You could probably say the exact thing about video game consoles and loading times/download speeds/whatever. The consoles got more and more powerful, but the games still load in about the same amount of time (or more) than they used to, and take longer to download.
And the reasoning there is the same as for this issue for webpage speed or congestion on roads; the more resources/power is available for use, the more society will take advantage of it.
The faster internet connections get, the more web developers will take advantage of that speed to deliver types of sites/apps that weren't possible before (or even more tracking scripts than ever). The more powerful video game systems get, the more game developers will take advantage of that power for fancier graphics and larger worlds and more complex systems. The more road capacity we get, the more people will end up driving as their main means of transport.
There's a fancy term for that somewhere (and it's mentioned on this site all the time), but I can't think of it right now.
One of my heuristics for video game quality is the main menu transition speed -- you only care about the menu animations once, on first view; after that, you want get something done (eg fiddle with settings, start the game, items, etc). So it should be fast, or whatever animation skippable with rapid tapping. Any game designer that doesn't realize this likely either doesn't have any taste, or is not all that interested in anyone actually playing the game.
This heuristic has served me stupidly well, and repeatedly gets triggered on a significant proportion of games -- and comes out correct
The actual level loading times of games doesn't matter all that much. Games go out of their way to be(feel) slow/sluggish/soft/etc
And the reasoning there is the same as for this issue for webpage speed or congestion on roads; the more resources/power is available for use, the more society will take advantage of it.
The faster internet connections get, the more web developers will take advantage of that speed to deliver types of sites/apps that weren't possible before (or even more tracking scripts than ever). The more powerful video game systems get, the more game developers will take advantage of that power for fancier graphics and larger worlds and more complex systems. The more road capacity we get, the more people will end up driving as their main means of transport.
There's a fancy term for that somewhere (and it's mentioned on this site all the time), but I can't think of it right now.