I hadn't noticed that angle, being fully invested in getting kids of my 256-color lawn. However, I feel a little more sympathetic towards Vogel; consistently making money in the games industry is borderline impossible. If, as he suggests early on, he is supporting a family with his small business, investing more than the absolute minimum in art, particularly when he has proven his business model, must look like a serious risk. Cheap art, and he knows he can recover from a failure; blow a lot of money on art, and the game sucks anyway, and he's finished, and has to go and get a day job, and post cantankerous comments on Hacker News during his lunch break. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.