Totally agree. You can't reduce an experience like Minecraft to any one thing, it's the formula that makes it so enduring. re: harping on Minecrafts graphics,

Totally agree. You can't reduce an experience like Minecraft to any one thing, it's the formula that makes it so enduring. re: harping on Minecrafts graphics, there's a lot of people that completely misunderstand the purpose of graphics in games and just think greater fidelity = better. Sure, in AAA games especially, graphics are there to sell the game, and that's certainly one part of the creative ensemble that the medium is known for. However, graphics also enable game designs. These include creating a sense of grandeur or plausibility (high fidelity), making fast feedback loops easier to see (high contrast effects), allowing for visual challenges (hidden items), freeing resources (low fidelity), and probably most importantly, drawing attention to relevant parts of play. The best creative decisions are those that tend to check a lot of boxes with a single decision, and Minecraft's lo-fi style really did that. It enabled complexity within performance constraints, drew attention to the resource game and away from the visuals, defined it's own aesthetic reminiscent of older games, and allowed the game to be built with a very small team without a lot of art skill. Basically notch took lemons and made lemonade, and it worked. My favorite part of the Minecraft aesthetic though is that it implies you can create, making the whole world creatively legible with big blocks. Other creation games in 2d & 3d just don't have this degree of creative suggestiveness, they look too much like other read-only games to make you feel like you're an equal participant in play.