And while it isn't anywhere near as deep as DF, the mass attraction of Minecraft shows that procedural generated worlds where there are no real goals can be very attractive and approachable, even to children.
That's very true. But again I think it's a different type of game. Very few people, in my experience, spend much time exploring Minecraft for the sake of exploration.
The genius of Minecraft is that it's a vast canvas for you to shape, not an interesting world to study. The purely procedurally generated world that it generates are fun to build on they just aren't that interesting after you've experienced it for a bit.
The genius of Minecraft is that it's a vast canvas for you to shape, not an interesting world to study. The purely procedurally generated world that it generates are fun to build on they just aren't that interesting after you've experienced it for a bit.