I think you are confusing the difference between art and craftmanship. Mario games are expertly crafted (and very artistic too btw) yet this passage describes Fumito Ueda perfectly.

An artist I know, who comes from a 400-year family tradition of art-making, once told me that he considers the difference to be this:  "a craftsman will allow his material to limit his expression, but an artist never will." He says that all artists are craftspeople, but that artists go further in what they choose to accomplish - and that the crux of the matter is in this issue of their relationship with material. An artist will fight, transmute, transform - whatever they have to do - their material to bend it to their will - to get it to be the vehicle of expression that they need to achieve.  A craftsman will accept the limitations of their material and work within it to produce the result they're after, whether that is beautiful or functional or whatever. The questions of beauty or multiples or these other considerations are really beside the point.

Shigero Miyamoto accepts the limits of his medium, Fumito Ueda does not. I admire his vision and non compromising attitude towards realizing it. For that reason it is of higher quality to me. His vision is inspiring to me, and while I really enjoy the smoothness and craftmanship of a mario game, Fumito's games stick with me.

That never stopped other games from getting them. GTA being a perfect example with its insane number of perfect scores.

SKYRIM 200 goty awards .

Damn, forgot about that.

I understand perfectly what art is. Stuff that old/pretentious people like.