Dwarf Fortress' creator Tarn Adams is the antithesis of this guy, as far as I can see from a brief perusal of his articles beyond this one. Tarn is humble, often plays down his acheivements, is really interested in how his players and community interact with the systems, and builds out complexity based on the desires and needs of the players.

I don't mean to diminish the work of Crawford, but he is building the same kind of simulationst mechanisms that Adams is, but Adams hit on success partly because of his personality.

I agree - Adams is incredibly humble (and shy) - and he's driven by making the game he wants to play; he cares less about the mechanisms and more about the results - he wants edifying gameplay and a game that can tell STORIES.

It's almost perfectly the academic/amateur divide if you will; which is amusing given Adams' background in education.