There were more standards and expectations in place, and it was easier to write (smaller) code for 8-bit machines of the day.

An Atari 2600 or Nintendo game did not lock up or have big bugs.

Granted, you'll find far more still-operational Atari 2600 consoles than you will NES consoles, but that's not important to know right now... possibly...

Today's games require patching every few seconds and, between the 1980s and now, people were conditioned to allow it.

And "competition" - the purported need to do things ever faster, even robbing people of the time to proverbially breathe, is a factor.

And since life is how we define it to be in our societies, assuming they are free and not influenced by others outside of it...