Mark Darrah, co-director of Dragon Age: Origins, has played Riven for 3 minutes and Factorio for 832 hours: 'If you want to know what kind of programmer someone would be, have them play Factorio'

Mark Darrah, co-director of Dragon Age: Origins, has spent only three minutes playing Riven and 832 hours playing Factorio, according to a recent interview. Darrah, who has worked at BioWare for 23 years, sees Factorio as a good indicator of a programmer's skills. He explains that examining someone's Factorio base after 25 hours can reveal their programming abilities, as the game allows programmers to maintain and optimize complex systems.

Darrah has been playing Factorio since before the release of BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition and finds that his son, who has an engineering mindset, approaches the game differently than he does. The programmer discusses his various games, from Eternal Strands to Riven, with the latter being the oldest game still installed on his PC.

Despite his extensive experience, Darrah admits that he is not as skilled as the average player in games he has worked on, attributing this to the unique challenges of game development.