I feel like RPG development is more like novel style development than technological development. A lot of Victorian novels are clunky and grossly overwritten by today's standards, but it's not because they're objectively worse, just that our tastes of changed. A lot of my favorite RPGs are 90s/early 00s era, like Vampire or Exalted.

...some of that is also because that's when I had the most time to play, of course.