This depends largely on your expectation for what a 'game' should be.

Puzzle boxes, for example, have zero on ramp, and yet many many people enjoy them, enjoy the struggle of discovery.

Arguably the edges of mathematics and science are inhabited by similar people, living where the rules are ill defined, where there is much to be discovered rather than pre-digested and spoon fed.

I have little patience for games that don't spoon feed, so I get where you're coming from. I watched my brother play DF and decided I didn't want to spend my time like that, trying to parse ascii, trying to figure out how all the things interacted.

I also don't like puzzle boxes that much.

To each their own.

I found exactly the discovery fulfilling in Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld and Minecraft. Once I mastered those (well, maybe it is fairer to say "once I plateaued", there are way more skilled players than me) I found much less interest in them. Sure, I still play occasionally for a bit after a big update drops, but that is pretty much it. Oh and yeah, puzzle focused games (as long as it isn't slide puzzles) are great too. I fondly remember Myst, Monkey Island and other puzzle games like that.

Some people like games where you need to grind (idle clicker games seem to be purest/insanest form of that), and that is something I don't get at all. It is just pointless busywork, just like those repetitive achievements ("kill N enemies with X style attacks") or collectables. (Achievements that are on the form "find this hidden thing" or "do this out of the box thing once" I do understand more.)

To each their own indeed.

>It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding.

No, it is a games job to be entertaining for those it was designed to entertain.

>It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.

Certainly there are many people who take a longer time to learn and grasp concepts and find challenging tasks something to be avoided, and this game isn't for you! That doesn't mean that every game should be designed so that the lowest commoner denominator can understand and enjoy the game! Some people not only enjoy being challenged by complex games, but seek those out those challenges and that complexity. The game market is flooded with easy to learn and easy to win games designed and made for simpletons, so there's no reason for you to complain about the rare game (these days) that deviates from that.

You're totally allowed to have that opinion. Time is valuable. It does have a tutorial nowadays, but it's still not easy.

Not everyone _wants_ to learn Dwarf Fortress, and that's fine - it's not for everyone.

But I'm just providing context that, for those of us that have learned, it is a great game.

Not every game can be for everyone, and Dwarf Fortress is not a game for people who want onramps. “Shitty game design” is subjective, I guess.

Maybe the Steam page is too slick? I can’t imagine somebody going to the old dwarf fortress page and thinking “this is a game I’ll pick up easily!”

No.

Dwarf fortress challenged what I thought the rules of game design were.

It was absurd amounts of fun. I was happy to go through the tutorials or ask questions on bay12.

Figuring out how things worked, and then using those skills to explore the world was fun. It was also internally consistent.

The game simply isn’t for you.

Somebody didn't grow up with early console games.

To this day, I never managed to get ET out of that ditch

>It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding.

Its the games job to present their unique style of fun to the market, and let the market sort it out. A game made by 2 blokes has to have a set of priorities, and their priority has always been the simulation.

>It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”

I mean, ignore Dwarf Fortress for a minute, this is exactly what Paradox has built its little empire on. I was at 300+ hours of Crusader Kings 2 and had only a sort of intuitive grasp of most of the games systems. And at the time, most of the safer european powers were at risk of just getting rolled off the map by the golden horde mid game, and the work arounds for that were quite insane. I still dont reckon I have the war/conflict systems mastered. Paradox does tutorials, they just suck immensely and you end up on the forums or wikis anyway.

Dwarf fortress has managed to create a game with that kind of skill curve with 0.0001% of the resources.

>that’s just shitty game design.

I feel sorry for you, I get the impression that this hostility is coming from a place where you really wish you could share in these fantastic games but haven't quite got the gumption to stick with them. I get it I really do, I mod Battle Brothers to make it easier, because I love the texture of the game but I haven't been able to master the combat or save scumming required to play at a real difficulty.

Is it your job to define jobs?

If you have a steady food supply and you can hold off a military attack you're playing "the real game". A handful of hours can get you there, and you'll be learning plenty fast.

Why is it the games job to handhold you?

Why is it a game's job to be fun?

DF is extremely fun.

No, that’s not a game’s job. You will not enjoy every game. Those games that you did not enjoy are not necessarily failures. They are simply games that _you_ did not enjoy.

Sure, that's not what I'm saying though. It's the job of the game to be fun in general, not in specific to some individual, and one of those ways is to have a good onboarding experience. People saying DF is fun are having fun despite its terrible onboarding, not because of it; in other words, cope.

I remember the "onboarding experience" essentially being losing over and over again and learning from my mistakes, getting a little further or trying a new approach altogether on each new attempt. Maybe it's an acquired taste but by the time I started playing Dwarf Fortress, I was not only already used to that, but thoroughly enjoying it as a core mechanic of games like Rogue, NetHack and Ancient Domains of Mystery.

I don't believe in the concept of "fun in general" in the sense you imply here. I've played very successful games that have evidently achieved popular appeal but that nonetheless turn me off because they're the absolute opposite of Dwarf Fortress: carefully manufactured designs of intentional experiences that you are guided through at every step. Some people really like that, some will want to be thrown in the wilderness with no clue, some want something in-between. Different strokes for different folks.

Some games are not fun to anyone, that is what I'm talking about for fun in generality. Games must be fun for someone, at least some number of people, to be called a good game. Some games get there with a good onboarding and some do it despite that as I said.

Sure, maybe someone may enjoy Dwarf Fortress despite that, but as I recalled from my own experience, it wasn't despite it that I enjoyed getting into Dwarf Fortress, but in large part because of it.

So are you wrong in saying generally that it's "despite its terrible onboarding, not because of it", or am I coping by lying? Mind you, Dwarf Fortress is preceded by a whole genre of more traditional Rogue-like games that made losing hundreds or thousands of times for a lack of knowledge of the games' systems before you figured them out a fundamental part of their appeal, so I'm not exactly alone in this.

No, no. If you cannot figure out a game then it won’t be fun, and you won’t enjoy it. But other people _will_ figure it out, and will enjoy it. And many of them will enjoy it more _because_ it was challenging to figure out and to do well at. It’s ok to write an approachable game, but not all games must be approachable.

They should be approachable to have the maximum number of people be able to enjoy them and even cynically increase sales. That some people find them fun despite the lack of approachability is just that, cope.

Plenty of players have fun with the game, regardless of your personal opinions on the "on-boarding experience".

I think you want this game to be something it's not. It's not a casual game for casual gamers. It's a game whose mantra is literally "losing is fun". It's esoteric menus and attention to detail are the result of decades of work by a couple of guys that just wanted to make the game they and their fans wanted to make.

It's imperfections are part of it's charm and if that turns you off from the game then it's not for you and that's OK.

I play Dwarf Fortress quite a bit. It does not stop me seeing the flaws in it. It is not perfect so I'm not sure why people act like it is, they're just coping that it doesn't have a good onboarding experience and once Tarn adds it (as he's always been doing), suddenly gamers will act as if that's what was missing all this time. It's a sense of hypocrisy I've not seen elsewhere.

> It does not stop me seeing the flaws in it. It is not perfect so I'm not sure why people act like it is

You're being way too dismissive of people that think the onboarding is reasonable. They can disagree with that without being blinded and thinking the game is flawless.

Because it’s not a complete or compelling experience if the systems aren’t naturally exposed and taught over time in a progressive manner. This has been a cornerstone of good game design for over 30 years.

>This has been a cornerstone of good game design for over 30 years.

First, this is completely wrong. There are many good games that have been designed over the last 30 years that didn't assume you were an invalid and needed your hand hand held every step of the way.

Second, many of us (including myself) have been playing computer games for ~50 years! In the 80s and 90s the average game was far more difficult than even the most difficult games put out today. It wasn't assumed that everyone, or even most people, were ever going to beat the game. There were games I played for hundreds of hours back then, and enjoyed greatly, that I never finished or even mastered all the complexities of! That didn't make it any less fun. I want to be challenged by a game. If I load up a game and am spoon-fed everything it isn't a game I play for long.

>good game design

There are plenty of good or even great games that dont give a shit about "good game design". And developing in the direction of "good game design" is sort of like Carcinization, AAA games have been tending towards a single unified structure. Its great for mass media but its terrible for art.

I learned Dwarf Fort through a mate of mine. We both played separately, and we would have phone calls discussing how we were able to achieve x or y outcome. Eventually we determined an ideal set of bootstraps to achieve a plateau of semi functional Dwarf society.

And then they dropped the dwarf economy update, and everything went to shit and we got to relearn how to pick ourselves up all over again.

Then Bees, then Taverns and Travellers. Then Danger Rooms started causing more serious wounds.

You are welcome to limit yourself to AAA games and yellow paint but thats you deciding to artificially limit what experiences you participate in. It doesnt cast a single shadow on people tooling around and experiencing the art of games.

I wouldn't consider that a universal feature. It can certainly help, especially if you are aiming for a generalized audience, but not every game needs to be either intended for or accessible to every person.

I would use Crusader Kings as an example, it doesn't even seem like a game at first, you have no idea what is going on, and large swaths of options and features may take dozens of hours to stumble across. But yet it is still a great game with many fans and players.

> it doesn't even seem like a game at first, you have no idea what is going on, and large swaths of options and features may take dozens of hours to stumble across

For me personally, figuring these things out was the most fun I got out of such games. I had an absolute blast loading CK2 without a tutorial and spending the next several hours trying to figure out what is all this nonsense about. Same with DF btw, once I figured out the idea, mechanics, control, and played for some hours to learn to build a somewhat sustainable fortress, it kinda stopped being fun.

There are notable counterexamples. I find life to be both complete and compelling as experience.

Eh, I definitely can't agree with this one. Some of the most beloved games of all time had effectively no on-ramp of any kind - especially if you're willing to go back 30 years - and none of the fans of those games would say "they are not compelling experiences" because of a learning cliff.

Religiously subscribing to every "cornerstone of great game design" is how you end up with the plain oatmeal of videogames. Inoffensive, bland, and easily forgotten.

I, for one, hate games spoonfeeding me. Most games are unlikely to be a player's first videogame. I don't need every damn mechanic tutorialized. Present me with my toolbox, and let me get to it.

Skill issue.

Claiming the game of systems and their interactions is not complete or compelling because it doesn't hold you hand is laughable.

Not everything has to be made or everyone, in fact I would argue that is exactly the reason games these days are bland and identical.

Press "F" to pay respects.