Nostalgia

Today Hollywood seems to be having a moment. They’re feeling nostalgic or at least want other people to feel nostalgic. And it's something that’s been very popular in the gaming industry. Uncharted 4’s throwback Crash Bandicoot level, Homefront the Resistance’s Timesplitter 2 levels, Doom’s throwback to its previous games, Modern Warfare Remastered getting more hype than the brand new Call of Duty game. It seems like the gaming industry wants to invoke the past. Many people claim that the sequelization going on in media is hurting the whole industry but is it really? Is there an actual time where nostalgia can be beneficial? See the thing is that the answer for both questions are both yes and no. It’s actually very nuanced.

Well, just so that we are on the same page, Nostalgia is typically described as the warm feeling you get when looking old photographs and home movies. But it can be more than that. Nostalgia comes from the greek word nostos or return home and algos or longing in english. When the word Nostalgia was first coined in 1688 by medical student Johannes Hofer, being Nostalgic was thought to be a disease.  But of course as we now know is not the case. Turns out that nostalgia isn’t as bad as you might assume. Actually studies show that nostalgia counteracts loneliness/ anxiety most of the time and causes people to have hope for the future.

So there’s two forms of nostalgia. Natural, originating most commonly from photographs and home movies. From bumping into a song that may have some kind of deeper meaning to one of the games you used to play as a child with your friends on the couch, natural nostalgia typically occurs very suddenly upon coming into contact with that original medium. The second form of nostalgia is unnatural. Media products from corporations who want to sell you back your childhood. That idea that “Hey you liked this as a child now go watch the new movie that doesn’t retain any of the charm of the original”. Many people see this kind of nostalgia as exploitive that it doesn’t really add anything to the medium. That the glut of reiterating on the same properties are going to stagnate the whole genre. But is that really the case? Is there some benefit to the rampant rebooting, and sequelization?

The thing is that reboots and sequelization are not created equally. When some movies are just unnecessary appropriations of nostalgic properties. Some movies can take on new context in the  times in which they are presented. The Amazing Spiderman doesn’t really do to a post financial crisis america what Sam Rami’s Spiderman did to a post 9-11 America. Ideas presented in the original film can be recontextualized. But in gaming where sequalization seems to be the only way to make money what does this mean. Sometimes there are games where their sequels rise above the originals upon which they were based upon but other times quickly become the same game slopped out every single year. The recontextualizing is not something that we typically see in video games. Most reboots tend to be just bringing back that old game with more modern mechanics if you're lucky. But some like the Tomb Raider reboot shows how different modern audiences see certain types of people. Nostalgic properties that take a leave of absense as the industry looks toward more profitable genres, tend to come back big and remind us what made the original so great. Simplicity.

Which is why I believe that people are hating on the new Call of Duty versus the game that they’ve already played. Why developers like putting nods towards their original franchises. Why we see the resurgence of rogue likes. Why the new Doom and Wolfenstein games exists. Its because there is nostalgia for simplicity. A time where progression systems were nonexistant. Were an upgrade was not some arbitrary stat increase. Where upgrades were an item that changed the way that you played a game. In a time with big budget action video games flooding the market. It’s the look to the past that reminds us where gaming used to be and puts where we are today in a new light. Times where couch co-op was king. Because it really is those moments of playing games on christmas with the family that we are truly nostalgic for. And these old games are a portal to the times where everyone seemed to get along. A truly formative time in life. Nostalgia sells. Maybe even more so than sex. And sometimes that could be a good thing but other times it could stagnate a whole industry. But at the end of the day what really matters are th memories that are with these games, movies, or songs and that we hold them close for those connections that we’ve lost along the way. But then again what do I know, I’m just a sponge.