The fact that we're growing up makes it harder for games to give us something scary.
This, this and totally this.
Something I've been saying in a lot of horror game forums.
It's not that games have become less scary, it's that people have become very accustomed to horror games.
Also the fact that it's easier to be impressed when you're younger or when you're still a kid.
Despite this basic psychological fact, veteran fanboys insist that horror games these days "lack the atmosphere".
Wrong.
It's just that these fanboys' nostalgia goggles are screwed on too tight.
I've been playing several horror games starting from the first Resident Evil game since 1996.
After playing and completing several titles, it has become difficult to scare me, save for jump scares I wasn't expecting.
Also, thinking hard about my experience with Resident Evil, I wasn't really scared by the boxy polygon creatures wandering the halls of the mansion.
What I was feeling was the tension of dying and losing my progress, forcing me to restart from a previous save, due to the old game save format.
That tension is confused with me being actually scared of the creatures and atmosphere.
People need to rethink about what they really like about past horror games and replay them today to make sure that it wasn't just nostalgia deluding them into thinking "older games are more awesome".