Kitfox CEO says hours of Civilization may have helped her run the studio

Tanya X. Short is co-founder and CEO of Kitfox Games, the publisher behind titles such as Dwarf Fortress and Caves of Qud. She notes that Dwarf Fortress has been playable for 20 years and says the studio will be celebrating the milestone throughout the year. Short recently finished TR-49, which she describes as a fresh take on the database game where characters are secondary to the act of trawling a database.

She praised its clear, tight focus and contrasted that design with Kitfox's approach, observing that the studio is "all eggs in one giant basket." Steam playtime figures include lengthy sessions in several games, and Short says Civilization was one of the first PC titles to really steal her heart.

She calls herself a "Civilization type personality worker," someone who enjoys plate spinning by starting multiple projects and checking back on them, and suggests that habit may have helped her learn to alternate between science trees and army defences as a studio head.

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