展过程中我们已经遇到过一些转折点，而所有的这些事件都帮助我们大大增强了信心，并有力推动着我们继续坚持下去。”

当然，还有一些方法能够帮助Adams兄弟更好地保障自己的未来。其中一种方法便是将《矮人要塞》推向Steam，将其呈现在数百万双眼睛面前。这一过程将包括经历Steam Greenlight。

Adams解释道：“像Steam Greenlight这样的事件让我们觉得世界变得更加陌生。我们的政策就像Kevin Costner的电影《梦幻之地》一样—-如果你创建了它，它们最终便会到来。所有的一切都朝我们走来，包括所有媒体—-我们从未设置一个广告，也从未参加任何大会或展会。”

Adams强调这并不是尝试着让自己变得自私或自大——只是因为当他开始开发游戏时，他并未关心如何进行游戏宣传，所以当需要面对这种情况时，他才会觉得不知所措。

他并不能确定Greenlight对于《矮人要塞》来说是否是个合理的选择。他说道：“当你面对像Steam Greenlight这样的内容时—-我不知道是否与我们面临的情况一样，这是否你只要伸出手就能抓到的果子，然后你会说‘好的，我们将把游戏带到Steam平台上。’”

“我并不了解它，因为多年的惰性，我们并没有这样的业务本能，并会产生‘我们需要前往那里’的想法。所以，如果有很多人因为想要通过Steam去追踪用户的游戏时间等待信息而来烦我们，如果我们现在的用户基础想要来到这里，我们也许会对它更具感兴趣。”

所以，将《矮人要塞》推向Steam更像是一种用户服务，而非想要获取新玩家？

他回答道：“我想应该是这样的。我不知道这么说是否会让人觉得我很自私，因为很多人都致力于将自己的游戏推向Steam并非常努力地想让用户注意到自己的游戏。不过我当然不是说我们是免费获得所有的这一切，因为我们也为游戏投入了许多努力才能吸引人们的注意。不过现在我并不担心这点，因为我并不知道这么做是否是一种浪费。”

平台

当将游戏呈现在更多人面前的话题悬而未决时，我问了Adams为何他会考虑将游戏移植到其它平台上，如手机或PS Vita。

到目前为止，手机其实还不可行，因为《矮人要塞》是一款较为激烈的游戏，需要更加强大的CPU——甚至忽视了潜在的界面问题，而手机设备还不够强大，应付不了游戏所需要的大量计算。然而，Adams承认“规格开始趋于一致了，”所以将《矮人要塞》带到平板电脑上更加接近当前的现实。

而关于PS Vita，他强调“如果有人接近我们，我们不会以任何原因给予对方代码，所以我们自己独自进行编译。”

他补充道：“将其带到Vita上也必须具有意义。现在，我们已经独自完成了许多工作，如在Windows，Linux，Mac等平台上进行编译。移植游戏的人将经历一个非常可怕的过程，因为我不会提供给他完整的代码。尽管与我共事多年，并取得了我的信任，他也不会获得完整的代码。因为我们真的是经历了许多麻烦才编写出现在的代码。”

签订一份保密协议去应对这种可能性对于Adams来说并不重要。他说到：“我需要有一种方法去编译它，我只是不知道这将如何运行于其它平台上。我猜你下载了这些开发中SDK。如果索尼愿意忍受我这样的无理取闹，不过我想他们不会愿意的，这便是非常伟大的奉献。这也是为什么经常会有些粉丝自愿与我一起经历噩梦的主要原因。”

他说到：“所以我们并不是反对其它系统，而是它们必须能够适应我们所选择的传递途径，因为我们具有种种限制因素。”

显然，对于这时候《矮人要塞》的开发，Adams兄弟肯定已经收到许多来自发行商的合作请求—-不管是关于游戏发行还是提供给二人工作。Adams告诉我，他从未考虑过为别人工作（“我们想要创造自己的东西，有没有钱并不重要”），不过在之前他曾考虑过与一家发行商签订《矮人要塞》的发行事宜。

他告诉我：“有一份合作是关于使用《矮人要塞》的名字，就像是《矮人要塞—-副标题》这样的形式—-他们想要为自己的一款游戏建立品牌。并开出了6位数的价码。”

他补充道：“当你着眼于这种情况时，你会想这就是交易啊。这一品牌是否会减价？你是否是在欺骗别人？只要他们清楚清楚这并不是《矮人要塞》，这并不是带着不同图像的《矮人要塞》，就像人们在今天称呼许多内容那样。只要你足够诚实，这里便不存在任何特定的问题—-如果我们想要的话，这便一直都是我们自己的品牌。”

他解释道，与发行商签订协议或将《矮人要塞》的版权给其它开发者对于当前粉丝来说并不是什么坏事。“我的意思是，如果我们突然拥有足够的钱而在经济上享受绝对的独立，不用再担心健康保险，那么我们便能比之前更加投入于《矮人要塞》的制作——谁会对此感到抱怨呢？”

他沉思了一会说道：“这将让一个冷静的人对道德行为的细节充满兴趣。我的意思是，我不需要拒绝这些人。但是我们需要考虑到一些分支。”

这些分支是阻止Adams兄弟签订这样协议的元素——顾名思义，这对兄弟认为他们最终会因为这样的交易赔钱，而非赚钱。

“当人们看到一些不同的情况，就拿我们来说吧，我们会从最坏的情况去考虑它，然后来自人们的贡献将枯竭，我们将只能面对一些不足以维持10年工资的总额。所以我们是否需要寻找一个新的IP，或者一个全新的视角？也许我们具有一定的知名度能够做到这点——但这却是非常让人不安的情况。”

当然了，就像Adams所说的那样，另一种情况是“与我们一样将所有鸡蛋放到一个篮子里是非常冒险的，对吧？我的意思是，这样做你只能拿一款优秀的游戏作为所有的赌注。当涉及版权时并不存在任何规则。”

复制

当Adams谈及另外一款将《矮人要塞》带到城镇的相似游戏时，我问他为何觉得没人能够成功复制这款游戏。当然，有许多很出色的游戏受到了《矮人要塞》的启发，但是却没有一款游戏真正复制了它的深度及视觉风格。

Adams相信他的游戏之所以较为独特是因为其他开发者热衷于创造能够快速实现的类似产品。

他在列举像《矮人族游戏》等项目时说道：“我们并未真正清楚他们是否因为任务的大小而气馁，或者从未想过自己重头开始进行创造。”

“像《Clockwork Empires》这类游戏的出现就更有野心了。他们似乎付出了很多努力，所以我们可以看到许多有趣的内容。但是我并不敢保证是否存在一个点去彻底模拟《矮人要塞》，因为我们并不是一个巨大的市场。这并不像是人们看着我们一年5万美元的收入然后想着‘嘿，我想要一块派。’他们会更期待像《我的世界》这样的内容，即能够赚取数亿美元的收益。”

关于《我的世界》的话题，Adams很感谢Markus Persson及其公司表示其游戏是受到《矮人要塞》的启发——他笑着说道：“这句话为我们带来了一半的粉丝哈！”

回到潜在的复制行为，或者做得不错的《矮人要塞》般的游戏，Adams认为这种情况迟早都会出现。

他说道：“我们很高兴能够维持这么久。我也很惊讶并未被别人折断了翅膀。至少到现在这种情况还未发生。”

盈利方式

Adams告诉我：“我读过Gamasutra上有关‘免费游戏是否道德’的文章，即谈论盈利以及斯金纳箱。我们很幸运避开了这样的焦点，并努力以某种方式为生。”

的确，《矮人要塞》的盈利方式（通过玩家捐赠的一款完全免费的游戏）于现代电子游戏产业中的各种业务模式都不同。

Adams猜想自己知道为什么这一业务模式适合自己，而不适合别人。

他解释道：“我们并不是想要成为数百万美元的热门游戏，这是我从其他人那边看到的目标——这是他们在面向iPhone以及其它平台探索时的目标。当然并不是所有人都这么想。但是我们并不需要那么辛苦，只要想想我们该如何盈利便可。”

他继续说道：“我已经看过人们经历了什么。Rocketcat Games便是如此。这只是一种奋斗，对吧？你需要决定自己是否真的想要设置免费游戏模式。他们太过慷慨了？所以最终便未能实现目标。幸好我们拥有足够的余地去打破气球，这便是我们现在所做的。”

那么了解《矮人要塞》故事的人将知道，Adams会给那些给游戏捐钱的玩家发送蜡笔画，并将其添加到“冠军”列表中—-这与如今的游戏开发者所提供的是截然不同的内容。

他笑着说道：“我是说，这真的很奇怪吧？但幸运的是我们的要求并不高，我们并不需要很多钱，我们只要确保自己不会停滞不前便可。即一年两个人的收益是5万美元。”

在说到自己的盈利技巧时，他表示：“我认为这就像是一个共享软件。我们并未受到其他人的启发。有人告诉我们，‘为什么不在你们生日的时候添加一个PayPal按键好让我汇50美元？’然后在接下来的四五个月，我们将挣得300美元。我仍然致力于这一工作，《矮人要塞》还未完善。然后我们发行了游戏，在之后的几个月里赚到了800美元，1000美元。我们便会想‘也许我们可以真真试试看。’那么现在我们平均每个月的收益便是4000美元。这真的太疯狂了。”

关于《矮人要塞》只通过玩家捐赠每年才获取5万美元的收益，我问了Adams他们所收到的捐赠是以什么样的方式传播的。我猜应该不是一些人只付少量的钱，而是《矮人要塞》有着自己的“鲸鱼用户”——即那些愿意支付大量费用的玩家。

他告诉我：“现在游戏拥有一个订阅系统，因为人们需要它。这里有愿意支付4位数金额的玩家。但这些并不是我们之前交流过的人——他们都知道自己在做什么，因为他们已经玩游戏很长时间了。并且除了一些故事外他们并未获得任何补偿。”

他继续说道：“我猜在鲸鱼系统间有许多平行线，但也有些人反复提供费用，并且是大笔的费用。游戏人捐赠了电脑，有些人捐赠了时间—-还有很多志愿者愿意处理漏洞追踪并回答人们提出的种种问题。甚至还有些人进行了面向Mac和Linux的移植—-而所有的这一切都是免费的。”

每个人只是希望看到《矮人要塞》继续下去，所以如果他们真的喜欢游戏，他们的最大兴趣便是提供一些金钱去推动游戏的发展。

他补充道：“我猜你会说鲸鱼用户有兴趣接收他们的礼物。显然是一连串的给予—-一连串的道德行为。我不知道其它市场是如何进行判断的，但是我直到人们在对此进行谈论。”

不喜欢社交

尽管很显然Adams兄弟就像独立开发者，但是他们却很少于其它独立开发者进行交流，或者参与到“独立开发领域”中。

Adams告诉我：“这并不是故意的。这只是我们的个性所致。从小到大我就没有什么朋友，并且也不觉得有必要于别人一起玩。这对于《爱人要塞》来说一点利益都没有。我从未使用过Twitter/Facebook。我的意思是，看到别人像交谈很有趣，但如果是要我参与进去的话就不是这样了。”

但这并不是说这对兄弟一点都未参加社交活动。就像之前所提到的，他们于Rocketcat Games会面并抽取了一些之前从未尝试过的手机游戏。他们也在去年年初的时候前往冰岛参加了EVE Fanfest，Adams还作为演讲者发表了演说。

但一般说来，Adams并不热衷于与其他开发者进行社交。他说道：“像GDC这类事件对于我们而言并不是我们受邀前往的地方。这只是你花钱前去的地方。所有的展会也是如此。而鉴于我们的情况，网络交流对我来说也没什么意义。”

他继续说道：“如果这样做未能成功，也不是说我们就需要去找工作—-我们不会为其它工作室工作。我们只是不想要社交罢了。所以也就没有这么做的需要了，尽管我知道我们能够大受益。我们并不想要到处谈论游戏设计的技巧之类的内容。我们经历了一个成熟的过程，因为我们已经致力于这份工作13年了。”

尽管Adams拥有斯坦福大学数学专业的博士学位，并曾经教过一段时间的数学，但他表示缺少社交动机在某种程度上阻碍了自己的数学PhD的发展。就像他所指出的，数学有时候也是一个需要社交的领域。

他说道：“让我们想象一些人一起在黑暗中致力于推断某一定理，这是一份共同协作的论文，但是对于我来说于别人一起共事却是最复杂的。因为我并不是一个擅于社交的人。”

尽管缺少社交技能，并在致力于游戏中总是会想办法隐藏自己，但是Adams却很高兴自己现在所处的境况，并对于未来的发展也充满期待。

他解释道：“我真的对所有的结果都很满足。已经花了13年时间了，你可以不用看起来像个傻瓜那样去谈论今后20年的发展。但是我们也意识到，谁到不知道今后20年到底会出现什么样的变化啊，对吧？不管什么情况都有可能发生，我们也将因为年龄的增长而遇到各种健康问题。或者也会出现经济问题。”

他补充道：“但我感觉更自在了。这是我在数学领域从未有过的感受。我从未到达过这样的里程碑。不过谁知道接下来还会发生些什么呢。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Dwarf Fortress in 2013

by Mike Rose

“What we’ve done is lay out a framework for version 1.0, and you just have a giant piece of paper with everything on it, and there’s the stuff that’s on the paper, and there’s the stuff that’s off the paper.”

Tarn Adams and his brother Zach have been working on procedurally-generated fantasy game Dwarf Fortress for around 11 years now, although if you include the DragSlay and Slaves to Armok development work that preceded it — and essentially molded the game’s early beginnings — it’s more like 13 years.

Although you can download and play the game for free right now, version 1.0 is still a long time coming. Tarn Adams recently estimated that we can expect 1.0 in around 20 years’ time, although he admits it’ll probably take even longer than that, “because I always underestimate release times.”

But the Adams brothers have a clear goal, regardless of timeframe. The duo recognize that they have gotten stuck in plenty of development ruts before, and their solution is to lay everything out in front of them, and decide on what will make the cut.

“We try to stay on the paper as much as possible,” says Adams. “When we finish the paper, that’s 1.0. And there’s a whole lot more to do after that. I mean, obviously, if we’re in our 50s, we’ll have all kinds of life decisions we’re making, so there’s no reason to think that we’ll stick with this plan for even another five years or whatever.”

But that’s the general idea — sticking to the plan without getting too deep in the weeds. “Just kind of lay out a skeleton, flesh it out a bit, but not put the little curly hairs on it like we did in the first version of the game, where we had curly hairs on every part of the body, and measured their exact flash points and everything, and you could teleport someone’s nose off and so on — although we’re pretty much there in Dwarf Fortress again.”

The 30-Year Plan

What’s so intriguing (and perhaps questionable) about Adams’ 30-year-plus plan is how exactly the designer can stay focused and enthused about a project that may potentially take up his entire adult life.

I regularly talk to developers who tell me “I’ve really enjoyed working on this game, but I cannot wait to get it behind me and work on something new.” How, then, does Adams keep up the enthusiasm for Dwarf Fortress? Isn’t his attention starting to meander to other projects?

“Not really,” he answers. “I mean, if we didn’t have vents for things like that, then I think it’d be a realistic expectation. But having put in the years, I kinda know where I’m at. And I kinda know I’ve made time for myself to make side projects, even though I haven’t released anything since Dwarf Fortress that wasn’t related to Dwarf Fortress… like the Cobalt Quest, the Mac porting project, or whatever.”

Zach and Tarn Adams

In fact, Adams says that he has around seven other big projects that are sort of in the works but not — “they are all sort of large undertakings that I don’t have large undertaking time for,” he says. “There’s time when we’re watching stupid stuff on TV over at my brother’s place where I have my other laptop, and I work on those games, just as kind of a break.”

“We don’t really talk about them that much, and don’t say what they are,” he continues. “We don’t want to build any hype for them because it’s not necessarily anything that’s ever going to see the light of day. It helps, though, to know that we still have other ideas that we can work on, and there are lots of other interesting things to experiment with.”

There’s another reason why the Adams brothers don’t believe they’ll ever get bored of Dwarf Fortress development — the sheer scope of the title, and the ridiculous number of avenues that they can potentially go down at any given point.

Adams says that whenever he becomes bored of a specific element of the game, he can simply go off and work on something else completely different instead. “Like, if I got sick of geology, I wouldn’t have to look at geology again for 10 years, right?” he laughs. “You can just go do something else.”

This is why Dwarf Fortress development is so completely different to, say, your average triple-A or mobile game design. A regular game development team might spend months and years refining a title and polishing it up, making it “ready for market,” and this is where Adams believes the enthusiasm can be lost.

“You explore new ideas in the interative development process, so it’s not completely stagnant, but I can see how you can wear down a bit more,” he notes. “With me, I was like ‘Ohh — I get to look up all the medieval garden crops now and learn all about plants!’ I learned a lot about bananas recently. It’s just wherever the mind takes you, you can explore. It’s like getting tried of learning is where Dwarf Fortress is at now.”

But Adams isn’t convinced that he’ll make the 20 year deadline, regardless of dwindling enthusiasm or not. Sitting at his computer day-in, day-out (or night-in, night-out, as the case may be) is taking its toll on the developer — plus it’s not like he’s able to control how the world will work in the coming decades.

“I’m sure there’s going to come a point obviously where we’re kinda fading out, not really from disinterest, but just because our bodies are falling apart,” he says. “And at that point, I don’t know if the game is still going to be viable — what operating systems are like, what weird headbands people are going to be wearing that let them see weird stuff with their iPhones — and Dwarf Fortress could just be totally dead by then.”

“Who knows how this stuff will work out,” he adds. “But if we’re still around, and we need to pass it on, then we’ll probably think of some open-source solution that just gets passed along, and lets people do whatever the heck they want with it. We’ll put up all our dev notes, etcetera. But that’s just idle speculation, right? That’s the general idea.”

He sees the future life of Dwarf Fortress going the same way that the likes of Nethack or Dungeon Crawl have, with new devs teams picking them up and pushing them along.

“We’ve just had our mitts on this one for a long time without passing it along,” he says, “but that’s not going to be a forever thing, obviously. It’s only going to stay afloat as long as people keep it afloat, right?”

Impenetrable

Dwarf Fortress was rather tricky to get into from the get-go, thanks to its ASCII art style and general lack of tutorials. But to an outsider looking in on this game so many years into development, with such a wide scope of features and potential play styles, it’s fair to say that getting into Dwarf Fortress is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks the video game industry as a whole can provide.

“I think the game has actually gotten easier compared to what it was in 2006,” Adams reasons. “It’s not really the mechanics that matter so much, since a lot of the mechanics in DF are under the table. A lot of the updates don’t matter either — I mean, I spent a month on beekeeping, but you’re not confronted with beekeeping, and you don’t need to learn how to do it, but if you want to make wax crafts and honey, then it’s an avenue you can explore.”

The designer argues that there are different types of impenetrability, and that it all depends on what a player focuses on.

“There’s the basic interface problems, such as not using consistent keys,” he explains. “Then there’s using graphics that aren’t graphics, that kind of thing [laughs]. And those have gotten slightly better, rather than worse.”

“But when it comes to things like indecision — like not being goal-orientated, or requiring people to set their own goals — I guess you could argue more features make that worse. Really, the fundamentals of staying alive haven’t really changed much at all.

“So I think the more time that goes on, the better the Wiki is, the better the tutorials are, the more videos get put out, the larger and more helpful the community is. So I think it’s probably easier to get into Dwarf Fortress now than it ever has been. Not that it is!”

When the game reaches the aforementioned version 1.0, Adams envisions tutorials, a more consistent interface, some context-sensitive help — all these things are on his piece of paper, although he has no intention of including isometric, supported or packed-in tiles or 3D interfaces, given the great job that the Dwarf Fortress community has done on the visual side of things already.

In fact, Adams has already attempted to start work on tutorials for the game, but has found that this is an element of design that can really impede development progress.

“We talk about the graphics slowing down development, and it’s one of the main reasons why we don’t have them,” he says. “Tutorials are sort of the same way, in that they are an anchor that you need to keep updated. But that’s definitely a sacrifice that I’m willing to make, just because I think they would make a big difference just to get people started.”

For now, he’s happy to let the Dwarf Fortress community do the job for him. “There’s a lot of people dedicated to helping others get into the game now, and if I were to become one of them, that would be even better,” he laughs, adding, “I’m not laughing at people’s pain — it is hard, and it is all my fault. It’s just when you’ve been talking about something for years, you start to get flippant, sometimes.”

I asked Adams whether he believes it would be possible to build a game with the insane depth of Dwarf Fortress, that would feel more accessible to the average gamer.

“Surely,” he answers. “It would be about delivering depth quickly. I mean, think of something like The Sims — how many copies did that sell, right? That’s not an uncomplicated game, and yet it’s still played by millions of people. The Sims is a really good example of a game that is complicated yet accessible.”

“And I mean, I’ve never played Minecraft, but I assume there’s some depth to the game, if you wanna have it, right?” he adds. “Yet the base game itself is playable by an eight year old. So I think it’s already here.”

Fan Drought

It’s a godsend for the Adams brothers that they have such a dedicated fanbase that is not only happy to keep playing the game and help newer players out, but also donate tens of thousands of dollars simply to keep the brothers afloat. But what happens if, in the years to come, the player numbers begin to fall away and the income is no longer sustainable?

“I’ll probably have to join that group of people who can’t get a job,” laughs Adams — although he’s well aware that that most likely wouldn’t be the case. “I think we probably are at the point where if we started hyping a new project, people would pay attention.”

“We could always trade in our reputation on a Kickstarter,” he adds. “There’s all kinds of choices these days, so it’s not like I feel that I’d need to go and immediately do Dwarf Fortress part-time while I seek a job. There’s alternatives. We’d still want to do Dwarf Fortress.”

It’s not really something that Adams likes to think about too often, given how incredibly depressing the thought is — that people would just stop caring about your life’s work.

“But it’s also a foregone conclusion, right?” he says. “That’s how these things always work. There are some things with staying power, like if you look at these roguelike games. But those communities are fractured a million times over. So who knows.”

It helps the long-term reality of Dwarf Fortress that the game was recently chosen as one of the Museum of Modern Art’s historial video games — an event that really spurred Adams and his brother onwards.

“It made us feel like it’s not like the floor is going to suddenly drop out behind us, even if support for the game dries out,” he notes. “It also makes you feel like maybe support for the game won’t dry out. It was a good milestone. And we’ve hit these milestones along the way, all of these things were stepping stones up to a feeling of confidence in our continued existence, and that’s been nice.”

Of course, there are methods by which the Adams brothers could potentially make their future more secure. One would be to get Dwarf Fortress on Steam, putting it front and center before millions of potentially new pairs of eyes. That process would involve going through Steam Greenlight.

“It’s things like Steam Greenlight that have made the world a little weirder for us,” Adams reasons. “Our policy is like well, it’s like Field of Dreams, the Kevin Costner movie — if you build it, they will come. Everything has been coming to us, all the press — we’ve never placed an advertisement, never gone to a conference, or expo, or whatever.”

Adams notes that he’s not trying to make himself out to be selfish or arrogant — it’s simply that he didn’t care about getting publicity when he first started developing the game, so when the hits began to roll in, he just sort of accepted what was happening.

This is where he isn’t too sure whether Greenlight would be a good idea for Dwarf Fortress. “When you have things like Steam Greenlight — I don’t know if it’s to that point where we’re like, is this a low-hanging fruit that you should just reach out and say ‘Okay, we’ll be distributed on Steam,’” he says.

“I don’t know enough about it, and it’s the kind of thing that, from the years of inertia, we don’t have these business instincts that kick in and say, ‘Yes, we need to get on that.’ So it’s sort of the thing where, if enough people bug us because they want Steam to track their user hours or whatever… if our current fan base wants it on there, it’d be more of the kind of thing we’d be interested in, rather than increasing our audience.”

So getting Dwarf Fortress on Steam would be more of a fan service move than one aimed at pulling in new players?

“I guess so, yeah,” he answers. “I don’t know if I sound incredibly selfish when I say that, because people work to get their games put up on Steam and work really hard on getting people to see their games. I wouldn’t say we got that stuff for free, because there was a lot of work put into the game to get it to the point where people would start talking about it. But now that I’m not concerned about that, I just don’t know if it’s a total waste, or whatever.”

Platformer

While the topic of getting the game out to more people is up in the air, I ask Adams whether he has considered porting the game to other platforms, such as mobile or the PS Vita.

Mobile hasn’t really been a possibility up to now, since Dwarf Fortress is a pretty intense game CPU-wise — even ignoring the potential interface problems, mobile devices simply haven’t been powerful enough to keep up with the vast number of calculations that the game is constantly doing. However, Adams acknowledges that “the specs are starting to get into line,” so the possibility of Dwarf Fortress on a tablet is definitely closer to reality now.

As for PS Vita, he notes that “if someone approached us, we’re not giving the code to anybody for any reason, so it would have to be something we could compile ourselves.”

“It would also need to make sense to put it on the Vita,” he adds. “Right now I’ve got a process that I do myself, where I compile it on Windows, compile it on Linux, and compile it on the Mac manually over here. The guy that ported it had to go through a pretty hellish process of my not giving him the full source code. He didn’t get it, despite working with me for years, and basically having my complete trust. I mean, one mistake and we’re in a lot of trouble with the code being out there.”

Potentially signing an NDA to counter this possibility wouldn’t matter to Adams. “I need to have a way to compile it, and I just have no idea how that works on [other] platforms,” he adds. “I guess you download these developer SDKs. If Sony was willing to bear with me through that kind of nonsense, which I don’t think they would be, to get one more game… it would take that kind of dedication. Which is why it usually comes from fans who care, and people who are willing to volunteer and go through the nightmare with me.”

“So we’re not against other systems, but it has to fit into the pipeline we’ve got, because of our restrictions,” he says.

It’s obvious that at this point in Dwarf Fortress’ development, Adams and his brother must have received plenty of offers from publishers — both to publish the game, and to offer the duo jobs. Adams tells me while he would never consider working for someone else (“we want to work on our own stuff, and the money doesn’t matter”), he has considered signing Dwarf Fortress up with a publisher before.

“There was an offer to use the Dwarf Fortress name – sort of ‘Dwarf Fortress: Subtitle’ or whatever — they wanted to brand one of their other games,” he tells me. “And the amount of money on the table was six figures.”

He adds, “When you look at that you think well, there’s trade-offs. Does the brand get cheapened? Are you deceiving people? As long as they’re clear this is not Dwarf Fortress or whatever, and this is not Dwarf Fortress with graphics, as people call a lot of things that are coming out these days. As long as you’re upfront and honest, there’s not technically a problem with that — it’s our brand to piss all over if we want.”

Signing up with a publisher or giving Dwarf Fortress rights to another developer wouldn’t necessarily be bad for the current fans either, he reasons. “I mean, if we had enough money suddenly to become independently wealthy and not worry about our health insurance anymore, then we’re working on Dwarf Fortress even more than before — who should complain about that?”

He muses, “It would take a very philosophical person interested in way down in the details of ethical behavior, I think, to find points of concern there. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that person. But we’ve certainly talked about it, and considered some ramifications of that.”

Those ramifications are what has held the Adams brothers back from such a deal — namely, the pair believes that they were actually end up losing money in such a deal, rather than making more.

“If people saw that there was this other thing out there, we considered in the worst case scenario, then the contributions from people would just dry up, and we’d be sitting with this lump sum that would not have added up to 10 years’ salary or whatever. So do we want the stress of having to search for a new IP, or a new angle all of a sudden? We have some name recognition to be able to do that kind of thing perhaps, although it’s a very chancy thing.”

Of course, the flipside is that it’s not like Dwarf Fortress isn’t risky enough as it is — as Adams notes, “putting all your eggs in one basket like we have is a very chancy thing, right? I mean, it just takes a superior game to blow it all out of the water. There are no rules when it comes to copyright, or whatever.”

Orc Fortress

With Adams touching on the idea of another similar game taking Dwarf Fortress to town, I asked him why he thinks no one has managed to successfully clone the game yet. There have been plenty of notable games inspired by Dwarf Fortress, of course, but none that really copied both the depth and the visual style of the title.

Adams believes that one of the main reasons his game has held its own is that other developers who are keen to create a similar product realize very quickly just as much of an undertaking it will be.

“We can’t really know whether they were discouraged at the size of the undertaking, or whether it was never their intention to begin with,” he adds of projects like Town, Dwarves?, and Game of Dwarves.

“Things like Clockwork Empires coming up are more ambitious. It seems to be doing a bunch of stuff, that’ll be an interesting one to watch. But I’m just not sure if there’s a point to emulating Dwarf Fortress completely, because it’s not like we’re a big market. It’s not like people see our $50,000 a year and think ‘Hey, I want a piece of that pie.’ They’d much rather look towards things like Minecraft, where there are hundreds of millions of dollars.”

On the topic of Minecraft, Adams is hugely grateful whenever Markus Persson and co. says that the game is inspired by Dwarf Fortress — “that’s probably where half of our fans come from!” he laughs.

Going back to potential cloning, or perhaps even a Dwarf Fortress-like game that does the job better, Adams says it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

“We’re happy we’ve managed to stay afloat for so long,” he says. “I’m surprised that we haven’t had our wings clipped by somebody. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

Free-to-Survive

“I was reading on Gamasutra about ‘Is free-to-play ethical?’ and all that kind of thing, talking about monetization and Skinner Boxes,” Adams tells me. “We’re very fortunate that we’ve escaped from having those concerns, and managed to make a living somehow.”

Indeed, the way in which Dwarf Fortress is funded — a completely free game that survives via donations from players — is a far cry from the various business models that are carted around in the modern video game industry.

Adams reckons he knows exactly why his business model works for him, but wouldn’t work for many others.

“We’re not searching for a million-dollar hit, which is the feeling I get from other people — what they are searching for when they release on iPhone and so on,” he notes. “That’s not everybody, of course. But we don’t have to work that hard anymore, thinking about exactly how we’re going to monetize.”

“I’ve seen what people go through,” he continues. “Rocketcat Games (Punch Quest) lives out here, and we meet up with him sometimes. And it’s just a struggle, right? To decide how you wanna set up your free-to-play model. His was, what, too generous? So it didn’t work out. Those kind of decisions, we’ve been very fortunate to have enough wiggle-room to bobble the ball completely, which is what we’re doing.”

Those who have followed the Dwarf Fortress story will know that Adams sends out crayon drawings to people who donate money, and adds them to a “Champions’ List” — a rather different proposition to what game developers offer nowadays.

“I mean, that’s just completely weird, right?” he laughs. “But fortunately we don’t have high demands, we don’t need a lot of money, and we’re making just enough to tread water. $50,000 for two people a year.”

“I guess it’s like shareware,” he says of his own monetization technique. “We didn’t really take inspiration from anything. Someone said to us, ‘Why don’t you put up a PayPal button for your birthday so I can send you $50?’ And then over the next four or five months, we made around $300. I was still working then, and Dwarf Fortress wasn’t even out. Then we released the game, and started making $800, $1000 in the subsequent months. And we were like, ‘Maybe we actually have a shot.’ Now we’re averaging $4000 a month, baseline, which is crazy.”

With Dwarf Fortress making $50,000 a year from donations alone, I questioned what sort of spread of donations Adams received. I’d assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that it isn’t simply a bunch of people paying small amounts, but rather, Dwarf Fortress has its own “whales” — people paying silly, unnecessary amounts.

“There’s a subscriber system now, just because people asked for it,” he tells me. “There’s people who have given four-figure amounts. But these are not people who we necessarily haven’t talked to before — all of them send in their regards ahead of time, and they all know exactly what they’re getting, because they’ve all been playing the game for ages — years, in some cases — before they send anything. They’re not getting any sort of compensation for it besides some sort of story.”

“I guess there are lots of parallels to be drawn between the whale system,” he continues, “but there are people who give recurring money and large amounts. Some people have donated computers. Some people have donated their time — there’s a lot of volunteers handling the bug tracker and answering questions for people. There’s the guy who did the port for Mac and Linux — that was all free.”

Everyone just wants to see Dwarf Fortress development continue, he reasons, so if they like the game, it’s in their best interest to throw some money his way.

“I guess you could say the whale has an interest in receiving their present,” he adds. “It’s obviously a spectrum of giving — a spectrum of ethical behavior. I don’t know enough about what goes on in other markets to pass judgment offhand, but I know people talk about that.”

Hey Scenesters

While the Adams brothers are very clearly indie developers, it’s notable that the pair rarely converses with other indie devs, or gets involved with the “indie scene” at all.

“It’s not a deliberate thing,” Adams tells me. “It’s part of a personality thing, if anything. I didn’t have many friends growing up, and didn’t feel the need to hang out with anybody. So with Dwarf Fortress, I don’t really see the upside. I’ve never really been a Twitter/Facebook kind of guy. I mean, it’s fun to watch people talk to each other, but it’s never the sort of conversation I would participate in.”

That’s not to say that the brothers don’t ever participate. As previously mentioned, they’ve met up with Rocketcat Games and sampled a wide variety of mobile games that they wouldn’t ordinarily have tried. Plus, the pair went to the EVE Fanfest earlier this year in Iceland, with Adams as a speaker — “we accepted it because, you know, it was cool!”

But in general, Adams isn’t so keen on socializing with other devs. “Things like GDC to us, were not a place we were invited to go,” he says. “It was a place that you paid to go. And all the expos too. And networking never made sense to us, because of the nature of our situation.”

“It’s not like we’re going to look for a job if this doesn’t pan out — we’re not going to go and work for another studio or something,” he continues. “We’re just not interested in doing that. So there just hasn’t been a need for it, even though I’m sure we’d benefit from it a lot. We don’t feel like talking about the craft of game design or whatever. We kind of have a mature process, I guess, since we’ve been doing it for 13 years.”

Although Adams has a PhD in mathematics from Stanford University, and taught mathematics for a short while, he says that his lack of drive to socialize stunted his mathematics PhD work somewhat. As he points out, mathematics is a very social field, at times.

“As much as you imagine people in closets working out theorems in the dark or whatever, it’s all about co-authoring papers and not stepping on each other’s toes, and working together on things because it’s so complicated,” he says. “I’m just not a socially-constituted person, I guess.”

But despite his lack of social skills and his hiding himself away while he works on the game of his life, Adams is perfectly happy with where he is, and how the future is looking.

“I’m really satisfied with how things have turned out,” he explains. “Having spent 13 years, you can kind of talk about 20 years without seeming like a total prat [laughs]. But we fully recognize that when you’re talking about two decades in the future, who knows what the heck’s going to be going on, right? Anything could happen. We’ll be entering the age of health problems. Economic this and that.”

“But I feel more at ease,” he adds. It was something I never felt in mathematics when I was working on that stuff. I never reached a milestone like that. But who knows what’s going to happen next.”(source:gamasutra）