The scale of the IF text-parser problem isn't that bad, and they addressed a lot of the issues decades ago, modern games don't struggle with this nearly as much. It's just that that Interactive Fiction tends to be a niche hobby, so most of the IF written today assumes you are already at least a intermediate in the field -- they often don't throw in a Tutorial, the way every modern triple-A game does.
From an 'intro accessibility' standpoint, Modern videogames are often way more willfully-obtuse. We just don't recognize it, because it's assumed that everyone who plays a game already has basic understanding of twin-stick first-person and third-person gamepad controls, we assume it like it's another form of basic literacy. (Who hasn't played a game before, right?)
But for folks who don't -- for the (many) folks who have literally never touched a gamepad in their life, sitting them down to modern graphical interactive-fiction controller game (say something like Firewatch, or Gone Home, or Edith Finch, or Life is Strange) is even more challenging for those folks than the traditional IF text parser.
I've seen people spend thirty minutes just trying to figure out how to look in a general direction -- it takes truly-new adults quite a while to get used to the feel of twin-thumbsticks for movement+camera-control, it requires a lot of careful fine-motor control on both sticks simultaneously and often has to be felt to be learned well.
At least with text-based IF, most people have been exposed to typing at school or at work or at a library or such. The same is not usually true of twin-thumbstick gamepads.
From an 'intro accessibility' standpoint, Modern videogames are often way more willfully-obtuse. We just don't recognize it, because it's assumed that everyone who plays a game already has basic understanding of twin-stick first-person and third-person gamepad controls, we assume it like it's another form of basic literacy. (Who hasn't played a game before, right?)
But for folks who don't -- for the (many) folks who have literally never touched a gamepad in their life, sitting them down to modern graphical interactive-fiction controller game (say something like Firewatch, or Gone Home, or Edith Finch, or Life is Strange) is even more challenging for those folks than the traditional IF text parser.
I've seen people spend thirty minutes just trying to figure out how to look in a general direction -- it takes truly-new adults quite a while to get used to the feel of twin-thumbsticks for movement+camera-control, it requires a lot of careful fine-motor control on both sticks simultaneously and often has to be felt to be learned well.
At least with text-based IF, most people have been exposed to typing at school or at work or at a library or such. The same is not usually true of twin-thumbstick gamepads.