Dwarf Fortress: You have a team of hundreds working for four years to make a game where you save the world again. We have one guy for four years build a world, populate it, write the physics, and have you beat the shit out of it. Your guys suck.
Actually, considering that DF's world is generated procedurally, it's really not that bad. A hell of a coding job, but The Toady One has removed the need to create art assets, dialog, storylines, and any of that stuff. He doesn't really build a world and populate it, he wrote a very nice set of rules that tell your computer how to put together a near-infinite number of worlds, and populate them with a near-infinite number of distinct individuals. In a normal game, where all this has to be done by hand, that's at least half of the work burden right there. I'm not in any way undermining Tarn's (if I may call him Tarn) accomplishments, but compared to a AAA game, this isn't quite as much work. It's still a lot, but it's not as much as goes into, say, Uncharted. A very pretty game, with lots of very nice gameplay, and beautiful scenery and setpieces (And did I mention it's beautiful?), but a short game (6-15 hours, depending on skill and difficulty levels). Compare that with DF, where you have near-infinite hours of gameplay just because of the masses of different combinations that go into a single fort/adventurer.
Interestingly though, and likely because of the lack of graphics/art assets/designers to tie up funds and time, Toady has put all that effort into creating good,
deep gameplay. I can't speak for everyone, but a game with this level of depths and a lot more polish (Chiefly bugfixes and a more intuitive interface) would be cheaper to produce, and could easily sell for the prices that most AAA companies are offering now, possibly more.
This really isn't me suggesting a tagline, though so:
Dwarf Fortress: ARE YOU SEEING THIS, GAME DEVS?!?
