Nostalgia: You'll Never Feel That Way Again

Another few months later and my previous intended blog post is already out of date.  Well, screw it.  Onward!

Nostalgia.  That word that I discuss endlessly with my friends.  It's something I fight and push back against in almost every discussion about games, yet I can't help that part of me loves it.  Both the fight and the thing itself.

Nostalgia is the longing to return to an earlier time in your life.  Often it's about when we're young, and the nostalgia for the things we had when we were younger is often the strongest.  It's a pair of rose-colored goggles: making everything so much warmer and happier than anything ever could be again.  I look back on some of my favorite games and have to admit that nostalgia is the thing that made it so great.

Some new video games (or "new" as the case may be) can invoke a feeling of nostalgia, that oh so nice longing for a better past.  But no game you ever play will give you the same feeling as that older game.  Not even if you play the same game again.  It's always different; feelings of nostalgia are tinged with the fact that it's not that same first time, and new games are entirely new experiences themselves.

And the reason I fight it is that if you're looking to make a game, or discuss a game to another person, nostalgia is all but useless.  If you're making a game, you can draw upon your nostalgia to know how to appeal to others who share it, but that'll always be limited, and never surpass the original.  And nostalgia isn't something transferable to another person.  Even if they have similar tastes as you, talking about nostalgia just leaves a certain amount of distance that opens no new doors to discussion and closes others.  So "It's all about the nostalgia" is a pretty weak thing to say when you're trying to explain away design flaws or shallowness in story.

And the thing that irritates me most is that nostalgia cripples our ability, including mine, to look back on games ourselves.  The ability to objectively judge a game's flaws and merits will always be reduced, at least somewhat crippling our ability to learn how to do better.  And I'd say it reduces the quality of analysis that can be done as well.  Look at history.  Little can be learned from the terrible mistakes of our past if we pretend it was all roses and dandelions.  How we approach video games might not be losing as much as history, but the basic mistake is the same.

Reality: Trail of Tears

Nostalgia: Thanksgiving

There are games from my past I love so much they give me shivers when I hear their music or play through certain parts.  The Legend of Zelda Oracle games, Golden Sun, Wind Waker, the original Halo, and more.  I still love these games, and I occasionally return to play them.  But whether trying to figure out how to make a game myself or discussing the literary merits of games, these are the games I avoid most.  I may point out specific things from them, but even then...  Those rose-colored glasses make it really hard to know when there's real stuff to be said or it's just the nostalgia talking.

Now, this has been mostly negative, and I don't think that nostalgia is all bad.  But when so many people will happily proclaim that the best of this series or that series is a game decades old...  It just saddens me.  And what's worse is when people happily proclaim that no game could ever surpass game X!  We're on the cutting edge.  There are so many new games to explore and so many new games to be made.  It's hard to make progress when things like "best game ever" are determined by the median age of the game playing populace more than games' merits (literary or otherwise).

Nostalgia should be something we look back happily on to enjoy now and then, but always with hope that something new can be great enough that it can beat those old games.  We shouldn't look back on those games and say with disappointment, "Wow, I wonder why no games can make me feel like that anymore."  That's just a great way to end up disappointed.  Learn well from the past, as there's much to be found there.  But trying to recapture nostalgia isn't the way to learn, and holding onto it like your only life-line to a happier life is even worse.  Enjoy them, but keep them in their place: a happy moment from the past.

We should be looking ahead, trying to find new experiences that are completely different from those old nostalgia-causing games, and hope to surpass what we've done in the past.  Whether game maker or game player, it's up to you.  It's up to all of us.  We need to avoid falling into the traps of playing and making games to capture old feelings, and instead, play and create to explore the vast and awesome possibilities ahead.

The future is bright. Let's chase it. Even as we enjoy our memories of the past.