You know, the obtuse interface and ASCII graphics of Dwarf Fortress don't bother me but they do hold me back from recommending it. I grew up on the Ultima series, MUDs and old-school roguelikes so my standards here are a bit dated. For a kid growing up in the age of Dark Souls III, a game like Dwarf Fortress might be relentlessly difficult to get into.
[1] http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/physics-teacher-blasts-his-stu...
Its a fun game, but not that kid friendly IMO.
KSP and Factorio are both better options.
Dwarf Fortress is fun, but different. It feels more like a narrative generator to me.
Edit: unsure why this is downvoted. People don't 'graduate' to games, each one appeals to people for different reasons. If you want your kids to play a more educational game, minecraft with mods is that game.
Would it make sense to just go full hacker culture like FB from the beginning without any serious management layer and goes small team instead of big team?
Then there's also the pressure to agree to a similar narrative, not necessarily in a bad way, just like any couple has agreed on a how they met story, they've been telling it for so long and had the arguments about "did that happen?" that the story has been set. Who knows what happened.
You'd have to assemble a collage of The Official Story, some of the weirder first interviews the group gave in the press, early non-hires who interviewed and caught a glimpse of a weird snapshot, the inevitable disgruntled folk (who may not inevitably wrong).
Aside from that, I do like http://justinkan.com/three-stories , it's a good series of disasters.
Dwarf Fortress is not particularly difficult once you figure out the obtuse interface. It's only a little bit more difficult than Minecraft without the boss fights. I got bored in a few months. Admittedly, much of this was the tendency of the game to slow my machine to a dead crawl. Once you're proficient at avoiding the pitfalls, the only really interesting thing to do is to keep growing the fortress. Sadly, the performance cliff is steep.
Fortunately, I've never seen this manifest in a startup before my own eyes (at least in an extreme way), but I'm sure someone else has a story to share.
That's because, however tough the entrepreneurship may seem, the businesses are part of the larger society which is collectively protected to a high degree from many society-devastating causes. I've mentioned this before¹: "The world around you and your loved ones is relatively safe thanks to multitude of operating services that make sure that the individuals roaming free are not that crazy, not that malevolent, not that contagious, and in short will not have that much of a negative impact on society at large (which includes you)." Of course, the environment of the Dwarf Fortress does not promise you that kind of protection.
"Unicorn products are worth four times as much as domestic animals, making unicorn genocide in the name of profit an attractive proposition."
- DF Wiki http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unicorn
I'd guess that the average Dwarf Fortress erm, Fortress, and the average startup fail at about the same rate. For, basically, the same reasons: too many unknowns, random events and morale.
2) Have a super complex UI.
3) Cats will end the world.
4) Kill the rich nobles (management) asap.
