I’m staring at a bunch of blocky, low-resolution trees on a desert island. In the distance, dozens of jagged rocks are sticking out of the sea. To anyone who has played Minecraft , the virtual landscape looks familiar, but this one is different: it was designed by a quantum computer .

It doesn’t look very quantum to me, but that isn’t really the point. Instead, this is a proof of concept by tech firm IBM that hints at how quantum computers could generate scenes, levels or even complete video games that are better than the ones we have today. …