the unity/minecraft level of abstraction is a common one in AFIFE, and too often ends up being Spore - looking and behaving in very interesting ways, but remaining just that. those approaches are on the wrong side of the performance vs evolvability curve - scale is a necessary ingredient and running things at a physics sim level is just too taxing.

it is of course entirely possible we are on the flip side and too low-level - this is something we're trying to find out.