Mark Darrah has spent 832 hours playing Factorio with his son, and he has no problem admitting his bases look like they were built by an amoeba. Darrah is the co-director of Dragon Age: Origins and the director of Dragon Age 2, but when it comes to base-building, he admits he is no engineer.
The game developer, who left BioWare after 23 years to run a game design consultancy and moonlight as a YouTuber, sat down to talk about his Steam library for the site’s regular weekend feature. The interview delved into the deep roads of his installed games, from the ancient Riven, which he has put only three minutes into, to the sprawling Space Age expansion of Factorio.
Darrah’s Factorio Admission
Darrah’s approach to Factorio is refreshingly honest. He says if you want to know what kind of programmer someone is, “have them play Factorio for 25 hours and look at what their base looks like.” He admits his bases are functional but messy, with binder twine and duct tape holding them together.
“I’m a programmer who will keep it working, but also there’s going to be a lot of binder twine and duct tape holding the thing together, and definitely you can see that in my Factorio bases,” he says.
The comparison to his consulting work is clear. He works with someone who now teaches game development at a college and wonders why Darrah gives away so much information for free. Darrah’s approach to Factorio is the same: functional but messy, with the duct tape showing.
From C&C to BioWare
Darrah’s career began with a childhood encounter with Command & Conquer. He recalls the moment the game’s storytelling drew him in, even though he does not reminisce about games he played in his youth.
“The thing that probably affected me for the longest, the most deeply, was that you could do storytelling for real,” Darrah says. “It had cinematic storytelling, at least for the time [and] I think the original Command & Conquer had a branching storyline.”
Two years after C&C’s release, Darrah joined BioWare as a programmer. He worked on Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, and Jade Empire. He is best known as the executive producer of the Dragon Age series, a role that made him co-director of Dragon Age: Origins and director of Dragon Age 2.
In 2021, Darrah departed BioWare after 23 years at the studio. Today, he runs a game design consultancy and posts development memories and lessons on his channel.
The Son Who Rebuilt His Bases
Darrah’s son shares his love of Factorio, but he approaches the game in a completely different way. Darrah says his son has an engineering mind, and he plans out the base, deconstructs it, and reconstructs it with a level of organization that Darrah himself never achieves.
“My base has always ended up being these amoeba monstrosities,” Darrah says.
The two play together, and Darrah says the new expansion pack, Space Age, is still what they play together. He has played Factorio since before Mass Effect: Inquisition shipped, so more than 12 years.
Three Games in One
Darrah has issues with how Factorio has grown over time. He says the game is now three different games wrapped into one.
“There’s the beginning part where you’re running around, which I actually find excruciating,” he says. “Then there’s the middle part where, mostly, I’ve automated everything, and then now you’ve got this third part where it’s like ‘OK, now I’ve got multiple planets on the go, I’m building spaceships.’ And that’s really interesting, but it is different because your little guy’s presence in the game is almost irrelevant.”
Eternal Strands and Magicka
The previous game Darrah played was Eternal Strands. He has a certain bias there because of his relationship with people in the studio, but he thinks it is a very good first game. He compares its combat to Magicka, a top-down game where players combined different elements.
“The game that it reminds me of—there’s a game where you played a wizard and you combined different elements, and it was a top-down game—Magicka! The combat in Eternal Strands reminds me of Magicka in a good way,” Darrah says.
Riven and Puzzle Design
The oldest game by release date on Darrah’s computer is Riven, which he has not actually played. He has only put three minutes into it, and he says he still has not played it.
“I have Riven installed,” he says. “I didn’t play Riven before, and I have only put three minutes into Riven, so I still haven’t played Riven. I’ve heard people talk about it from a puzzle design perspective. I definitely feel like there’s an art to puzzle design that I feel like I could develop. I’ve never done puzzle design. I wasn’t responsible for puzzles that existed in any of the Dragon Age games.”
The BioWare philosophy, he says, has always been to make sure that all puzzles could be completed by all people, often in heavy-handed ways. A puzzle game like Riven cannot do that.
Learning From Factorio and Riven
Darrah’s reason for installing Riven is simple: he wants to learn something from it. The game has come up in conversations at least twice in the last two years, and he sees that as a good sign.
“Let’s play this game—which I have not done—and let’s see what there is to be learned,” he says. “Because it’s come up in conversations at least twice in the last two years. So I think for a game that old, that’s a good sign that there’s something there to be learned.”
If you exclude remasters, the next oldest game might be Dragon Age: Origins. Darrah does not play games he worked on after they come out, but he played some on stream for his channel.
“I do not play games I work on after they come out [but] I played some on stream for my channel, and whenever I do a video where I’m going to talk about what I remember with the game, I play the game long enough to capture footage to use as background for the video,” he says.
Darrah’s Approach to Games
Darrah’s approach to gaming is not about perfection. It is about the process and the lessons it teaches. He has played Factorio for more than 12 years, and he knows his bases are not pretty.
His bases are functional, but they are held together with binder twine and duct tape. That is the kind of programmer he is.
“Factorio for 25 hours and look at what their base looks like,” he says. “I’m a programmer who will keep it working, but also there’s going to be a lot of binder twine and duct tape holding the thing together.”
Key Facts Box
- Mark Darrah is a co-director of Dragon Age: Origins and director of Dragon Age 2
- He left BioWare after 23 years in 2021
- He has played Factorio for 832 hours
- He has played Riven for 3 minutes
- The games he recommends for judging a programmer: Factorio for 25 hours
- His son approaches base-building differently than he does
The interview is a reminder that even the people who build the games sometimes have messy bases. Darrah is proud of his functional mess. He is a programmer who will keep it working, and he knows it.
See the video the story is built around at PC Gamer.
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