The alternative hypothesis is that many great minds have been introduced to the world of programming and engineering by games like Factorio, Minecraft, and Kerb

The alternative hypothesis is that many great minds have been introduced to the world of programming and engineering by games like Factorio, Minecraft, and Kerbal. Maybe people who would have never explored those fields otherwise. I also don't buy into the idea that if these games didn't exist, those types of people would instead be naturally spending all their time tinkering on things that would drive scientific and engineering progress.