As mentioned earlier, a game’s presentation - it’s interface - should be matched to the gameplay. But there is another angle here worth considering. We are 40+ years into video and computer gaming, and many of the things we’re seeing today are built on experiences that have come before. They are refinements of older approaches, and refinement is often a great thing. But we have seen such an increase in technological capability, that refinement has in many ways come to mean complication. Simple has evolved into sophisticated, because more sophisticated experiences become more possible as the underlying tech becomes more able.
For those who have been playing for years, all the complication can feel like enrichment. The experiences feel deeper, because they have more moving parts (in the gameplay, or in the interface, including the controllers above). This is simulationism at work again. Real life has tons of moving parts, so adding more nuances to each world, character, action, etc, makes the whole thing feel more real. BUT, at their heart, games abstract reality. Good abstraction (including the right things) is the target, not just sophisticated abstraction (including more things).
Yes - not all contemporary games ladle on fine-grained sophistication, but generally speaking, it is a common characteristic of the present era.
Now here’s where this sophistication comes home to roost, and knocks many people off their perch. Not everyone wants to have heaps of sophistication with loads of buttons, menus, actions, objectives, etc. Complicated games raise the bar to entry. While seasoned players feel it’s no big deal, this is because they are making use of their years of accumulated experience. A person who is brand new to gaming can often be overwhelmed by all the things they have to master to even become competent, much less good in a modern simulation game. Many people just don’t want to have to dedicate a whole portion of their life to getting good at sophisticated games with lots of moving parts. There are plenty of potential players who would have fun getting involved if it didn’t require so much.
So again, to be clear - sophistication is not bad, but it’s not always good, either.
Simpler games also mean easier pick-up-and-play. You can dip in, and back out of a simpler game much more quickly. Just last night, my 13 year old daughter and I wanted to play a little Atari before we closed out the night. We popped in Warlords, banged through half a dozen games, then moved on to Maze Craze, and played half a dozen of those.
retrogamestart.com
https://retrogamestart.com/answers/why-retro-video-gaming-so-popular-its-much-more-than-nostalgia