Why Video Games Get ‘Old’ So Quickly

… and why we might finally be stepping off that treadmill

Clive Thompson
OneZero
Published in
10 min readAug 22, 2021

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In 1996, this pixelated Lara Croft was a peak of high-end graphics

Earlier this week I wrote a piece about how teenagers are rediscovering Papers, Please. It’s an amazing indie game from 2013.

In the headline — and in the text — I referred to it as an “old” game.

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Clive Thompson
OneZero

I write 2X a week on tech, science, culture — and how those collide. Writer at NYT mag/Wired; author, “Coders”. @clive@saturation.social clive@clivethompson.net