Tarn Adams Going Full Time

By: Derek Yu

On: May 7th, 2007

Here’s something that the Something Awful guys and I can agree on: Dwarf Fortress is awesome. Which is why I was elated to hear that creator Tarn Adams (aka Toady One) has decided to go full time:

“He he he, I’ve been out of school for two years. I’m quitting my job as a visiting assistant math professor (like a baby professor) to write video games, DF in particular. Ideally, I’ll be supported by the DF community. Realistically, who knows? Right now I can pay for food, utilities and a slice of rent on donations, and I’ve saved enough money to make an honest effort for some months after I leave my job mid-May. I’m hopeful that when I finally have my time freed up I can push things forward to the point where the project generates enough interest that I’ll be able to pay my bills and maybe even get health insurance or something. Whether or not that’s optimistic remains to be seen, but I think it’s worth a try.”

Donationware is a tough route, but I would love to see Tarn get to make DF a living! Given his insane pace, one can only imagine what the game could look like with a few years of full time work. Send money!

Posted in Community, Developers, Roguelikes | Tags: TarnAdams

Pyabo

Unfortunately, history tells us that this is a pie in the sky idea. He needs to go Shareware route in order to support himself. I don’t know of a single instance of someone successfully managing to live off donations (except Sally Struthers). Someone point out a counter-example if they can…
Pragma

@Pyabo: Well Penny Arcade went the donation route for a little while before going with quality banner ads on their site. Granted, they’re damn good at what they do and deserve every cent they get.

They’ve shown that running an entertainment site on a donation basis works if:

– you have an established audience, and are already wildly popular
– offer exclusive content each month as an incentive to donate
– plan on abandoning the donation route once something better comes along

So there’s a way to do it, but it would probably help if the guy had a popular web-comic instead. That said, I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance going this route for indie game software – certainly not an ASCII-text based one.
raigan

i don’t know — if he’s getting enough donations to pay for food+utils+some rent, that’s a pretty substantial stream of donations!

it seems reasonable to count on donations increasing as the audience expands.. assuming that’s been the pattern thus far.
ZombiePixel

There always ancillary products if he can come up with something cool / funny like little vinyl ASCII shaped action figures.

The Strongbad series developers support themselves on ancillary products, no pay-per-view content or advertising.
moi

That’s one bad career choice if I can see one!
Being part time professor is a good way to pay the bills while working on a game, no need to quit.
And DF doesn’t have enough production values ATM IMO, it will need a heck of a lot of work and time before he can live from selling it. I’m not even going to talk about donaitons…
ds

He plans to sell it, eventually. It’s only donationware while it’s in alpha.
failrate

Awesome! Just that he has the balls to try is frigging awesome.

Also, I think it’s time we develop next-gen ASCII shaders :D
Thom

ds, are you sure? I seem to remember a thread on the DF forums where Tarn says that DF will always be freeware or possibly beerware, forever.

Although after a quick search, I can’t find it.
http://www.arsecast.com DrDerekDoctors

I’d happily buy a shareware version on the proviso that it had proper graphics (so I didn’t have to refer to a chart while I was learning) and something approaching a learning curve or tutorial.

I utterly adore the idea of a hugely sandbox game, but it does my cob in at the moment.
CosMind

@Pyabo

i counter that!
:P

the cat who started

kingdom of loathing
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com

not only “got by” on donation only, but was pulling in over 140 grand a year, and had to hire others to help him keep up with the user base (from what i read in a previous wired magazine).

to be perfectly honest, i’m not sure that i even agree with the majority sentiment that donation is less lucrative/more challenging than shareware or even straight commercial digital distribution. from my perspective, it’s actually the most viable and wise option to persue. you just have to be really creative with how it applies to your game…
John H.

Donations are an exceptionally difficult route to go.

Most people who survive this way actually supplement their income through things like merchandise sales (Penny Arcade) and selling game items (like Kingdom of Loathing, which does it in probably the least evil way possible).

If anyone deserves to make it though it’s the Dwarf Fortress guy.