[chrisjc]

Absolutely! I remember playing Quake 3 and whatnot back in the day. As I became immersed in the game, keyboard/mouse/1024 would eventually disappear (figuratively).

Strangely enough, I feel like there is more friction for me to play video games of this era (and i don't) despite the advancements in and availability of technology to interact with said games. Perhaps the friction I feel has more to do with the bombardment of content (ads, microtransaction, social-media, etc) that gets in the way of and distracts from actual game play.

Then again, maybe I'm just getting old.

Perhaps this is what the author is trying to get at? If we could immerse ourselves in a similar way when we were using "primitive" games and hardware and therefore were subjected to all the temptation and risk, then what is different or relevant?

The quantity of those immersed and additional layer of (arguable harmful) content?