Ask HN: Are great old games more immersive?

I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;re more immersive across the board. There are many many old games that I didn&#x27;t find particularly immersive (any shooter&#x2F;action game really) and plenty of recent games I found super immersive (some recent ones: The Last of Us, The Witcher 3, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Life is Strange).<p>I think that as azeirah says, nostalgia is probably a big part of it.<p>About two years ago, I played Final Fantasy 7 again for the first time in 10+ years. This was a game that 12&#x2F;13 year-old me spent countless hours on and a game I considered to be one of the most immersive games I ever played. However, when I played it again, I found the game to be quite weak. The dialog is super super weak, the story is quite formulaic (although I obviously already knew the story so its hard to evaluate fairly), the gameplay wasn&#x27;t amazing by modern standards etc etc. Its still a good game, but it showed me how much games have advanced, across the board (not just graphics) and I didn&#x27;t find it at all immersive playing it again now.<p>So, there were immersive games in the past and there are immersive games now, but how they immerse you has likely evolved over time too.

In some ways, I think so. To appeal to wider audiences, game makers have added a lot of hand-holding features over the years that in my opinion make the game world itself less immersive, since you&#x27;re constantly being reminded what you should be doing and this is how you do it...etc. I&#x27;m thinking of games like the Zelda series, Elder Scrolls. There is less of sense of discovery and exploration and figuring out the rules of the world on your own. This is partly why the world of Dark Souls series feels so immersive. In some ways it doesn&#x27;t feel like a game at all. It feels like a world that doesn&#x27;t care about you, and that draws you into learning about it.

Without some kind of qualifications here--what constitutes an &quot;old&quot; game, how do you define &quot;immersive&quot;--I&#x27;d have to say you&#x27;re probably an old fogey. I&#x27;ve played video games since the Atari 5200, and while I&#x27;ve enjoyed games like Ms. Pac-Man, Joust, Frogger, and Dig Dug, never once did I feel immersed.<p>Compare them to Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus, or Skyrim. They all feel like worlds I&#x27;ve inhabited. The surface area of those games is alone enough to make contact with all sorts of places in my mind.

Some of it can be age related in a number of small ways that add up: nostalgia is the obvious one (and others have mentioned), but there are all the little bits of things that add up to change what you can spend time and attention on. When you are in your early teens with &quot;not a care in the world&quot; it&#x27;s very easy to deeply immerse yourself in a work, but as you grow older you gain responsibilities and cares and can&#x27;t afford to spend as much time or attention.<p>Immersion requires you to spend time and attention. To some extent immersion is a sensation of attention grabbed with time slipping away. To be immersed, almost by definition, you need to give the game your full and almost undivided attention, and be able to let time flow freely without notice. That can undoubtedly get harder as you age and get more things demanding that you spend time or attention on them; more things demanding you box your time or your attention means less opportunity for play, for immersion.<p>Nostalgia plays into it because you become more willing to shuffle your time and attention around for things that your brain already knows it can enjoy. New things are a risk and if you are already so aware of how many things require your time and attention, it can be tough to take that risk on something new. There&#x27;s a Catch-22 there as well that because you feel you are gambling by playing a new game, if you set immersion as your quality bar, you&#x27;ll never reach it because the gambling instinct to hedge your bets against &quot;heartbreak&quot; hedges your time and attention from even being able to reach some of those levels necessary for immersion (thus almost guaranteeing &quot;heartbreak&quot; by trying to avoid it).<p>Beyond time and attention there are a lot of aesthetic and subjective factors you can explore. It is quite possible that, for instance, you prefer the lack of graphics detail because you can fill in the details with imagination. Obviously there are people that will always love books more than films, but those same people can still enjoy a good film and kind find things to love in cinematic arts. The more you can figure out what it is subjectively that you love in older games, the easier it can be to find the parts of new games that cater to your aesthetic or even entire new games built specifically for your aesthetic. (Circling back around, the more that you can find things that are flavored in a way that meets your subjective desires, the easier it becomes to spend time and attention on them and thus find yourself immersed.)

I just hope I never run into another game as addictive as WoW was when it first came out.

&quot;Ninety percent of everything is crap.&quot; So, we look around us at the handful of excellent stuff that still survives and compare it to the schlock that surrounds us today and conclude &quot;They just don&#x27;t make them like they used to!&quot;<p>But new games do seem to suffere from having an excess availability of computing resources. Old games had to focus on game play and be disciplined about what they included. Newer games may not have anymore programmers than older games, but they often have a huge leap in art resources. This does not necessarily enhance the game play and can be detrimental to the experience when misused.

You might find games that don&#x27;t have a monetization method built-in may be more immersive, depends on the content obviously. I would venture to guess that most mobile games can&#x27;t be very immersive.<p>It would be hard to quantify immersive since that is a feeling, you could look at time spent in game as an indicator.

Might be a mix between rose-tinted glasses and acknowledging that games these days aren’t always made with the same intent[1] that studios from years or decades ago had.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13165780" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13165780</a>

Have to concur with others regarding nostalgia being a part of it.<p>Another big aspect, however, is ennui. The original Doom was engaging because it was something entirely new. After having played dozens of FPSes though, there&#x27;s a tired sameness to all of them. &quot;Oh boy, it&#x27;s time to save the world again with your pistol &#x2F; shotgun &#x2F; assault rifle &#x2F; sniper rifle &#x2F; rocket launcher; how exciting&quot; ... yeah, sorry, no. It really takes superlative execution for me to even consider buying another FPS these days and even then I&#x27;ll wait for it to be in the bargain bin before buying it.

Nostalgia might play a part here, try playing a great older game that you haven&#x27;t played before. Don&#x27;t take one that&#x27;s in the same series as you often like, e.g., no old zelda game if you&#x27;re a zelda fan.

Other possible explanations:<p>- Younger people can stay focused on games better.<p>- Social media make it harder to get immersed.<p>I think the first may be the largest factor. For those do doubt this: go play a game of Concentration (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Concentration_(game)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Concentration_(game)</a>) with a four year old.

Half-Life 2, immersive storyline with good pacing, action&#x2F;tension and puzzle&#x2F;problem solving.

I recently bought an USB controller shaped like the snes one. Having recently sold my ps4 for lack of playing it, I can say for sure at least for me, and this is probably because I grew up playing these games, that the snes and Sega Genesis generation of games are much more playable for me<p>Sure graphics processing is miles ahead now, but I always seem to get bored.

I wonder the same. I still love aoe more than any other game.

More immersive ? Maybe not. More fun ? Hell yeah.

This one is easy: no.