It depends on the game. I mean, I understand what the OP is saying. However, games with very generic graphics allowed me to use my imagination. So, while my character looked like a generic stick figure, in my mind, it was something much more. Basically whatever I wanted it to be. Once games started to get better graphics, it limited my imagination. Instead of thinking my avatar was X, it was now whatever the game designer decided it would be. So in this way, it almost was like the debate of movies vs a book. Better graphics stifle imagination.
The middle ground is what I would argue against. The nice thing about 2D games is that they are timeless as opposed to a 3D game that really tried it's bests to look good, except years later going back to it, it looks like crap and you can't really use your imagination much. I mean, go back to FF7 for example. It looks terrible. Just terrible, because it tried to be cutting edge 3D and it was, but with like 24 polygon models, it just looks like ass now. Where as FF1, FF2 and FF3 still look great.
2D Games = Replayability because, like a book, you can use your imagination to fill in the gaps.
3D Old Games = Not so much fun to revisit. Graphics are ass. It's like a "try hard"... you know?
3D New Game played in current era = Good.
I think that's an interesting point - not unlike my comment on Rogue. I wonder what percent of games praised for pixelated games fit that issue. On a related note, the Zork series sort of struggled with this, when it made graphical Zork games.
And I guess more broadly, it's come up in other art forms - what did silent movie stars do when movies gained sound? What did radio stars do when tv took over? Some didn't fit, others more less copied their shows over - e.g., Dragnet, Jack Benny - trying to think of examples that 'adapted'. We can all pretty much agree 'Buster Keaton was a classic, and belonged in silent movies', while few of us actually want to watch such
silent movies so much we'd pay to see them in a theatre today.
A difference is that the sort of thing we're talking about in the games where 'imagination' is a plus justifying no graphics or bad graphics seems to me an exception, but largely pixelated graphics are just a negative, while the limitations of 'silent movies' or radio shows seemed to take more advantage of those limitations for some benefit. (But even there, most seem to have been worse because of the limits).
For every Buster Keaton where his art was very much designed not only to fit the silent medium, but even to use far fewer 'word cards' to tell a story than other silent films, where they were BETTER as silent, there were a lot more silent films that were just worse as silent movies, which is why 'talkies' pretty much entirely replaced them.
There weren't hundreds of movies still coming out as top releases without sound and with 'word cards' saying 'hey, these are silent, isn't that great', as with the appreciation of hundreds of pixelated games. I guess people could SAY 'movie content over sound', but it'd be as dubious as claims of 'gameplay over graphics', need a case that's actually the case.
Another point, to me the phrase 'gameplay over graphics' mostly meant, 'put gameplay first - I'd rather play a game with good gameplay and bad graphics over one with bad gameplay and good graphics', but it almost never meant 'a game with good gameplay and pixelated graphics is better than a game with good gameplay and good graphics'.
In other words, it wasn't saying 'low res graphics are actually better', it was saying 'low res graphics are worse, but they're less important generally than good gameplay'. The biggest example IMO I'd think we'd largely agree on of early Full-motion video games that were just bad but 'HEY IT'S ACTUAL VIDEO OH MY GOSH".