We've been playing lots of board games lately, including lots of older ones we'd kept (or bought on ebay) from our childhoods. But with the older ones, I keep noticing one thing: they were often less visual, had fewer pictures, and were more text based.
Some old ones we've played lately are Game of Life, Careers, which have lots of tiny text all over the board, so you have to imagine what's happening (and perhaps use a magnifying glass). Whereas modern ones seem to be more visual: symbols on the board instead of worded instructions, more rounded corners instead of straight lines, all the game cards have pictures as well as text; the playing pieces often sculpted in a lot of detail, instead of simple plastic cones or pegs.
In fact, I've just done a quick search on "Game of Life", and the modern version has a much more "jazzy" board than the older one we were playing (see pictures).
I suppose one reason is changes in technology with producing these, and that it's easy to produce the fancy stuff cheaply, but has anyone else noticed this?