Post by Morreion on Feb 9, 2010 8:32:18 GMT -5
Nostalgia is Good (Keen and Graev's Gaming Blog)
Nostalgia: Good. Criticism of Nostalgia: Bad. (Vicarious Existence)
I like nostalgia! ;D
I see nostalgia as a good thing. In fact, I see it as a great thing. Nostalgia means longing for something past. More often than not, when someone pulls the nostalgia card, they are using a definition that includes the person longing for something in an idealized form. Why is that bad? Before I expect someone to answer that, I’ll tell you why I think it is a good thing so that the ball is then passed to their court.
For me, when I’m being nostalgic it’s not because I’m thinking of something that was and can not be again. When I speak of a game and how great it was, it’s not because I’m thinking of something that did not happen. I’m not longing to play a character again that I played ten years ago. I’m not longing for that guild I was in. When I say that DAOC was a great PvP game that handled a multi-faction war better than any other MMO it’s not because I have some dillusional state of mind.
I know that I can never experience EverQuest again. I know that I can never experience Star Wars Galaxies again. Ultima Online will never again see the light of day in its true form. Even World of Warcraft’s original form “Vanilla WoW” is something of the past. Those games are gone. Their spirit lives on and we can all love them for that. However, when someone like myself truly gets nostalgic about those games it’s because I see more than just the great game I can never have again.
It’s about gameplay. When I get right down to it I am talking about the design of the game. When I think about games of the past and I wish for games of today to adopt their enormous worlds, their level of content, their complexity, their ability to evoke an emotional response, and a specific mechanic it’s because those things factored into the whole. If one insists on telling me that this is nostalgia then I would say nostalgia is a good thing. If nostalgia allows me to remember good game design, remember exactly what I liked about a particular game, and then want to implement it in a newer generation then that is a great thing. We can and should learn from the past.
For me, when I’m being nostalgic it’s not because I’m thinking of something that was and can not be again. When I speak of a game and how great it was, it’s not because I’m thinking of something that did not happen. I’m not longing to play a character again that I played ten years ago. I’m not longing for that guild I was in. When I say that DAOC was a great PvP game that handled a multi-faction war better than any other MMO it’s not because I have some dillusional state of mind.
I know that I can never experience EverQuest again. I know that I can never experience Star Wars Galaxies again. Ultima Online will never again see the light of day in its true form. Even World of Warcraft’s original form “Vanilla WoW” is something of the past. Those games are gone. Their spirit lives on and we can all love them for that. However, when someone like myself truly gets nostalgic about those games it’s because I see more than just the great game I can never have again.
It’s about gameplay. When I get right down to it I am talking about the design of the game. When I think about games of the past and I wish for games of today to adopt their enormous worlds, their level of content, their complexity, their ability to evoke an emotional response, and a specific mechanic it’s because those things factored into the whole. If one insists on telling me that this is nostalgia then I would say nostalgia is a good thing. If nostalgia allows me to remember good game design, remember exactly what I liked about a particular game, and then want to implement it in a newer generation then that is a great thing. We can and should learn from the past.
Nostalgia: Good. Criticism of Nostalgia: Bad. (Vicarious Existence)
Sorry, but this is just wrong. Nostalgia is a memory bias and serves as a mental defence of what we believe based on past experience. What Keen is doing here is trying to force a cognitive explanation onto an emotional dissonance – he feels that MMOs today don’t give him the same kind of “emotional response” he got from the older games he used to play, so therefore it is the fault of the current MMOs because they lack the same kind of features. It is a subjective argument taken from an emotional place – despite arguing that he isn’t, everything he liked about those previous times and places are locked up in his overall memories of a past time.
People self-justify their memories over time. Modern movies suck – the old ones were better. Old MMOs were more exciting, new ones suck. I like your old stuff better than your new stuff. We base our opinions of new experiences compared to old ones, so the first major experiences, in MMOs or anywhere else, often become disproportionately important. If they don’t, then why the heck do people still talk about Trammel in glowing terms despite the harm it was doing to the Ultima Online player base? Or how great the social scene in Everquest was, despite it often arising from agonising grinds or mob camping?
People self-justify their memories over time. Modern movies suck – the old ones were better. Old MMOs were more exciting, new ones suck. I like your old stuff better than your new stuff. We base our opinions of new experiences compared to old ones, so the first major experiences, in MMOs or anywhere else, often become disproportionately important. If they don’t, then why the heck do people still talk about Trammel in glowing terms despite the harm it was doing to the Ultima Online player base? Or how great the social scene in Everquest was, despite it often arising from agonising grinds or mob camping?
I like nostalgia! ;D
