cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/49343322
Widelands is a free, open source real-time strategy game with singleplayer campaigns and a multiplayer mode. The game was inspired by Settlers II™ (© Bluebyte) but has significantly more variety and depth to it.
Source - Website
Right, so you’re not in the intended audience for the game. That’s fine! Not every game is made for every gamer. Many are made for very specific niche audiences! The RTS genre is already like this, and these graphics are pretty much exactly in line with what the audience for classic RTS games expect. It’s very similar to Age of Empires II.
Absolutely!
My only take is that disregarding graphics as something not important and not influencing anything or anyone is not right.
Plenty of people, me included, care for the high-quality assets in the game, and that's a big factor. Honestly, as I see it, there are two reasons open-source games don't commonly gain massive traction: they don't have the budget for massive marketing, and they don't look on par with AAA games which still attract most gamers with visuals.
The niche audiences can be served, just not your everyday gamer.