I meant to imply that they (in the typical case) don't really have an interest in games as a medium, and are simply looking for small distractions to fill gaps in their lives. If they don't appreciate the games themselves, I don't expect them to appreciate the art behind them either.

But since you went there, I do think that exclusively playing freemium slot machine games is an indicator of bad taste. Just as someone that exclusively eats at fast food restaurants probably has bad taste in food (yeah, I made a fast food analogy).

I feel sorry for the kids that grew up with smart phones and have never known a game that wasn't vapid and exploitative. There are worse fates, but still.

Good question. It's also fairly simple to answer. Players of freemium games fall into two categories:

People who have some emotional draw to it (maybe they like the art) and play it despite recognizing that the mobile freemium game industry is a giant social engineering experiment aimed at extracting money by exploiting weaknesses in the unaware human mentality.

People who don't recognize this, either by simply lacking awareness, or lacking enough experience to draw a comparison to non-exploitative games. Regardless of which it is, in both of these case, on average over the entire population, it is fair to assume that they will either not be attentive enough to appreciate details in the art, or won't even have enough knowledge to draw a useful comparison to other kinds of art.

Are you implying that Players of paid games do not fall into the same two categories?

No, i am absolutely and determinedly not saying they do not fall into the same two categories.

I'm not implying, i'm explicitly saying that people who primarily play games that are either sold up-front and without any IAP, or only with IAP that unlocks the full-game part of a "free demo", are, on average over the entire population, are most likely to be found in the third category of people who either have enough experience with games that are not menschenverachtend or are able to recognize games that are menschenverachtend, and avoid those consciously, and are thus also more likely to have the experience or attention to appreciate small detail art decisions.

These two statements are wildly different.