This type of criticism sometimes seems to capture the spirit you're describing, but sometimes it seems to verge on entitlement when talking about video games.

I think it was John Carmack who bemoaned the fact that the video game audience quickly accepts any advancement in graphics as the new status quo for gaming, and complains about any game which doesn't immediately match it.

I think consumers of the medium don't always appreciate the technical achievement which modern AAA video games represent - it's maybe one of the few domains of computing which demands the people working on it to use 100% of the hardware, and to pull tons of dirty tricks to eek out every last bit of performance.

So sometimes it seems the audience attributes something to laziness, just because something is missing they have seen in another game, while what they are seeing is the result of very talented engineers working overtime to deliver a miracle.

Well yes and no. If general tone of most discussions is just critical, overall mood is crappy to be polite. If you are in crowd of complainers, even if they keep saying its constructive, its a properly depressing place to be. Life is not just numbers, points, striving for perfection. What makes us humans is much, much more.

This short video looks amazing, specifically because its not state of the art in engine work and current level of tech. Yet you feel like you are there, on one of the canals. Many games these days use better meshes and have higher count of triangles and other techniques yet they don't deliver these emotions to those who visited Amsterdam.

And games were, are and always will be about emotions.