It's quite alright and thank you for such a thoughtful reply. Since this is only text and you cannot hear my voice tone or see my body language, my post probably sounds more sour than I intended.
I see what you are saying, though. And it makes a lot of sense. This very place, Itch itself, is a good example.
During those years, a LOT of the artwork was bought from other indie people here on Itch. That was true not just of my first game, but of all my projects up until the end. I still remember the moment I found this site... It was like a scene where everything lights up and you hear that angelic choir like "uuuaaaaahhhhh" lol.
Believe it or not, because of algorithms and stuff, when you first start off looking for assets they can be really hard to find. To this day I am still coming across random game asset sites and they all share a lot of wares but each one also has a little something different the others didn't have.
Which actually brings up a question I am wondering in regards to your goal... I wonder if simply gathering artwork together would be enough, given the nature of these algorithms. But gathering and then heavily categorizing them... That could possibly help to not only gather stuff together but also trigger the algorithms when it detects a relationship between two or more contexts.
Even here on Itch, the tag system is not as robust as I once thought it was. As I said, my first game required niche art and once you try targeted searches, Itch will yield very little results even for assets you know should be there.
Just wondering out loud, you know?