0AD, an open source historical RTS in development for 22 years
How did this find players? People want "more Age of Empires II" (and to some extent more Age of Mythology). In the most literal sense of those words. 0AD got there earlier.Other previous discussions (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684532) were about pathfinding in this game. The pathfinding in AoEII is something. It's neither naturalistic, immersive, nor intellectually stimulating, which would be goals of mine and probably the average game designer in 2023. I'm not going to say how I really feel because I don't want to be downvoted over something stupid. The important thing is people love this pathfinding. It's worthy of copying.0AD: People love more of the same. Another free & open source example is Pokemon Showdown. People want original untainted Pokemon so badly that Pokemon Showdown still has concurrents in the tens of thousands. Who wants to play competitive Wikipedia? Nearly a million people a day do.Commercially: There was an audience for "more Breath of the Wild" before TOTK: Genshin Impact. League of Legends is more than a decade old now. Counter-Strike is almost as old as 0AD. Old reigns supreme.