From my observation point as a gamer who plays a lot of strategy games, he did actually come up with something quite novel (when it was new). However, what he built is now extremely common in the strategy genre - practically every game out there is doing exactly what he's describing. They all independently invented similar solutions to the same problems.
He genuinely just seems to be unaware that these other games exist, which really doesn't surprise me because there's so much stuff out there, and because the strategy genre's become (with a few high-profile exceptions) a sort of under-the-radar AA-grade experience, where people are putting out solid games with good presentation value, but they're not carpet-bombing the world with marketing, or trying to sell them at Walmart. I'm an avid gamer and there are entire genres, with multi-million dollar titles in them that I'm mostly (or completely) oblivious to.
There are just a lot of games that, despite having production quality that beats the pants off a lot of 90s/00s games, no longer bother doing "push" advertising that intrudes into your life, because it's just no longer economical to do.
He genuinely just seems to be unaware that these other games exist, which really doesn't surprise me because there's so much stuff out there, and because the strategy genre's become (with a few high-profile exceptions) a sort of under-the-radar AA-grade experience, where people are putting out solid games with good presentation value, but they're not carpet-bombing the world with marketing, or trying to sell them at Walmart. I'm an avid gamer and there are entire genres, with multi-million dollar titles in them that I'm mostly (or completely) oblivious to.
There are just a lot of games that, despite having production quality that beats the pants off a lot of 90s/00s games, no longer bother doing "push" advertising that intrudes into your life, because it's just no longer economical to do.