Well, Helm, I can see your point, and largely, I can agree with it. I think that you are right that for mass appeal, you need art with a certain charm. However, my point is mostly about strategy in planning this project.
If I was making a commercial game, I certainly would hire an artist. But that's not the case. The game will be free and open source so I have to do it differently. Basically, I have three options:
First option would be to for me spend a few more years on developing my art skills to comparable levels as yours, probably making my game a six year project. I don't think it's unrealistic to say that I need two years to make it from my level to your level, and that's probably even too optimistic.
Second option is that I find artists who are willing to work for free on such a project from the beginning. My experience in the past has been that it is not so easy to find artists willing to do this, for understandable reasons.
Finally, I can go for the utilitarian art, focus on developing compelling game play in stead, and then hope that the game will attract artists, like you people, who will hopefully be willing to help me out with improving the art.
I think I will go for this final approach, as this will result in something that is playable that much sooner. Also, I plan to make the game different enough from usual conventions. Other famous open source games like Battle for Wesnoth took the same approach, I hope this is the most viable approach.
Of course, I'm open to all and any suggestions, here.
