>See how it cuts both ways?
Not really. I haven't been in the industry for 25 years and I haven't written articles excusing my game's poor visual quality. I'm aware of my abilities and I'm constantly working on improving them. For instance, you can see the current game I'm working on here https://twitter.com/adnzzzzZ and generally people are responding better to its visuals than they did for my previous game.
If you find me 20 years from now making the same types of games and writing articles about how my games look bad and how it's actually all intentional then maybe you'll have an argument.