Community can go a long way towards compensating for worse technology, yeah.
Community is the entire goal. The technology just has to meet some minimum threshold. You know any 13 year olds playing Minetest?
I don't know any 13-year-olds, but I hear that a lot of them do play Minetest.
My kids are younger than that and play Minetest/Luanti all the time. They are well aware of Minecraft but are completely engrossed by the modding first approach of Luanti.