Love the Past, Look to the Future
Originally published April 2016 in Cubed Gamers, Issue 4
Nostalgia in the gaming community has had a bit of a bad rep recently; like your Grandma saying things that get us all into trouble, the genre can slide into being a bit old-timey. Though I don’t want to keep resurrecting the decomposing carcass that is #GamerGate, the idea that games are resistant to contemporary criticism is a stifling straightjacket for an art form.
In a similar nostalgic vein, gaming has quite consistently fallen into a ‘comfort blanket’ mentality, stifling bright young things with the tired, machismo-overloaded, white protagonist who has lost an item significant to him and is driven to avenge her/him/it through his own smug sense of entitlement. I think many of us are cynical about playing through these stories again and again (casting a sideways glance at Watch Dogs), but lazy companies hang on to the dangling thread of our comfort zones, safe in the knowledge that we all have some form of nostalgic crevice that buckles us into continuing to buy boring — yet nicely familiar — drivel.
Nonetheless, there are some parts of our nostalgia that can continue to be relevant; aspects of old games which are simultaneously considered classic for a reason, and give us some wiggle room. Here are three justifiable aspects of our nostalgia, which are still ‘trendy’ in 2016 — think more 60s miniskirt than 70s flares.
1) The Concepts
Gaming atmosphere has always been pinnacle for making an investment in the ol’ memory bank. Though many utopias and dystopias are refreshed again and again, it’s surprising to think that we don’t get tired of them too often.
The obvious concept that springs to mind is the Zombie apocalypse; though cinema first went there in the 1930s, there’s something about gaming that brought the apocalypse back to life, if you will. It’s probably a combination of gaming’s immersive nature, and the variety of different takes on the concept which gamers are committed to playing: from your classic Left 4 Dead, to The Walking Dead to Day Z, there’s always a different experience to behold, whether it’s through the game mechanics, the way the undead came to be, or the ever-popular inclusion of chainsaws.
It’s this development of nostalgic concepts that creates such masterpieces as The Last of Us, which play on our expectations of the Zombie concept, challenge them, and sometimes make us laugh at how naïve we are from the last time (I know the ‘machismo avenging man’ stands here, but the depth of its concept saves the storyline). This imagining of new worlds is consistently reworked and revamped into something new, from 1984’s Elite, to the upcoming Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. That’s not blood you’re seeing; it’s just the glare on your rose-tinted glasses.
2. The Characters
When we got the GameCube out the other night, we realised we could remember almost every line from The Simpsons: Hit & Run, 13 years on. This is because — albeit lifted from a multi-million pound franchise — the characters and phrases are absolutely solid. It’s this idea of likable, well-humoured protagonists that makes even hardcore, first person shooter groupies go all blurry eyed at the thought of The Secret of Monkey Island.
Though it’s astounding how you can make your very own character — down to that scar they received from the ‘can opener incident’ of 2057 — in Fallout 4, I think Trevor from Grand Theft Auto V is the perfect example of how playable characters with ‘rich’, ‘unique’ personalities can still take precedence in making a story memorable. In my opinion, it’s the humour of these games that sticks with you — Glottis from Grim Fandango being no exception. So whether it’s phrases such as Manny’s ‘That is not on fire’, or Homer’s ‘I’m soaring through the air like a candy wrapper caught in an updraft!’ these characters and their words will stay with you for eternity, like that god-awful song you heard every day and every night of your Freshers’ week.
3. The Colour
Back when Lara Croft’s breasts could still take someone’s eye out, developers couldn’t rest on their hyper-realistic laurels. They constantly pushed (and compromised with) the limitations of the graphics they had. This is probably why things were so wacky and colourful; any attempt to be realistic back then just came off a bit naff.
These virtual spaces may no longer have the wow-factor they did back then, but it was that level of sheer imagination that makes us reminisce on how vibrant gaming used to be. Undoubtedly, the level of graphical realism now is astounding, but it will be interesting to see how a generation who were brought up with the likes of LA Noire and Metal Gear Solid V, instead of Crash Bandicoot, experience nostalgia.
Luckily Indie devs have this one down; the retro and colourful are back in fashion again. And titles such as Braid use nostalgic genres such as the platformer to create something almost Einsteinian in practice. Though it presents an arguably ‘childish’ aspect of the gaming world, the re- introduction and development of colour and imagination has easily sought out a double demographic of gamers: the nostalgic and the new.
Mary Schmich in Wear Sunscreen suggests that ‘Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth’; the ‘advice’ we use from past games can definitely be a bit rancid, retelling stories and restricting our imaginations. But I’m going to suggest that instead of ‘recycling’ the past over and over again, we use our desire for nostalgia as a foundation. Inspired by concept, character and colour, we can, and have, used our nostalgia to paradoxically pave the way for something new, genuinely and proactively ‘painting over the ugly parts’ with new storylines, gameplay mechanics and environments. It’s too easy to recycle and resell games to us with the hope that our nostalgic impulses will accept it as a comfortable 7/10. We’re looking for something a little less ‘back in my day’, and a little more inspired.
