In the actual implementation of Minecraft yes, regarding the concept i disagree. I'm no game designer, but I imagine that having a block based game with similar mechanics could be implemented a lot more "down to the metal". Procedural terrain generation has been around for a while, the crafting system is simple (maximum of 9 items => 1 item), and vanilla minecraft only uses less than 700 ids for blocks and items. Tool effects on blocks are relatively simple, and a lot of the other complexity can be done without (say rendering arrow flight paths or items dropped onto the floor). Which doesn't mean the current implemenation isn't somewhat cludged together, much to the chagrin of the modding community who don't allways appreciate coding decisions made within the vanilla game. We'll need to see how long the game lasts, since along with the development company Mojang being purchased by Microsoft, they don't always handle interactions with supporting projects such as Buckit, Forge or Cauldron too gracefully. Since they often rewrite and restructure portions of the game without providing the long promised modding API devs and modders have to completely rewrite their code between versions, which leads to high developer churn. There's lots of drama in the community, and Mojang is invariably connected to it due to several of the senior devs stemming from the community.