This is the place where I want to thank ratchet, because he gives on an almost regularly basis links to interesting games!
Thank you, ratchet!
I agree that his assumptions are mostly going too far.
Maybe, ratchet, you want to make a tiny little game that is fun for at least a minute, make it as small as possible.
This way you could see/show how close your suggestions are to the reality of game making.(or, how far away they are from the praxis of game making.)

[Maybe, a "Minute Game Contest" in Morbius with any engine you like were a nice thing to do?]

Mentioning the ever lasting design versus programming: don't forget marketing.
*still looking speechlessly impressed at the success of AaaaaaAAAAaaaah! and Bad Rats and Wonderful World*

About design:

IMO, to invent those "very simple or rather abstract graphics" is already an extremely difficult task. I almost lost my believe in me that I can handle that, although I have still hope that can learn it.
Look at 'my' "Fish On Wheels" in the projects forum, I think it is an extremely good start, but it is extremely far away from getting a consistent graphical design, too. This bothers me very much.

It is what I meant
In GameDev forum , fanatic programmers claim that you should programm every thing from the scratch
That's absurd of course
However some fanatic artists make the same mistake
If they watch a good demo on you Tube...wow a great game, they claim

Of course it would silly to deny the importance of graphics and presentation
It is a matter of fact however that many top selling games do not have an advanced graphics
take the SIMS for example
The other way round is hard to find
Not only
Sometime the abuse of graphics effects can be even a drawback
Take for example strategic games
I still regret the "spartan" Dune 2 graphics which made so easy to indetify and select the unities on the battle field
In other kind of games the atmosphere is , on the contary, created by the graphics

I downloaded Unity3. It is a very impressive tool for making Role Playing Games. It can do much of the work allowing one to create lovely graphics. However, the amount of "help" that a system provides is inversely proportioned to the amount of "freedom" allowed in said system. A simple example is the use of templates in GS.

An expert in either GS or Unity can create amazing games. GS provides a lot of freedom which requires a lot of graphics and programing. Unity makes those tasks easier but one must follow the "Unity" path. I doubt that I could have created my reaction time programs easily in Unity3.

Define your task, recognize one's own talent and knowledge, choose a platform and create.

Well what You are saying is correct
The amount of help is inversely proportional to the amount of freedom
For this reason I hate the engines which make too much for you
A typical example was Torque which was geared towards FPS multiplayer games
However we should not make also the opposite mistake
I went through some absurd threads on GameDev forum where fanatic programmers supported by even more fanatic moderators claimed that game engines are of no use
A game programmer should code everything from the scratch ( direct x or opengl ) in the name of flexibility
About 3dgs and Unity3d in my opinion they are the right compromise
These engines supply just those features which are in common to all games
Features which the developer should in any case code by himself
Templates and prefabricated scripts are options
Dont use them if you dont like them

You are right that some tools can make things too easy, and thus remove important functions to make more diverse games..
BUT, I disagree with you about unity vs 3dgs. IMO Unity is not any more limiting than 3D Game studio is. In my opinon after using it for a while.. I find that it is just as versatile compared to 3dgs.
The workflow just makes you think things are too easy, the work flow is just speeding up things that you waste lots of time on in other engines.

I am just curious how much time you spent with unity before coming to your conclusions? All I can say is give it a chance and learn its ways. Yes some things are different, but that doesn't make the platform any less powerful.

Dear VPrime,

I must have failed to be clear for I did not mean to say anything about the power of a platform nor decide if one was better than the other. I recall the heated discussions of "C" vs "BASIC". A casual programer (like myself) is unlikely to have the time to master any platform. Hence, our efforts are going to be more affected by the concepts underlying said platform.

Well probably both VPrime and myself misunderstood your post
I understood that Unity, in your opinion, is less flexible than 3dgs, as far as programming is concerned
Up to a certaint extent it may be true
For example Unity3d does not allow vertices manipulation
However it is a big mistake to assume tha Unity3d is for artists while 3dgs is for programmers
Unity supply a lot of commands having an high degree of abstraction thus making the engine more flexibble but also less intuitive

Ups. Sure? That's interesting...what does it allow. I guess there is something like vec_for_vertex - but no vec_to vertex?

of course unity allows vertex and mesh manipulation too. otherwise the minecraft clones like the one of captain kiyaku wouldn't be possible for example.

Yep i can just confirm what ventilator said, you can modify vertex of course, create meshes at run time, recreate the UV coordinates, etc.

It bothers me if people always "try" Unity for an hour and then be like "i've used Unity it sucks its missing feature xyz".

EDIT:
Have fun: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ScriptReference/Mesh.html