If that were true, why would gamers prefer games with better graphics? Why does Valve make a fortune selling virtual hats if no one cares how their character looks?
Graphical representations are there to draw you in, but once you are there, the representation isn't as meaningful. Tetris remains a wonderful game whether you play it on a Game Boy or on hardware today.
The hats thing is about people meeting certain status motivational needs. Reiss' 16 Desires indicates that people seek status, and hats confer it. There's also a desire for collection, which hats also offer. You'll find many people who go "why do you care about hats? They don't change the game." For them, their desire for how they look or what they have isn't as meaningful. I'm hesitant to say "Reiss' 16 Desires is definitely correct" as all psychology is essentially pretty soft, but it does provide a useful framework for games motivation analysis, which is what I am currently supposed to be writing my PhD thesis on instead of procrastinating on HN :)
Some skins do confer gameplay bonus, even if they don't do it mechanically. League of Legends sells skins, and when you see someone with a champion with a skin on, you know they like that champion. It provides "skintimidation" to the other team.
I don't go as far as Aarseth in terms of rejecting aesthetics or narratives. I like that we have these things, and I like that they are better than they once were. I think most people feel that way. However, it's not a be-all-and-end-all proposition if you play a game that doesn't have a great story or stretches your moral compass. Those games could be wonderful games. There are plenty of great narratives with terrible games attached, like Heavy Rain.
There's room for everything, and I don't think pointing and saying "You're a bad game because of your narrative" is helpful. A better issue is "You're a bad game because of your ludonarrative dissonance" (such as Bioshock Infinite, where the character is trying to escape the ghosts of his past, but ends up murdering hundreds of people anyway) or "You're a bad game because your system simulation is completely screwed up" (imagine a SimCity where you were taught that people loved it if you polluted everything as long as there were low taxes). These are bad designs because they teach the wrong lessons. GTA is a wonderful marriage of design and story: the insanity that the players' are allowed to wreak fits in with the world created. The only way to play GTA subversively is to actually attempt to follow the law except when instructed not to (something Pippin Barr tried in [1]).
We like looking at pretty things. Well-rendered scenes in games let me more easily imagine myself in a different scenario -- whether that is rappelling down the side of a skyscraper to rescue hostages, or flying an X-wing through a canyon.
I'm not going to play Bioshock or Dishonored or Call of Duty 42 simply because of "ooh, shiny!", but at the same time we won't complain if it's there. If all else is equal, we often go with the newer one. If I were to buy Bioshock Infinite (or the new Tomb Raider, etc), it would be because I'm interested in the story and the experience, of which the graphics are just part. Perhaps that's because graphics in PC games have been already Pretty Awesome for longer than I've been able to afford the hardware?
>Why does Valve make a fortune selling virtual hats
Because of the perceived social status conferred on them for having a rare or "cool" hat. It has nothing to do with the narrative vs mechanic question.
The hats thing is about people meeting certain status motivational needs. Reiss' 16 Desires indicates that people seek status, and hats confer it. There's also a desire for collection, which hats also offer. You'll find many people who go "why do you care about hats? They don't change the game." For them, their desire for how they look or what they have isn't as meaningful. I'm hesitant to say "Reiss' 16 Desires is definitely correct" as all psychology is essentially pretty soft, but it does provide a useful framework for games motivation analysis, which is what I am currently supposed to be writing my PhD thesis on instead of procrastinating on HN :)
Some skins do confer gameplay bonus, even if they don't do it mechanically. League of Legends sells skins, and when you see someone with a champion with a skin on, you know they like that champion. It provides "skintimidation" to the other team.
I don't go as far as Aarseth in terms of rejecting aesthetics or narratives. I like that we have these things, and I like that they are better than they once were. I think most people feel that way. However, it's not a be-all-and-end-all proposition if you play a game that doesn't have a great story or stretches your moral compass. Those games could be wonderful games. There are plenty of great narratives with terrible games attached, like Heavy Rain.
There's room for everything, and I don't think pointing and saying "You're a bad game because of your narrative" is helpful. A better issue is "You're a bad game because of your ludonarrative dissonance" (such as Bioshock Infinite, where the character is trying to escape the ghosts of his past, but ends up murdering hundreds of people anyway) or "You're a bad game because your system simulation is completely screwed up" (imagine a SimCity where you were taught that people loved it if you polluted everything as long as there were low taxes). These are bad designs because they teach the wrong lessons. GTA is a wonderful marriage of design and story: the insanity that the players' are allowed to wreak fits in with the world created. The only way to play GTA subversively is to actually attempt to follow the law except when instructed not to (something Pippin Barr tried in [1]).
[1 pg. 200] http://www.pippinbarr.com/academic/Pippin_Barr_PhD_Thesis.pd...