Honestly I'd find a "realistic looking by default" Roblox with good animations and lighting much more appealing.
Unreal engine is already almost there, gamify the UI, invest a few millions in creating good quality assets and you have it.
* All games play on all platforms. You can play cross-platform on any game.
* You can buy "robux", the in-game currency, in every retail store under the sun
* There are 2 million content creators alone in roblox
* Nearly every kid under 10 knows about roblox
* You can run it on a potato
* You can spend 1000 hours playing it while never playing the same mini game twice
* It is still growing and has since 2006
Far from it. Roblox solves the multiplayer part of the equation very well. Authentication, social graph, transactions for players; game server hosting and API for creators. It took me 5 minutes from starting up Roblox Studio to having my own game live and discoverable by all other players - this is huge.
If you are referring to the blockiness, the blocks are a major factor in the game’s appeal -and not just as a reference to Minecraft. Because everything is blocky and nothing can look super detailed, no one need be too embarrassed to make crappy art. You can go ahead and just make stuff that looks crappy without feeling judged. That way, instead of leaving most players sitting around watching a few elite fine artists, pretty much everyone has fun contributing.
I have been blown away by Roblox. I thought this kind of tinkering no longer existed, but it's still there.
In many ways it closer to the old Second Life than Minecraft. My daughter treats it as equal part social network and multi player gaming platform.
It's like cruising Kongregate or New Grounds was for Flash games. Sometimes they looked like trash but were fun to play.
Means Roblox games can load in seconds too.
I guess minecraft is more popular with older people who grew up with it and there is some limit reached which slows down minecrafts success at the moment. It seems minecraft was also rather silent in the last year. Animal Crossing and now Among Us are the hottest games everywhere, but aroung minecraft it was rather silent, even though it should have been more succesful with people staying at home the whole time, giving people more reason to do stuff in Minecraft.