Minecraft really should have been the end of anyone saying that graphics are more important than gameplay.
It's the definitive example of how you can make a game with graphics that are not only simple, but often quite ugly, and still capture a huge and diverse portion of the market with engaging gameplay.
Honestly, AAA games are getting more boring every year. It's all graphics and story, with no appreciation of the unique power of games (like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress) to give players the tools to make their own stories.
No, Minecraft has graphics, and a very specific style of graphics, without which it would have failed miserably.
Minecraft's graphics were critical.
The simplistic graphic style was required to grab basic gamers by literally assisting the gameplay. The '8 bit' looking block building style makes it dead simple for almost anybody to play the game and build things. The graphics in Minecraft are like having a guide rail.
That’s all gameplay and has nothing to do with graphics.
Anti-aliasing and all that tech, better (professionally) drawn textures, etc. – all that could be done without affecting gameplay.
I agree with you that the 1×1×1 meter block is of central importance to the game’s success. It creates a game that strikes a perfect balance between giving you power to manipulate the world and giving you simple enough tools to manipulate the world. 3D editors exist but only very few people find playing around and creating worlds with them to be fun. Minecraft is much less powerful than a 3D editor (since it restricts you to those 1×1×1 meter blocks), but by reducing that power it is able to give you accessible tools. (There is obviously also a technical reason. Making the basic unit smaller than those blocks makes the worlds more computationally intensive.)
Yeah, having 1×1×1 meter blocks restricts the graphics, but that’s a consequence of a gameplay decision. That’s the causal link there.
I think the graphics played some role in Minecraft’s success, but only insofar as they were serviceable and not completely terrible.
It's the definitive example of how you can make a game with graphics that are not only simple, but often quite ugly, and still capture a huge and diverse portion of the market with engaging gameplay.
Honestly, AAA games are getting more boring every year. It's all graphics and story, with no appreciation of the unique power of games (like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress) to give players the tools to make their own stories.