Tarn Adams, creator of Dwarf Fortress, had some choice words for gaming's executive class when he sat down with PC Gamer at Gamescom 2026. His take is pretty bleak: "They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job. So I don't see that going anywhere sustainable, and I feel like there will simply be a pop and a reckoning."
Adams sees the AI obsession bleeding into every industry, not just games. "Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis," he said, describing managers fixating on whether employees used AI on their commits and quietly planning to replace them with machines. He grounded it in something personal: his own father got laid off from a sewage treatment plant because management didn't understand what his job actually involved. The company didn't survive long after. His conclusion: "It's just the same old shit."
On a lighter note, Adams also mourned a smaller casualty of the AI moment: he can no longer use the phrase "dwarf AI" when talking about his game. "They took the letters from me! I have to talk about dwarf behavior now. It doesn't exist. It's dwarf behavior, and they misbehave sometimes." Rough times all around.
Alex
Catch-all — action, adventure, simulation, racing, casual, horror, puzzle
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