Video Games as Objects and Vehicles of Nostalgia

Abstract

Barely 50 years old, video games are among the newest media today, and still a source of fascination and a site of anxiety for cultural critics and parents. Since the 1970s, a generation of video gamers have grown up and as they began to have children of their own, video games have become objects evoking fond memories of the past. Nostalgia for simpler times is evident in the aesthetic choices game designers make: pixelated graphics, 8-bit music, and frustratingly hard levels are all reminiscent of arcade-style and third-generation console games that have been etched into the memory of Generation X. At the same time, major AAA titles have become so photorealistic and full of cinematic ambition that video games can also serve as vehicles for nostalgia by “faithfully” recreating the past. From historical recreations of major cities in the Assassin’s Creed series and L. A. Noire, to the resurrection of old art styles in 80 Days, Firewatch or Cuphead all speak of the extent to which computer gaming is suffused with a longing for pasts that never were but might have been. This paper investigates the design of games to examine how nostalgia is used to manipulate affect and player experience, and how it contributes to the themes that these computer games explore. Far from ruining video games, nostalgia nonetheless exploits the associations the players have with certain historical eras, including earlier eras of video gaming. Even so, the juxtaposition of period media and dystopic rampages or difficult levels critically comment upon the futility of nostalgia.

Heritage Sites and Video Games: Questions of Authenticity and Immersion

“…'Recreating cities for nostalgic play' (p. 9) is exactly what Makai (2018) sees in L.A. Noire and Assassin's Creed. Sometimes, as in the case of the 1940s L.A., it is 'actual nostalgia in people who lived in the city at that era' (p. 9).…”

“Makes me feel like I was born in the wrong era”: Gamer self-efficacy and appreciation, rather than controller type, correlate with historical nostalgia when playing a retrogame.

“…Regarding the preservation of decay, anecdotal examples would include the animation flickers of hand-drawn cartoons (an artifact of physical project and photography systems), the occasional crackles of a vinyl record (an artifact of debris in the grooves of the record), or various color tinting artifacts of early film and television (artifacts of the shift from black-and-white to color film processing). For retrogames, features such as chiptune music (Driscoll & Diaz, 2009) and pixel art (Makai, 2018) reflect artifacts of the technical limitations of early video game hardware.…”

Rethinking Remakes: Value and Culture in Video Game Temporalization

“…Fan communities around retro gaming typically characterize their informal labor through an appeal to one or another “correct” form of nostalgia, which in turn informs what elements of gaming history those communities deem essential to the “proper” experience of an older title (Heineman, 2014; Hörtnagl, 2016). The labeling of correct and incorrect necessarily introduces political and social questions of power and preference, which has led game scholars (Garda, 2013; Gaughen, 2014; Makai, 2018; Williams & Tobin, 2022) to turn in great number to Svetlana Boym's (2001) The Future of Nostalgia to differentiate between what Boym calls “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgia. For Boym, the impulse to return to or to recreate a kind of prelapsarian past makes up “restorative” nostalgia, which seeks always to create “total reconstructions of monuments of the past” (p. 41).…”