When I worked in the games industry, we would spent an incredible amount of effort, money and time on creating as realistic a world as we could muster out of the hardware. This would involve talented artists, animators, programmers and hardware engineers.

And then came Minecraft made by 1 guy rendering blocky graphics with basic animations. It was a real wake up call for a lot of developers, that success isn't driven by how realistic you can make a world, but something more fundamental. Most games with ultra-realistic graphics feel more like theme-park rides, where you have little or no affect on the game - as doing so would break the immersion.

After minecraft came out I quit the industry, and am far happier for it.