I get nostalgic when I listen to certain music, because I remember when the music was new and the good times I had. But I still like those bands. And there is good reason to like them. It's the same with games.
Don Johnson once described a heavy metal band as Jimmy Hendrix played twice as fast and half as good. A lot of modern games feel that way to me.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I get nostalgic when I listen to certain music, because I remember when the music was new and the good times I had. But I still like those bands. And there is good reason to like them. It's the same with games.
Don Johnson once described a heavy metal band as Jimmy Hendrix played twice as fast and half as good. A lot of modern games feel that way to me.
Don Johnson sounds like someone who doesn't understand metal :P. Hendrix = Blues riffs... Most real Metal = Classical music.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For the most part the truth is there is a very large demographic that just likes SIMPLE,EASY games,hence why Wow became so popular,anyone can play it and be good at it.Everyone in life likes to succeed,but only some like to challenge themselves or be pushed ,they don't like it easy and simple.
The same thing happens in sports,house leagues have divisions for a reason,the idea is to equally challenge each player and NOT make it too easy.Some gamer's feel stressed if anything looks too difficult,also the reason so many like soloing,they don't need anyone else because it is so easy and they never look bad.Many are afraid to fail in the eyes of others,simple easy games don't allow that.
Also there has been a recent influx of older games being done and for good reason,good ideas but we need to see better effort on graphics and animations.
Nostalgia is just a cheap word for accepting a cheap game that in 2016 should not be acceptable.There are Soooooooo many competent developers in 2016 that they could all easily make copies of old nostalgia games,but if they all did that we would have one boring rpg genre and a flooded market with too many poor choices to decide on.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
While i do agree that nostalgia can make us remember things different than they were, a lot of times is the reason we want to try something we've already experienced and we can have very pleasant surprises that way.
For example, i recently finished Divinity: Original Sin for the second time and never actually played any game of the saga, so i started with the first one, Divine Divinity. Oh boy, i'm having SO MUCH FRIGGIN FUN with that old piece of crap. Totally worth it! And after finishing i think i'm going to start Ultima VII again because the graphics are so similar, even when the game is more like the bastard child of Diablo and Baldur's Gate. The break from the terrible MMOs of today is actually a healthy breath of fresh air.
Other times i just get really disappointed about some games i considered good in my times. For example, i tried to play Warlords Battlecry and the UI is just a pain, couldn't feel it right at all, and it was terrible because i loved that game.
Some of it may be seeing it through rosy glasses effect but there are a LOT of people who are willing to play old games accepting semi old graphics for a real mmorpg. Blizzard just shut down the premier private WoW classic server which had a huge community and hundreds of thousands signed a petition to Blizzard to offer a classic WoW server. EQ2 had the TLE servers which had a lot of players and the only way to access the TLE servers for EQ2 was with a sub while the non TLE servers were free. Many other older mmorpgs have also followed suit to an extent as well. The problem is none of them are bringing back really how it was in classic like EQ2 going instead for a dumbed down super easy version where a few rush content and then would whine for the next expac aiming for their own favorite expac against the wishes of the majority.
This is none of these classic server retakes have failed straight out and have lasted many months each. When they do fail eventually its usually not because of lack of graphics or it being old style but because the company dumbed down the content trivializing things so much usually in the past and never brought that back with the classic.
What can be seen in the end is while yes we see those games through rosy colored glasses we still want those games as they originally were except with hopefully updated graphics and a few tweaks.
There's really no clear-cut answer here, because we're all so different.
From personal experience with a lot of gamers, I know there are those who actually prefer that things stay as they are - and who can spend an inordinate amount of time playing the exact same game for many, many years.
I guess you could be dismissive of them and claim they're living in the past - and maybe that's right.
I don't know.
All I know is that I, personally, crave evolution and new things - and even as I love a lot of established features and mechanics, I always think there's room for growth.
I'm not into innovation for the sake of innovation, though. In fact, I'd rather play a derivative quality game than an innovative new game if it's just mediocre - even if I might appreciate the innovation in itself.
That why I use the word evolution instead of innovation, because I think old ideas can be great - and they can be expanded upon without necessarily becoming entirely new things.
With all that said, nostalgia is a very powerful emotion - and even I can't deny the impact it can have. I have certainly been guilty of cutting games a lot of slack, if they also happen to appeal to my nostalgic and warm memories of the good old days of complex mechanics and needlessly obscure gameplay.
Comments
Don Johnson once described a heavy metal band as Jimmy Hendrix played twice as fast and half as good. A lot of modern games feel that way to me.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The same thing happens in sports,house leagues have divisions for a reason,the idea is to equally challenge each player and NOT make it too easy.Some gamer's feel stressed if anything looks too difficult,also the reason so many like soloing,they don't need anyone else because it is so easy and they never look bad.Many are afraid to fail in the eyes of others,simple easy games don't allow that.
Also there has been a recent influx of older games being done and for good reason,good ideas but we need to see better effort on graphics and animations.
Nostalgia is just a cheap word for accepting a cheap game that in 2016 should not be acceptable.There are Soooooooo many competent developers in 2016 that they could all easily make copies of old nostalgia games,but if they all did that we would have one boring rpg genre and a flooded market with too many poor choices to decide on.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For example, i recently finished Divinity: Original Sin for the second time and never actually played any game of the saga, so i started with the first one, Divine Divinity. Oh boy, i'm having SO MUCH FRIGGIN FUN with that old piece of crap. Totally worth it!
And after finishing i think i'm going to start Ultima VII again because the graphics are so similar, even when the game is more like the bastard child of Diablo and Baldur's Gate. The break from the terrible MMOs of today is actually a healthy breath of fresh air.
Other times i just get really disappointed about some games i considered good in my times. For example, i tried to play Warlords Battlecry and the UI is just a pain, couldn't feel it right at all, and it was terrible because i loved that game.
This is none of these classic server retakes have failed straight out and have lasted many months each. When they do fail eventually its usually not because of lack of graphics or it being old style but because the company dumbed down the content trivializing things so much usually in the past and never brought that back with the classic.
What can be seen in the end is while yes we see those games through rosy colored glasses we still want those games as they originally were except with hopefully updated graphics and a few tweaks.
From personal experience with a lot of gamers, I know there are those who actually prefer that things stay as they are - and who can spend an inordinate amount of time playing the exact same game for many, many years.
I guess you could be dismissive of them and claim they're living in the past - and maybe that's right.
I don't know.
All I know is that I, personally, crave evolution and new things - and even as I love a lot of established features and mechanics, I always think there's room for growth.
I'm not into innovation for the sake of innovation, though. In fact, I'd rather play a derivative quality game than an innovative new game if it's just mediocre - even if I might appreciate the innovation in itself.
That why I use the word evolution instead of innovation, because I think old ideas can be great - and they can be expanded upon without necessarily becoming entirely new things.
With all that said, nostalgia is a very powerful emotion - and even I can't deny the impact it can have. I have certainly been guilty of cutting games a lot of slack, if they also happen to appeal to my nostalgic and warm memories of the good old days of complex mechanics and needlessly obscure gameplay.