Good point. This is most obvious on Minecraft. Minecraft, to me, is a visual 3d database -- digging dirt doesn't remove something, it merely changes the value

Good point. This is most obvious on Minecraft. Minecraft, to me, is a visual 3d database -- digging dirt doesn't remove something, it merely changes the value for that block in the database -- from "dirt" to "air" -- which changes how the game's algorithms act. And the game still ships with "developer graphics" which would have been easy for a TNT to run.