251: Youth Eternal

[Brendan Main]

Youth Eternal

Beyond selling us games, the industry is peddling an idea that entices most of the population: youth. Brendan Main examines how youth isn't really a commodity that can be sold, at least not without the new skin crème peripheral.

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[Mutie]

Fuckin' A. Now I just want to play on Lylat Wars.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I don't think it is youth in itself that we want when we look back at old games we used to play or even nostalgia. I think that what we want is that sense of wonder, magic and amazement that we experienced the first time we played the game in question.

I remember my first run in with Morrowind, the water was oh-so pretty (and it better had be on my brand new Geforce4 Ti4600 card, top of the line at the time), the guards were stern and despite its' rather swampy surroundings Seyda Neen promised great times as I chose to be a Redguard. I had no real understanding of the mechanics in Morrowind (higher numbers better, use skills to level them, easy as pie) nor did I know anything about Morrowind, Vvardenfell or what awaited me once I set off for Balmora to do the starter quest.
Now, several hundred hours of Morrowind later I've finished the game twice and powerlevled more characters than I care to think about. I know where to get the awesome gear fast, what to exploit to get rich fast and I've seen most (not all) locations on Vvardenfell.

Fallout 3, Civilization 4, Heavy Rain, Dragon Age... The list of games that has given me that sense of "wow, this is awesome" feeling can be made quite long. But it doesn't break down to youth, what it breaks down to is that I am looking for that same amazement over again. That feeling you get when you are just slowly starting to grasp the story or the mechanics and carve out your own small victories. The game seems so huge, so incredible and you are only seeing part of it! As you get further in, you realize that there are flaws, the game is short or you find a build/weapon/strategy that turns every fight into a breeze. You start seeing things in a new light and realize that they aren't as fantastically awesome as you thought at first.

It can be seen in all things we do, from buying a new car or moving to a new (and better!) apartment or even getting a pet. We are looking for that thrill of something new, something we don't understand and have to learn about. The car has a dodgy transmission, the hot water only lasts for five minutes and the dog needs to be walked every third hour or it starts chewing on your pillow. But oh boy, wasn't the puppy cute when you got it?

 

[Eric the Orange]

Right now the "in" retro thing to do is 8 or 16-bit pixel sprites. so I would guess that in 5-10 years we'll be seeing games purposefully made in early polygonal 3D, like the PS, Saturn, or N64. Which I find kinda funny 'cause I always thought early 3D looked worse than late 2D, until technology got good enough to do it well, and developers got used to using it.

But that begs the question of how graphics can improve. By the logic that the retro games will fallow about 20 years behind current technology, then what is now will be considered "old school" 20 years from now. Which makes me wonder, what will graphics look like then if they are as different a current gen system to a Nintendo. I don't think graphics are increasing as fast as they were back then. I personally don't see a lot of difference between Xbox and Xbox360 for example, but that could be because I do not have an HDTV.

 

[Aptspire]

I downloaded Game Room from the XBLA yesterday. I have had a lot of fun playing around those old arcades, even though they were popular before my time

 

[toadking07]

Yeah, my childhood in all it's purity and fun is gone. I mean, I'm still a kid at heart, still love playing video games and taking life none too seriously, but yeah, all those new and first experiences are gone forever. And of course so is that innocence we all held at one time. I can no longer remember what it felt like the first time I killed a video game character. Did I feel remorse? Was I regretful? Did I bat a eye as I gunned down my cousin's avatar in the game? (probably not because he was kicking me and my bro's butt 52 to 3 in a halo slayer match)


I like this article, it's got a sad song underlying it, one that should be thought about, but of course not dwelt on too long. Time passes, nothing lasts forever, make the most of it all.

 

[twm1709]

He didn't want to strip off his gear, but his experiences - to "unplay" the game, and see it again as if he was young.

This I understand. when pokemon soulsilver came out a while ago. I got all dreamy-eyed about the days when I atrted playing the original games more than 10 years ago and decided to fire up my gameboy with blue and silver. but as I went byt i realized the game didn't hold any appeal for me for the same reasons I quit at the time. I just knew everything that game offered. I had already captured them all, had my dream team and my battles, knew every type strenght and weakness. I wished I could have just unlearned everything to recapture the old magic. The new games just don't do it for me, either.

 

[Goremocker]

I really liked the WoW reference.It's the perfect metaphor for wanting to experience that up hill struggle again.To replay the story of victory as if it had never happened.It's what we all want.We all want to fell our first found love for gaming all over again.Great article man,just, great.

 

[Alar]

Very good article, and I think for the most part, very true. To unplay a game is something a lot of people have wanted to do.

It may not be possible now, but there's always hope we'll get some sort of selective memory cutting technology in the future! Cut out the game experiences, re-play it, and paste the old ones back!

 

[Brendan Main]

It may not be possible now, but there's always hope we'll get some sort of selective memory cutting technology in the future! Cut out the game experiences, re-play it, and paste the old ones back!

Sounds like something from that movie, "Eternal Sunshine of the Mario 3."

 

[-Torchedini-]

Very good article, and I think for the most part, very true. To unplay a game is something a lot of people have wanted to do.

It may not be possible now, but there's always hope we'll get some sort of selective memory cutting technology in the future! Cut out the game experiences, re-play it, and paste the old ones back!

You wouldn't want to do that. Go watch eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.
Selective memory cutting sounds nice. But its just like nukes. Can you undo it ?
And can it be applied without your permission ?

I think everybody's mind should be their own. Without any ability to enhance any of your memory's.
Allthough instant learning as in the Matrix movies wouldn't be too bad

 

[ImpostorZim]

Excellent article. My first system was a Super Nintendo. I remember playing Killer Instinct over and over just trying to beat my highest personal combo record. I also remember that Wow! Effect I got from playing it at a young age. The sprite characters were fascinating and it was the designs were the most beautiful things I had ever seen on a screen. After leaving behind the SNES and getting my first PSone, I got the same feeling playing Final Fantasy VII. Everytime, I left something behind to move on to something bigger and better. Now, about 15 years later, I'm playing TESIV: Oblivion nonstop! I think it's one of the best Role-playing games I've ever played.

It's amazing how things are though. My younger siblings just don't get it. I'll sit down and play Final Fantasy VII or Killer Instinct again and they look at me like I'm crazy! They say stuff like "That guy has no fingers!" or "That's not even 3D". But what they don't realize is that once upon a time, those were the Oblivions and Final Fantasy XIII's of the time. Sadly, those exact feelings will stay stuck forever in their respective generations and will probably be long forgotten down the road. That is of course, if we don't share those experiences with our kids. I wouldn't dare let them become ancient history.

 

[Monshroud]

I really like this article, especially since I have the same thing going on with WoW. After I got my first character to 80 and started leveling some of my alts, I purposefully created a new character, chose a race and class I had not played and didn't tell anyone who I was. I was trying to re-capture that joy of just playing the game before I got all concerned about having the best stats and spec. While it was not the same, I was able to recapture some of that awe.

 

[MissAshley]

He didn't want to strip off his gear, but his experiences - to "unplay" the game, and see it again as if he was young.

This I understand. when pokemon soulsilver came out a while ago. I got all dreamy-eyed about the days when I atrted playing the original games more than 10 years ago and decided to fire up my gameboy with blue and silver. but as I went byt i realized the game didn't hold any appeal for me for the same reasons I quit at the time. I just knew everything that game offered. I had already captured them all, had my dream team and my battles, knew every type strenght and weakness. I wished I could have just unlearned everything to recapture the old magic. The new games just don't do it for me, either.

Believe it or not, SoulSilver and HeartGold manage to recapture some of the newness of the past. The alterations in mechanics made in Gens III and IV really make SS and HG play differently.

I enjoyed this article even if it did make me feel a little bad. Many of the games I don't understand or enjoy will be the first gaming experiences of another meaning whenever I become flabbergasted over them I'm inadvertently trashing someone's future memory.

 

[Remzer]

I totally relate to that.

For a while, now, I've been utterly unable to finish a game. Not that I'm not enjoying myself, but once past the glorious discovery of a new "creature", its system, its gameplay, its characters, vilains, etc, I tend not to get bored, not to lose interest, but simply to lose that spark, that feeling of "something new". RPGs I will start over many times, just to experience playing a new character, feel the difference, the "newness". In WoW, for example, which I played only for about six months, I must have created close to 25 new characters, some never reaching past lvl 10. The highest I ever got to was lvl 52 with a gnome warlock (Ah, Yhmer, how I miss ya!).

I played Final Fantasy (the original) around 15 times total, from beginning to finish, and once that first time was gone, I could never find the "Ooooooh this is gonna be great!" feeling I got when I first crossed the first bridge after defeating Garland for the first time. Because I knew that world lying ahead like the back of my hand. I had already played it for the first time. All subsequent runs were only re-experiences, not renewed first experiences per se...

There unbearably and ultimately will only be ONE first time.

Great article, Brendan.

 

[Outright Villainy]

Of course, it doesn't work that way. What he was asking for was a do-over; not to do it all differently, but to do things again for the first time.

The essence is all right there in that sentence. The wonder of the new, learning new mechanics, new characters, gameplay, and for me most importantly: new settings. I love discovering new land in games; what people can I talk to? what treasures can I find? I eagerly await the next fallout or Zelda, those kind of games really spark my imagination when I get out to exploring.

 

[CAW4]

I don't think it is youth in itself that we want when we look back at old games we used to play or even nostalgia. I think that what we want is that sense of wonder, magic and amazement that we experienced the first time we played the game in question.

Basically this. I still remember one of my first few games of CoD4, and even though I had played CoD2 & 3, this was the first time I was able to go online. It wasn't my first game (that was on Crossfire, this was on downpour), and I was simply wandering around, marveling at (what I thought was) the size of the map. I was struck down many a time while wandering around, but it was amazing to see this completely new experience. Now I can't get that same feeling back, it's like a cold detachment to what I'm seeing in the game. Even new games can't get it back, I focus on "how can I win," "what's the best flanking route," even during my first time playing a game. I can't get that same feeling I got the first time I picked up some random's G36c at about level 12 and thought "I can't fucking wait to get this," rather than "what did the Den Kirson chart [http://denkirson.xanga.com/715966769/modern-warfare-2/] say this gun's damage was?"

Oh the negatives of being, as Yahtzee would say, "that guy"

 

[geizr]

Let me start this by saying I'm 38 and soon going on 39. I'm likely older than most of you(probably all of you). You want to know the secret of youth? It's very simple. You don't look back into the past; you look forward into the future. You wake up and face each new day as a new challenge and a new chance to learn and gain and grow. You look at each coming moment as an opportunity to become a different person, to change, or find yourself in a different experience. The past is locked into stone and unchangeable, but the future is a teeming field of potential possibilities. All you have to do is choose a possibility and move forward into it. Once you start stagnating and just repeating the same things over and over, trying to relive past glories, that's when you're getting old and decrepit.

P.S.: Live(learn) from the past, live in the present, and live for the future.

 

[saikotriller]

I had a sporadic video game experience as a kid; I went from the NES to the Sega Genesis to the PS2. So I missed a lot of the "classics" that my friends grew up with. And I can go back and play them now, but even playing them as new games, it's not quite the same. I feel the sense of wonder and newness, but I always think, "Oh, so this is what they were talking about" and not, "Wow, I like this for my own reasons." It's hard to play catch-up to other people's nostalgia. But the fun new things you discover through exploration is what I enjoy about games. I like WoW best when I get the trial and run around in the starter zones until I'm tired of it, so I never have to lose that sense of fun.

Also, I remember being at a Hot Topic when I was in high school, and looking at all of the retro themes, especially the video game ones, that they had for t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats, etc, and thinking, "Why? Why would kids my age be nostalgic? We're only 18! The good ol' days weren't that long ago!" I think this whole idea of selling youth explains that in part. Though I think that the geek cred was also a large part of it. It's interesting, because who'd think youth would be so popular a commodity to the young? Aren't we supposed to not realize how good we have it when we're young? Or is the time around high school when we start to realize that youth is fading, and want to hold on to it? I wonder.

Great article. It answers my questions by giving me more questions to answer. : )