Actually it's a minority of gamers who like to create. The majority are goal based. Even games like Little Big Planet, which are all about creation, the number of players who actually create are relatively small, most people just play.

Minecraft's strength is that it appeals to both creators and non-creators.

How do you know that they aren't just creating but not sharing? Even I do that, goal-based as I am. I just don't spend as much time on it.

Good point. Although internally MediaMolecule (and Sony) will probably have very accurate stats on this via telemetry, you can get a rough idea by looking at what percentage of players have achieved which trophies.

http://exophase.com/game/littlebigplanet/trophies/

In a game such as Little Big Planet, where it could be argued that the whole point is creating levels, less than 50% have got the "Creator" trophy, but most players have the trophies you get when you complete ready-made levels.

You can repeat the exercise with other creative games on console. Here's Minecraft XBLA (unfortunately the achievements chosen for this title are less enlightening).

http://exophase.com/game/minecraft-xbox-360/achievements/

It's true that tracking sites like Exophase and Raptr only track achievements from people who sign up. These sites cater to players who really care about achievements, so the results would be skewed in that direction (and which I would say is the opposite direction to creativity, which has intrinsic fun).

Thanks for that! It didn't occur to me to look at achievement data.