I don't know the business considerations for this little niche Jeff has carved out for himself, so I'll just trust that he knows what he's talking about.
The art really does look bad though. I wonder if what he needs is actually worse art. I'm sure there are corners he could cut, like instead of having a full set of sprites for each race×class combo (I don't know anything about his games, I'm just assuming), each facing four different directions, he could have just one sprite per race with a symbol in the corner indicating its class and an arrow pointing which way it's facing. I'm not sure that the downgrade would result in turning off too many players, I think nearly all the players that care about art style are already turned off from his games. Maybe that would leave more room in the budget for the aspects where his games really shine (which I assume they do, given that he can make a living off of them despite how bad of a visual first impression they leave).
The art really does look bad though. I wonder if what he needs is actually worse art. I'm sure there are corners he could cut, like instead of having a full set of sprites for each race×class combo (I don't know anything about his games, I'm just assuming), each facing four different directions, he could have just one sprite per race with a symbol in the corner indicating its class and an arrow pointing which way it's facing. I'm not sure that the downgrade would result in turning off too many players, I think nearly all the players that care about art style are already turned off from his games. Maybe that would leave more room in the budget for the aspects where his games really shine (which I assume they do, given that he can make a living off of them despite how bad of a visual first impression they leave).