Please choose one button to start your search:
The nice but still professional-looking one on the right? choose an AI SDK for your next game, choose your next car, choose your next employee based on his portfolio... I'm afraid aesthetics will always play a role in all of this, no matter how hard we try to be objective.
My personal way of looking at things since a couple of years is that feelings are objective as well, they are the objectivity of your subconscious, whenever you get overwhelmed and your logic circuits overflow, fall back to the feelings, and you know what? it's absolutely the right thing to do, but I digress...
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy/ is about the importance of aesthetics, it was written on listapart.com, a web design site (I think). It is an excellent read, throw away your coder art, there are good free models out there!
This reminds off the GDC AI demos (which I watched on the AIGamedev GDC report videos), some companies had great looking assets, while others had wireframe blocky shapes, although this does not tell much about AI, psychology again played it's role in making an opinion about them. Now of course, it might not totally fool one, but it will still tend to tip the balance in the depths of your brain, this article explains why.
