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Ignoring the lack of updates if the game is buggy, games back then were also more focused on quality and make gamers replay the game with unlockable features based on skills, not money. I can't count the number of times I played Metal Gear Solid games over and over to unlock new features playing the hardest difficulty and with handicap features, and also to find Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, you'd lose a number of hours exploring every nook and cranny finding them!
The level of quality and number of bugs depends a lot on the era you're talking about, as well as the platform. As a PC gamer from the 90s, much of my technical literacy came about from trying to coax games to work. My experience with console gaming was usually much more hassle free, though I have far less experience with it and don't have a modern point of comparison (last console I even used, not even owned, was the PS3).
My real point of "it was better in the old days", is the industry learning to exploit addiction. It's everywhere, and it's not just gambling. The longer you play the more likely you are to pay so even without loot boxes and the like, games are taking as much out of casino playbooks as possible. It's fucking revolting and should be criminal.
As someone who has had problems with addiction of various kinds in the past, it's so blatant to me. I can feel it playing into my vulnerabilities and it makes my blood boil. I avoid most gaming these days because I know if I let it become a habit, the next time life knocks me down I'll fall victim to this.
Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it. Tracking down a driver update or patch (that you just moved to an unencrypted folder) on a dial-up connection? Re-installing your OS from a series of floppy disks because something broke, again? Limiting clock speed because so many things were tied to CPU cycles and wouldn't function on new hardware?
PC gaming was a nightmare but you put up with it because StarCraft or Quake 3 online was dope as hell, we had Diablo and Myst and Half-Life and Doom and Putt-Putt Goes to the Goddamned Moon so it was all worth it.
I remember the day I learned this lesson.
Young gamers don't know the pain of a BSOD and the interminable wait getting back into game on an IDE hard drive. Even a CTD was a nightmare.
This is restricted to a small part of modern gaming, though. In indie games, for example, you find none of these exploitative practices (talking in general, of course) and get wonderful, masterfully crafted works of art by people who do game development out of passion (also speaking in general, of course).
Yeah, no, maybe the fact that you had to immediately jump to indie games should have been a hint that it's not a small part.