The Nostalgia Factor

[Hero of Lime]

I do not want this to become a political debate, because this is not the forum for that.

Well we do have a certain part of the forum for this kind of talk, but a lot of us try to stay out of it.

Though I agree with your post that Yatzee saying that conservatism is the root of all the wrong in the world is unfair and narrow minded. I would say the exact thing if he had said the same about liberalism as well.

Blanketing whole political ideologies like that does not help with civil discourse, but Yatzee is not known for being a cordial fellow anyway. XD

Though I do agree with some of the points he made about the games industry, however I feel like the notion of "going back to basics" in terms of game design can make for a better game. In some cases tech limitations were what made some classic games so good, the developers didn't have the need to put a bunch of useless stuff in to hope it turns out better. I may have gone a bit off topic, but I believe there are some strengths to old school game design that one could mistake for nostalgia mongering.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I agree completely. Whenever I see Early Access and developers constantly asking their backers what they want in the game, it infuriates me. If I backed a game, it is because I have faith in you, the developers, to make the game you want to make. I believed in your product. Go make it. To hell with what I think, or want. I already gave you my money. Go make the game you want to make. Stop asking what every brain dead moron wants. There is a reason most video game players aren't video game developers, they would suck at it.

 

[Thanatos2k]

There's a famous saying from Henry Ford: "If I'd asked the public what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." The only difference between the latest Call of Duty being a carbon copy of its predecessor and the latest Legend of Zelda being a carbon copy of a game made 20-some-odd years ago is time.

See the problem is we've seen what's outside the comfort zone. We've been seeing what's outside the comfort zone for years.

With absolute garbage like Dungeon Keeper Mobile showing us what happens when "progress" is made, maybe the notion that things used to be better isn't so far fetched after all.

I hope you're attempting to explain the obsession with nostalgia rather than excuse it. Yahtzee could probably write a whole column on this stupid false dichotomy alone, and I'd quite appreciate if he did. Just because the mainstream gaming industry refuses to come up with new ideas that don't suck doesn't mean everyone else has to.

But games are entertainment. A product that companies produce to sell to consumers. Why is it a bad thing to give the people what they want? If people are entertained by the same thing with a slightly different twist or a new story slapped onto the same gameplay mechanics, I fail to see the sin in making something that is the same level of quality without completely changing everything and selling it to them.

McDonald's has been doing it for decades.

What does "progress" even mean in the realm of video games, and why does one HAVE to have it?

"But what about COD?! People like you bash on it all the time for doing that!" you might exclaim.

I don't hate something like COD because it doesn't change, I hate it because having played better shooters a decade ago on the PC I know that it's bad to begin with. I would happily buy sequel after sequel to Baldur's Gate if they were made with the same level of quality even if the gameplay systems barely changed. But we get so few games like Baldur's Gate now, not because the game doesn't work, but because of "progress." And yet the new RPGs that come out (like Dragon Age 2 *vomit*) still aren't better than Baldur's Gate is *today.* They might have better graphics. They might have a better framerate. They might have better voice acting, and motion capture, and branching dialogue trees, and might work on consoles, and have worlds 5x as big, and have non-linear stories, and might have some nonsense social network integration. And yet, even today, most are not better games. That's not nostalgia talking - Bioware has gone on record saying they could never make something as good as Baldur's Gate again, and it's just sad.

That's why when someone comes along and says "We're going to make a sequel to Planescape Torment" or "We're going to make a new Megaman game" people hurl money by the millions - they want the same QUALITY of experience that the market has refused to give them. They know a game like Planescape Torment is worth their time. They know a game like Megaman X is worth their time. Bioware or Capcom sure as hell isn't giving it to them. Progress did not produce better games, and in many cases we're seeing "progress" ruin games.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I feel that people are fundamentally misunderstanding what conservatism is.

Conservatism, at it's most fundamental ideals is about personal responsibility. A conservative believes in the power of the individual, and that individual's ability to take care of themselves and those they care about. A conservative believes in hard work, and living within one's means. This is what we mean when we talk about "traditional values".

Conservatives are not against progress. But progress for progress' sake, however, is bad. Progress needs to be tempered with perspective, not idealism. Good progress must be slow, because if we start progressing faster and faster without restraint, we end up creating a lot of waste that buries us and prevents us from seeing where we came from and where we are going. We end up directionless.

I do not want this to become a political debate, because this is not the forum for that. I'm just trying to clear up the misconception. I would also encourage everyone to educate themselves about conservatism so they can make up their own minds about the issue as well.

You know, it's not helping that you have a picture of an Imperial Star Destroyer as your icon while you try to make this point, lol. Reading your words with the Imperial March theme in your head makes things take an entirely different slant.

 

[Colt47]

The problem has less to do with nostalgia and more to do with the old companies growing into vertically structured corporations with a web of developers linked to the central hub. It's kind of like the university political system, except instead of professors we have game designers trying to pitch ideas to a centralized committee and pleading for funding. Kickstarter hasn't really gotten away from the pleading for funding part, but at least the stakeholders they are pleading to are the general public, who just want to see fun and interesting titles that take advantage of the old characters we know and love.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

You know what I'm nostalgic for? I'm nostalgic for a time before social media when I didn't constantly hear about developers acting like politicians, spoiled children, or both.

 

[Dragonbums]

Well the thing is the "progress" we've been seeing now has been nothing but trash. So as far as I'm concerned I will gladly stay in the bubble.

For one, you actually got a full fucking game for $60.00 a lot more often than you got a half complete game for the same price that's piecemealed to you for $15.00 each.

Secondly, in the past people made games because they wanted to. Now it's all just focus group test lists and trying to grab that CoD money.

The list goes on and on.

Nostalgia is taking such a hard on now because what IS the future now is being screwed over, over priced DLC, and being given the middle finger on content if you bought a game on a studios unfavorable console. Yeah, that sure as hell sounds great.

 

[isdestroyer]

I feel that people are fundamentally misunderstanding what conservatism is.

Conservatism, at it's most fundamental ideals is about personal responsibility. A conservative believes in the power of the individual, and that individual's ability to take care of themselves and those they care about. A conservative believes in hard work, and living within one's means. This is what we mean when we talk about "traditional values".

Conservatives are not against progress. But progress for progress' sake, however, is bad. Progress needs to be tempered with perspective, not idealism. Good progress must be slow, because if we start progressing faster and faster without restraint, we end up creating a lot of waste that buries us and prevents us from seeing where we came from and where we are going. We end up directionless.

I do not want this to become a political debate, because this is not the forum for that. I'm just trying to clear up the misconception. I would also encourage everyone to educate themselves about conservatism so they can make up their own minds about the issue as well.

You know, it's not helping that you have a picture of an Imperial Star Destroyer as your icon while you try to make this point, lol. Reading your words with the Imperial March theme in your head makes things take an entirely different slant.

Indeed. The irony is not lost on me.

 

[Ipsen]

See the problem is we've seen what's outside the comfort zone. We've been seeing what's outside the comfort zone for years.

With absolute garbage like Dungeon Keeper Mobile showing us what happens when "progress" is made, maybe the notion that things used to be better isn't so far fetched after all.

I think you could go farther with that thought.

We see what's outside of the comfort zone, and with an increasing amount of scrutiny for this aging medium, things just look like they suck more, and this is solidified by us simply having more substantial evidence for the fact.

True progress would be both getting out of the nostalgia bubble AND the greed/shady business practices plaguing the industry NOW, or at least get past consumers' scrutiny for such.

One wonders if consumers are even ready for that progress, though.

 

[Orange12345]

I kinda disagree on this, sure kickstarter is built on nostalgia but most of the really successful kickstarters are for games in genres that just don't exist anymore capcom refuses to make another megaman game and bioware has moved on from making baldurs gate style of rpg is that a bad thing? no mass effect is great, does that mean people who want another baldurs gate style game are living in the past? absolutely not because it is a fundamentally different game from what is being released now. For all it's failings I think kickstarter is a net positive for the games industry it gives devs a chance to make a game they can be passionate about, and not the game about which terrorists the gruff middle aged white soldier and his sassy ethnic partner foil this week.

 

[Racecarlock]

The Nostalgia Factor

The various things I've said about the new console generation and their respective hardware gimmicks might have given you the impression that I'm some kind of stubborn ageing neophobe who insists that everything stay exactly the way I like it forever. Nothing could be further from the truth

Read Full Article

Oh you're one to talk, yahtzee. Who is the one who wrote an entire poem around how he's concerned about all the apparent new directions thief is taking? Also there was the entire bulletstorm review and then the whole "I was into shooters before you were sucking on wiimotes" thing at the end of the medal of honor warfighter and doom 3 BFG edition review.

You may not be nostalgic for mario or even old style adventure games that much, but I've seen your show, yahtzee. You have nostalgia goggles like all the rest of us.

 

[ACman]

I feel that people are fundamentally misunderstanding what conservatism is.

Conservatism, at it's most fundamental ideals is about personal responsibility. A conservative believes in the power of the individual, and that individual's ability to take care of themselves and those they care about. A conservative believes in hard work, and living within one's means. This is what we mean when we talk about "traditional values".

Sigh....

No....

Conservatism literally means a political and social philosophy promoting and retaining (ie conserving) traditional social structures and institutions.

The whole "personal responsibility" thing is something taken from economic rationalism and has stuck with US conservatives because it is the antithesis of big bad socialism/communism (and fascism back when people were scared of that.). The word to describe it is not conservatism, it's "individualism".

Much of the "Conservative Movement" in America (And in England and Australia) is big on individualism (at least economically speaking) and has been since the 1980s, but it is not inherently part of conservatism.

 

[Magmarock]

You make a good point of good nostalgia vs bad nostalgia. However,

Nostalgia is based on the fallacious notion that things were better in the past. They weren't. You were younger, more innocent, less exposed to negative news reports and with a child's inbuilt sense of loyalty, and so you remember it more favorably than it was. Trends show that things have always been on a steady pattern of improvement, with regards to technology, awareness of societal issues, equality, and the reduction of crime and global conflict. There may be more reportage of unpleasantness nowadays, but that doesn't mean there was less unpleasantness in the past, just that we now have access to wonderful technology that allows more information on unpleasantness to be spread around.

This is a mixture of truth and fiction. Simply put yes things to get better but not in every way. Sometimes things get worse and it's important to recognize when they do. Remember evolve just means change over time it does not mean improvement over time

When it comes to PC's things have pretty much only gotten better (with the exception of Windows 8) hardware and backwards compatible have improved drastically.

However with consoles it's another story. Consoles have only gotten worse ever since they left cartirgres in favor of optical.

Now look were we are now. SSD drives are the new thing and optical is obsolete. Those cartridges used the same technology as SSD's which was why they worked so fast and so readability. now that's been traded with long load times, ring scratches and red rings of death.

There is no reason to get a console in this day and age. It's easy to see why people cling to the past, the past earned their trust and respect, while the current console generation has only made it harder to trust the industry. How can you blame anyone for being nostalgic when the next crash is right around the corner.

On top of that when it comes to "modern game mechanics" I'm not sure if modern is a misnomer. Take Bio-shock infinite for example. It uses a combat system very similar to the first Halo; only problem is, Halo came out in 2001 and Bio shock infinite came out in 2013.

The truth is, there's just isn't anything new anymore. Nostalgia now is simply trading one idea of old for another idea of old. But at least those who still love Goldenye 64 aren't kidding themselves .

 

[Steve the Pocket]

*sigh* Look at all these people telling Yahtzee things he's been saying for years now and LITERALLY STARTED THIS WEEK'S COLUMN BY BRINGING UP as if he were the last person on earth to be made aware of it. How can you people be so nostalgic when you clearly can't hold on to a memory for more than a week?

Oh right. I was also going to say this earlier:

That's one of the many things I don't understand about the US. It's always positioned itself as a melting pot nation, bring me your huddled masses and all that bollocks, where anyone can come and build a new life from nothing. But in practice, all anyone seems to want to do is cling to the past. They refer to themselves as Irish or Italian despite having spent less time in Europe than a fucking Canadian moose.

I think that has less to do with nostalgia for the Old Country they never lived in, and more a desperate attempt by White Americans to outwardly identify as something, anything they consider to be more interesting than just plain-old White Americans.

 

[Therumancer]

Errr, well I think trying to tie nostalgia to politics isn't a good idea. While there are older people here, to be honest at 38 it's not like there is some age where the social policies I mostly argue against weren't in place to some extent. After all I was raped by an older kid at the age of 6 in a residential facility, which would have been 1981 (an experience I have pretty much blocked out but still haunts me). It's not like I sit here and long for the good old days of the 80s before all these gay people were around or anything. (to take one of my more controversial opinions). When most of my solid opinions and political opinions I hold now formed I went from being a fairly forgiving teenager to a cynic in my mid-late 20s and 30s when I was involved in security and such. A lot of people like to criticize people like me for being stuck in the 1950s or whatever, but really I don't think many people are that old. I think it largely comes down to your life experiences and how much you get to see behind the curtain. At the end of the day I can probably fairly claim to be the least racist and anti-bigoted person you'll ever meet because at the end of the day I pretty much seem to wind up hating just about everything and everyone as sad as that is... but it does even out.

That said, the central point when connected to games is a fair one, except that I tend to agree with some of Yahtzee's earlier points from previous ZP episodes and articles more than this one. That is to say that innovation for the sake of innovation is bad, and there is no reason to take something functional and change it simply to be different. A point Yahtzee himself makes all the time in ZP with cute little cartoons and jokes, say about some dude replacing a metal helicopter with one made out of bread, and being surprised when it not only fails to surpass the original but fails in general.

See for the most part what Nostalgia comes down to is people longing for things that were good, but people decided to stop doing for no particular reason. There interest was there, it still is, just nobody does it anymore, and when they do it tends to be a half hearted effort that winds up failing because it's half hearted nature is obvious and drags it down (which ironically causes the guys who made it to neglect that kind of product even more). For example, while a lot of people HATE turn based RPGs, or deep RPGs with lots of numbers and micromanagement involving multiple pages full of numbers for each character, those kinds of games are perfect at what they do, there is no need for them to change, update, or add more action or whatever. They survived so long, and have so many people demanding that kind of game with new graphics and no real "simplification" or "embellishment" to the gameplay itself that this should be obvious. It's like the joke about "Chess 2.0" that Loading, Ready, Run did... some people hate Chess, but at the end of the day it remains what it is because it's pefect at what it set out to be, and still entertains countless people despite the haters. In a lot of cases the glow of "never was" isn't as strong as some people make it out to be, failures to resurrect old properties or style of product fail because they were half arsed cash grabs.

Turn based RPGs probably aren't the best example when referring to Yahtzee's point because he hates those, but meh, it's my rant.

The problem right now is the industry has gotten so greedy and unbalanced that it hasn't been able to produce enough games for different audiences. It only tends to aim at the biggest, most immediately profitable audiences and ignore all else, pushing ahead to impress the lowest common denominator.

See right now there is still plenty of room for say old school turn based RPGs, and a market that would make them profitable, and actually when care is taken, a steady source of income. Game companies however aren't interested in a fair profit for a fair amount of work, they want the monster profits of the next "Farmville", "Call Of Duty" or "Candy Crush Saga" so they alternate between cashing in on each other's work, current franchises, and experimentation which is more designed to find the next big mass appeal hit rather than to actually try and please the gamers they know are already out there.

I don't think Nostalgia is the problem, I think the game industry, and the way major niche audiences are neglected, is.

 

[WildFire15]

Probably the worst use of nostalgia is when it's used as the face of a cheap knock off, ala Dungeon Keeper Mobile. Either EA couldn't be bothered to come up with an original concept and sent some interns to search their morgue or they knew they'd gain more attention for their cash grab if they used an IP people felt nostalgic for.

The problem right now is the industry has gotten so greedy and unbalanced that it hasn't been able to produce enough games for different audiences. It only tends to aim at the biggest, most immediately profitable audiences and ignore all else, pushing ahead to impress the lowest common denominator.

See right now there is still plenty of room for say old school turn based RPGs, and a market that would make them profitable, and actually when care is taken, a steady source of income. Game companies however aren't interested in a fair profit for a fair amount of work, they want the monster profits of the next "Farmville", "Call Of Duty" or "Candy Crush Saga" so they alternate between cashing in on each other's work, current franchises, and experimentation which is more designed to find the next big mass appeal hit rather than to actually try and please the gamers they know are already out there.

I don't think Nostalgia is the problem, I think the game industry, and the way major niche audiences are neglected, is.

Pretty much this. We've got the hindsight and technology to improve and perfect 'nostalgic' games now and they can appeal to audiences the AAA industry refuses to acknowledge. That doesn't mean we all want to throw away new ideas and advancements. I really enjoyed Rayman Origins and Legends, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and Blur (to pick out a few random games on my shelf) but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to see a new 3D Rayman game, a more traditional Banjo Kazooie or another Project Gotham Racing.

 

[MrBaskerville]

I don't really think nostalgia plays any role in how we percevie games, as long as people replay the games instead of just remembering them. Nostalgia can only take you so far, i might have good memories about Superman on the Mastersysyem, and it might invoke a feeling when i see it again, but after a while of playing it, that feeling dissapears and is replaced with new feelings. Nostalgia is a whimsical thing, and it can't make a bad game good or vice versa, unless you only keep it in your memory. Personally i've been playing games from all eras for the last 10 years, i just play whatever seems interesting and somethings were better back in the day. The thing is, as things change some things will change for the better and other for the worse. I think Rpgs were generally better on pc in the 90s, back when it wasn't about experience and loot, back when fantasy was allowed to be inspired and weird. I could say similar things about point'n click adventures a lot of them had better puzzles and better writing than a lot of the newer ones, though it is starting to get better again.

Jrpgs were better on ps1-ps2 and the Ds (including 3DS) while Survival horror had an edge on ps2. It would be a shame to just close ones eyes and say that everything is improving every console generation, There are things worth revisiting in every era (many things) and not just popular titles or stuff you enjoyed in your childhood. Personally i'd say that gaming has been a lot better than it is right now, i'm defineately having an easier time finding great games on older consoles than i have on ps3, not that they don't exist, but they seem to be spread thin these days. Atleast for someone with my taste in games and design.

But it is a bit boring that we are spending so much time remaking and rebooting all kinds of old franchises, especially when they keep missing the point of the original art style or gameplay.

 

[fractal_butterfly]

Thank you Yahtzee for writing this article. This perfectly sums up my thoughts about nostalgia. It sometimes seems really hard to create any kind of game, that is NOT some remake of a 20 Year old classic.

 

[RandV80]

I kinda disagree on this, sure kickstarter is built on nostalgia but most of the really successful kickstarters are for games in genres that just don't exist anymore capcom refuses to make another megaman game and bioware has moved on from making baldurs gate style of rpg is that a bad thing? no mass effect is great, does that mean people who want another baldurs gate style game are living in the past? absolutely not because it is a fundamentally different game from what is being released now. For all it's failings I think kickstarter is a net positive for the games industry it gives devs a chance to make a game they can be passionate about, and not the game about which terrorists the gruff middle aged white soldier and his sassy ethnic partner foil this week.

It's also worth pointing out that with a highly successful kickstarter like Might No. 9 while it raised a few million it only had 67,226 backers. Put that in contrast to the 10 million or so people (I don't know the actual numbers) that buy the new Call of Duty every year and I'd hardly call kickstarters a 'troublemaker'. Certainly there's going to be a lot that try to cash in, but it's more than just nostalgia at work here.

Another example, Capcom released Mega Man 9 a few years ago on the Wii virtual console making it technically identical to Mega Man 2... critics and gamers alike downloaded it and loved it. I'd say that's because sometimes the old stuff still just plain works, with or without nostalgia. Going further down this topic access to old nostalgia games has never been better, with services like Good Old Games thriving and Nintendo and Sony making their classics legally available for purchase. I rather enjoy trying out those old nostalgic games after so long, and seeing which ones actually hold up well today. Like I have Heroes of Might and Magic 3 still on my desktop that I was playing a few months ago... and it was a huge let down. On the other hand, last year I gave Secret of Mana a try on my Wii and absolutely loved it. It was lacking in some modern story conventions (even for the latter SNES days) but overall I thought it was an extremely well structured game.