That’s what I have been thinking about as well. At first I thought that 0x10c will be a game for an extremely small niche, enough to not really be a failure (at least if you don’t compare it to Minecraft) but not enough to be a true success.

That is still very possible (I think it’s also possible that Notch doesn’t really have a well-thought out plan, that all this wasn’t planned and that he just did what he can do best, playing around with a game concept and having fun, all alone. I’m not arguing that’s a bad thing.) but the game has certain properties that could make it a success, even if it seems incredibly nerdy.

Only a handful people had to re-build the Enterprise in Minecraft and make a video of it. Only a handful people had to build ALUs and CPUs in Minecraft and make a video of them. Only a handful people had to design practical redstone and rail contraptions and make video tutorials. Only a handful people had to build tools, make texture packs and code mods. Only a handful people had to make adventure maps.

0x10c could be similar: Only a handful of people have to write software (and judging from the initial response, that handful will be quite the handful). And someone writes really cool software and shows it off in an YouTube video others who have no intention of ever really understanding the DCPU-16 nevertheless have a reason to check out the game and run that software.

There is obviously more to a game than that, but I do think that 0x10c has at least the potential to be quite popular even for those who don’t know how to write assembler.