Ok, so how close is minecraft as a "toolkit" for converting ascii games to graphical? I don't know how minecraft servers/mods/etc work, I just have been watching my kid's JJ/Mikey with him. I squarely missed the minecraft crazy, I was post-college.
But DF could be (squints) converted to some minecraft "world" couldn't it? How hard is it to do minecraft worlds that would mirror/translate/active generate from some complex sim process like DF?
The only dwarf fortress players I know IRL are also skilled with and interested in computers. Normies aren’t sinking 6 weeks (what it took me) to ramp up on DF, and certainly wouldn’t have in 2013
Don't underestimate what tiles do for a game in terms of (perceived) accessibility. Anecdotally my kids (under 11), who will almost certainly abandon the game after playing it, are demanding that we get it because they like what they are seeing, they like drama (dwarfs into zombies), they like building and crafting (infinite possibilities vs. MC). Now it's true that I've been talking about it, so they are feeding on my hype, but they are also genuinely intrigued by it. I think the viral potential of DF went way up with the recent release, it might not be completely unheard of as common amongst the broader gaming populace in the future.
We may be in a post-Minecraft world but Dwarf Fortress does not come from one. It predates, and was in fact a major source of inspiration for, Minecraft.
If we're talking about whether the highly obtuse ASCII version of DF should have monetized earlier we cannot point to its highly accessible direct descendant from seven years later.
With better games than Minecraft? Not many. Not many at all.
Any game that isn't a building game is immediately disqualified from consideration, since most games focus on you consuming level content made by others instead of expressing your own creativity, and no such game can be considered better than Minecraft. And Minecraft is simply the best building game out there, I'm open to suggestions but I've seen and played a lot of building / digital lego games and none of the rest can hold a candle to Minecraft balance of streamlined simplicity and creative versatility.
If you're looking for a game that is specifically about building and sailing battleships, or cars, or rockets, or cities, then there are better games than Minecraft. But minecraft is more generalist, you can build anything from cute cottages to digital computers in minecraft, it has the broadest general appeal of any building game I've ever heard of.
It was pretty obvious to me from the start, from the beta days in 2010 anyway, that Minecraft would be a massive success. Even in that early state all the elements were there to make it massively successful. And compared to other digital lego games at that time, it was hands down the best there was. I've seen Infiniminer, don't try to tell me that it was pure luck that Minecraft succeeded where Infiniminer languished in obscurity.
Minecraft was a sandbox single-dev game that broke every mold and trope, and sold for $4 billion.
Me claiming that DF could be worth $100M in a world where Minecraft was worth $4B and is likely worth much more now... not a crazy take.