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Comment by darkteflon | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t the claim in the first paragraph only make sense if you assume that content becomes irrelevant as it ages? That holds for news but not for most other media.

I have a huge Steam backlog and a Plex server stocked with (ymmv) many of the finest movies available in the form. There’s so much media there that there’s no realistic path to experiencing it all in my lifetime. That certainly has an impact on my inclination to purchase new games or movies.

I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggering.

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>I have a huge Steam backlog

Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated. It's not just the graphics that ages, but also the game mechanics, UI and UX, and the general presentation of the game. I would rather play Path of Exile than Diablo 2.

>I concede that that’s always been the case for durable written works thanks to the local library. But the scale of convenient supply now is staggerin.

I think even these written works go through "improvements". It's difficult to point out what is better about the more recently written stories, but somehow they are more appealing (in some aspects). Picking up an old book is harder than a new one if you're very familiar with a genre.

>Yeah, and by the time you get to many of those games they will feel clunky and outdated.

I don't agree with what you wrote literally (I almost exclusively play old and old-ish games, and I have fun), but:

>Path of Exile is a 2013 free-to-play action role-playing video game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games

I'm confused. Why is your example of a modern game is a game from 2013? Most people's backlog is probably shorter than 13 years, so if 13 year old games are fine then I'm not sure that contradicts OPs point.

He may have meant poe2; it came out last year? Then again the remaster of d2 was fairly recent and quite playable by my standards.

PoE is still getting new content 3 times per year, the dev is committed supporting both games for a long time.

PoE2 is still in early access, I feel it would be wrong to say that it is out until the makers claim that the product is ready to stand on its own two feet in the market

The analogy works if you know the comparison.

I mean, first, Diablo 2 did come out in 2000, 13 years before Path of Exile.

But also Path of Exile is maybe the game that has received the most updates and content of any game in existence (No Man's Sky looks stingy compared to Path of Exile, imo). It receives a small expansion's worth of content every ~4 months. Path of Exile in 2026 is an entirely different experience from Path of Exile in 2013.

I absolutely would not play the 2013 version today (and also am unable to because it's a live service game).

The better comparison would be Path of Exile 2, which came out last year or comes out later this year depending on your perspective on Early Access games, but it's less a 1:1 evolution of Diablo 2 and more its own thing.

I also like old games, but I grew up in the D2 era, so they hold nostalgia factor for me. There will always be games that stand out as classics, like Diablo 2 and Super Mario 64, but not many people play them who didn't already play them during their era, and even fewer people are going out of their way to play Titan Quest or Gex 64 for the first time in 2026.

Games do age, more so than books and movies, imo, because it's a younger medium and the technology keeps evolving.

As an aside, I also think entertainment industries are not saturated. I'm always hunting for recommendations that hit just the right spot, and so much is a miss for me. I'd love if there were 10 Path of Exiles to choose from, I'd play them all. (Hell, I'd be happy with just one quality Pokémon game...)

> It's difficult to point out what is better about the more recently written stories, but somehow they are more appealing (in some aspects)

For starters, the use of the language. Even a book written 20-30 years ago can feel a bit off in word choice and idioms. I know many people are into that, but for others it just increases the cognitive load of reading.

The purpose of reading is to challenge your mind, literally the cognitive load. If slang from 20 years ago is preventing you from reading a book, that’s a sign of mental laziness.

Many/most people don't read for a mental workout.

That's also a sign of mental laziness.

The argument for new media is pure conspicuous consumptiin.

I wouldn't say irrelevant but certainly less popular over time compared to when it was newer. Even with all this supply on your fingertips I bet you watch a lot more movies from the 2020s than the 1920s.

EDIT: Since people are getting specific about that last line and missing the point, how about instead it's "I bet you watch a lot more movies from the $yourFavoriteDecade than the timemachine(start = $yourFavoriteDecade, direction = "reverse", years = 40)"

Watching a movie from the 1920s requires paying some attention to follow characters and plot. Watching a movie from the 2020s is just 90-120 minutes of nonstop CGI visual stimulation.

There are plenty of good films to see that don’t depend on sfx

Ok but I watch more movies from the 2000s than from the 2020s.

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