Where will the Nostalgia lie for the next Generation?

[BaronUberstein]

There will be no nostalgia . This generation ( graphics asside) is the worst generation . We are going to forget it existed , save for a few titles such as DA:O , Dark/demons souls .

What exactly counts as "this generation"? Because I've had some damn good memories already with some games. Homeworld, Call of Duty 4*, as well as just the general fun I've had in Company of Heroes multi-player. I still talk with my friends about games that happened a year or two ago because of just how awesome or funny they were.

So I argue that there is plenty of room for nostalgia, because all you need are good experiences and people who shared in those experiences as well, and I certainly have both of those.

*Yes, that game's story was enjoyable, had several twists I did not expect, and I overall enjoyed the experience and haven't really found a FPS that has impacted me the same way. Hell, I did a high school final project on Post-Colonialism and Appropriation in CoD4 and got an A on it.

 

[AlmightyTooTh]

In my opinion, games like Minecraft, call of duty, the newer pokemon maybe, Gears of war, Assassins creed and the like will be the nostalgia trips for them. It's games like these that will stick because when they began, they were something new, with new mechanics and fun gameplay that stands out in their mind. I know some will think these games are a bit samey, but really when they came out, they were the shining stars until they made sequels/got drowned in copies.

Starcraft 2 is another one I think will bring people back. Even games like Happy Wheels and Pandemic might be in there. There's a whole world of flash games to consider too

 

[BytByte]

Just like every other generation, Mario. Those that will still have fond memories of "innocence" as a child will more remember the plumber than anything else I believe.

 

[triggrhappy94]

I imagine it'd sound something like...
"I remember back when my friends and I used to rush home after Middle school to play Modern Warfare online. We used to noob tube and quick scope so many people, it was awesome. Nowadays, you can't do that kind of stuff; multiplayer in games today are way to balanced and fair."

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I think we're going to get nostalgic for the before time when our games came on disc and in boxes. There are some people already who are nostalgic for the days when games came with good manuals after all.

 

[sunsetspawn]

Mass Effect man. For those who were able to play from the beginning, there won't be anything like it ever again.

Pretty much this!

Mass Effect out-specialed KOTOR; it was a magical experience.

I do have some feelings for Borderlands too because of the desolate atmosphere, and I'm sure the sequel has done away with that.

 

[Daniel C 'Magistrex']

A decade from now, I'm going to be telling my kids about the good old days, back when Minecraft was actually about building a skull fortress into the side of a mountain or building a 40-foot cock and balls out of solid gold while hiding from the Al Quaeda Cactus Squad, rather than about collecting ghast tears to kill a giant goddamn dragon that has never hurt you and just wants to fly around in its own lonely little pocket dimension.

That, is actually brilliant. I appreciate all of the new things that have been added to Minecraft, but in all honesty, I just want to build stuff with my friends, and fight off zombies. I don't really care about the potions, or enchanting, or anything else like that.

I think we're going to get nostalgic for the before time when our games came on disc and in boxes. There are some people already who are nostalgic for the days when games came with good manuals after all.

Yeah, that's something I miss. The last good game manuals I can think of were for Fallout 3 (Detailed enough in comparison to most) and The Witcher 2: Enchanced Edition (Came with a complete walthrough for every quest, maps, and a regular manual). Nowadays we get cheap pamphlets that explain the controls, and not much else. It's not as exciting as it used to be.

 

[Evil Smurf]

A decade from now, I'm going to be telling my kids about the good old days, back when Minecraft was actually about building a skull fortress into the side of a mountain or building a 40-foot cock and balls out of solid gold while hiding from the Al Quaeda Cactus Squad, rather than about collecting ghast tears to kill a giant goddamn dragon that has never hurt you and just wants to fly around in its own lonely little pocket dimension.

That, is actually brilliant. I appreciate all of the new things that have been added to Minecraft, but in all honesty, I just want to build stuff with my friends, and fight off zombies. I don't really care about the potions, or enchanting, or anything else like that.

I think we're going to get nostalgic for the before time when our games came on disc and in boxes. There are some people already who are nostalgic for the days when games came with good manuals after all.

Yeah, that's something I miss. The last good game manuals I can think of were for Fallout 3 (Detailed enough in comparison to most) and The Witcher 2: Enchanced Edition (Came with a complete walthrough for every quest, maps, and a regular manual). Nowadays we get cheap pamphlets that explain the controls, and not much else. It's not as exciting as it used to be.

well you can buy Pokemon Guidebooks with the games but screw that! I have the Internet!

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Well there are plenty of games this generation that smaller gamers will remember fondly playing, so yeah there'll be plenty. Like Skyward Sword and Transformers..

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Depends on what sort of games they like. A lot of people will be nostalgic for Call of Duty and elitist "games are art" narrative snobs on forums will be nostalgic for Enslaved or whatever. Nobody will be nostalgic for Mass Effect though, just slightly embarrassed about how they liked something like that.

 

[Slash Dementia]

Probably Mass Effect, and that's about it. There haven't been many memorable games this generation. There have been good games, but those don't necessarily warrant nostalgia..

 

[jebara]

I'll probably remember Portal 2 and Dark Souls with a fondness.
But the one I'll feel most nostalgic about is Persona 4,I know it on a last gen system but I played it during this gen and probably remember it as a current gen game.

 

[Squilookle]

Yeah I'd say probably just Mass Effect, Portal 2, and especially Minecraft.

Everything else was just... more of the same.

 

[PPB]

New gamers who started playing this generation will undoubtedly feel nostalgic about the current games.

For the rest of us, there's already quite a bit of nostalgia going on for the first Mass Effect so I guess it will remain. I've seen Dragon Age: Origins mentionned, but I would hazard that the people who liked it the most are those who grew up with BioWare's old RPGs and that their nostalgic feelings will remain stronger for Baldur's Gate and its sequel/spinoffs.

It's hard to tell beyond that. Personally, I don't think this generation was as impressive as the last ones from a gameplay point of view (it's all about the "HD" craze nowadays). I have a hard time believing that graphics alone are enough to imprint a game in our collective memory. I'm not saying the games are bad, they're just more about a technical refinement of mechanics that were already in place.

 

[xPixelatedx]

There will be no nostalgia . This generation ( graphics asside) is the worst generation . We are going to forget it existed , save for a few titles such as DA:O , Dark/demons souls .

I like you, and for the most part I agree. I wasn't particularly fond of the last generation either, and if it wasn't for the PS2 and it's HUGE library of decent/great games, that gen would have been a failure as well (lol at PS2s STILL selling today). I just wish the original Xbox and gamecube had a bigger selection of blockbusters.

You seem to have chosen a very limited spectrum of games, perhaps instead of 'we' you meant to put 'I'

No, I am with them to a degree. For people with gun fetishes this gen was probably a godsend, likewise for grandma and your little cousins with their wiis. But for people who liked everything inbetween - the people the last gens were aimed at - we kind of got screwed this gen, at least if you're talking about games outside the indie scene. There were exceptions; games like Portal, LBP, etc., but nothing close to enough to make this gen feel worth it. This was the gen of everything trying not to be a video game, then touting thats a good thing because "video games are stupid and we should be trying to achieve more cinematic experiences". This was the gen of the every-man protagonist where you play the same brown/black haired late twenties something in almost every single game. This was the gen where everything became Gears of War or Cod (R.I.P. Resident Evil/Dead Space). This was the gen of catastrophic hardware failures by design, because of cheap work and business ethics (RROD). This was the gen where a game publishing company showed it could be so anti-consumer it could be voted the worst company in America. This was the gen three of the greatest developers pulled a 180 and now only produce the poorest quality products: Capcom, Rare, Sega. This was the gen that Sony showed you could be as condescending as you want to your consumer base, even to the point of egging on that very consumer base to attack you through hacking; and that was after telling us all to get two jobs to afford their new console.

I could go on for a bit more, but I think that should be enough to convey the message. All that said, I hope (I really do) that the next gen will be much better. Nintendo found out the casual audience isn't sustainable, and the indi scene is about to become even more accessible for people to jump into and sell their games. If things like the Ouya succeed even a little, they will take some of the industry's profits and that should enrage a lot of publishers who think the CoD model is perfect. Maybe, just maybe we might see the frequency of great games we did in the SNES/PS1 era, once the industry decides they need to again start taking chances to also compete with the indie scene. Something is horribly wrong when the only thing to quench my gaming thirst all year was a furry game on XBL summer Arcade. I mean seriously, what the hell...

 

[Veylon]

If the much-ballyhooed video game crash happens, one thing we'll be nostalgic for is AAA graphics. You know all those people who want traditional animation back? We'll be just like them. If the crash really hits hard, we may well be nostalgic for consoles.

 

[trooper6]

Just like every other generation, Mario. Those that will still have fond memories of "innocence" as a child will more remember the plumber than anything else I believe.

Speak for yourself. I'm old enough that Mario was just a dude in Donkey Kong and people were more interested in Pac-Man or Go back a bit earlier to Asteroids or Pong. Not everyone worships Mario.

But to the original question. To all those of you arguing there will be no nostalgia because there are no "goog" games, or that there will be nostalgia for this or that "good" game, that isn't how nostalgia works. Nostalgia is not about the object as much as it is connecting to a time when you felt safe and happy, usually your youth or or other times when you are forming your identity. Because if this, the past is often reconstructed to be something it wasn't (hint: the 1950s was a terrible time for a lot of people who weren't 5 years old). What this means is a) nostalgia will be individual and b) it isn't based on appeals to "objective quality."

I was heavily invested in the 1980s sci-fi show V and 1980s Doctor Who. There are people from now who will say those shows were crap, but I think they are great and will always defend them.

But another point, I am not one for nostalgia because I think it is dangerous. Nostalgia blinds us to the faults of the past and causes us to warp and misrepresent history....and then it also comes with that curmudgeonly "everything was better back then and everything today sucks." it makes us regressive. We can have fond memories of the past, while still embracing the future. One of the best ways to keep that balance that allows us to remain current and progress is to also remember that the past was also not great. There were crappy games in the past just as there are crappy games now.

 

[Chimichanga]

If kids of the upcoming generation don't find nostalgia with Cave Story I will surely weep.

But to be more realistic, it's probably going to be stuff like

Borderlands
Anything by Nintendo (Mario, Zelda, Kirby, etc.)
Halflife 2 & whatever episodes
Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and pretty much everything by Bethesda
KOTOR 1 & 2, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights, and pretty much anything by Obsidian
Definitely the God of War series
Hell, maybe the Gears of War series
Definitely the Assassin's Creed series

Eh... maybe the Call of Duty: MWF schlock. I'm not going to like it, but you have to admit, it was popular enough that the kids of today are going to remember fondly when they get to our age(s). Lord help 'em.

Essentially, whatever was popular, but did something (at least once at the time) that was memorable. For example, Borderlands being highly stylized and having a shit-ton of weaponry, or Cave Story just being Cave Story.

Pretty much what defined 'Nostalgia' for us. Granted, with the obvious exceptions, I feel it won't be as creative and dynamic as ours was, when gaming was still new and concepts and technology were essentially being broken with every big new title in the 80s and 90s, but it will still be there for the games that deserved it - the games that pushed boundaries and set themselves apart - or even just created the trends that currently stagnate the industry (They had to be popular and innovative at some point to inspire their imitators, after all).

My hope is that whatever they remember with the same love and reverence as we do for our Pokemon Red & Blue Versions, Metal Gear, Mortal Kombat (the first 3-4), and whatever other classics, even the redundant CoD shit, they remember the best aspects of them and continue to promote the innovative parts of them that we with our own modern biases failed to pick up, so the creative spirit, even if not the image of those games pass themselves on like ours did.

Legacy through innovation and impact - the best way for a title to pass itself on.

 

[Daniel C 'Magistrex']

Just like every other generation, Mario. Those that will still have fond memories of "innocence" as a child will more remember the plumber than anything else I believe.

Speak for yourself. I'm old enough that Mario was just a dude in Donkey Kong and people were more interested in Pac-Man or Go back a bit earlier to Asteroids or Pong. Not everyone worships Mario.

But to the original question. To all those of you arguing there will be no nostalgia because there are no "goog" games, or that there will be nostalgia for this or that "good" game, that isn't how nostalgia works. Nostalgia is not about the object as much as it is connecting to a time when you felt safe and happy, usually your youth or or other times when you are forming your identity. Because if this, the past is often reconstructed to be something it wasn't (hint: the 1950s was a terrible time for a lot of people who weren't 5 years old). What this means is a) nostalgia will be individual and b) it isn't based on appeals to "objective quality."

I was heavily invested in the 1980s sci-fi show V and 1980s Doctor Who. There are people from now who will say those shows were crap, but I think they are great and will always defend them.

But another point, I am not one for nostalgia because I think it is dangerous. Nostalgia blinds us to the faults of the past and causes us to warp and misrepresent history....and then it also comes with that curmudgeonly "everything was better back then and everything today sucks." it makes us regressive. We can have fond memories of the past, while still embracing the future. One of the best ways to keep that balance that allows us to remain current and progress is to also remember that the past was also not great. There were crappy games in the past just as there are crappy games now.

It's very true that nostalgia can be a bad thing - sometimes we get so obsessed with what we had then, that we ignore and shun what we have now.

I agree with you in saying that there still will be nostalgia - nostalgia is, after all, tied to personal experiences within a game, rather than the game itself. The problem however, is that games, for the most part, have become cheap and disposable. Buying a game today isn't as much of 'a big deal' or an investment that it once was - iOS games are the perfect example. You can dish out 60 cents or so on a game, play with it for an hour, and then forget you ever even owned it.

I think what people are trying to say that it's difficult today to become attached to a game like you may have done so in the past, because chances are you own dozens of other games too, and just as likely so does your family. As a result of an abundance of games, it can be difficult to remember particular games that meant something special to you, other than just viewing the collection as a source of entertainment you played when you were bored.