4 Reasons Nostalgia is Ruining the Video Games Industry

TGC writes: Video games are an expensive hobby and despite the high initial cost of buying them, they still depreciate faster than pornography. As such some gamers have become disillusioned with the state of modern gaming and taken to lusting after the good old days. However, it’s the gamers that assert that retro games are superior to their modern counterparts that are hurting the industry the most. Here are four reasons why …

[ShaunCameron]

Agreed on all four. Especially #1. In 10 years, watch these same gamers whining about this generation remember it fondly bragging about how great COD was. Or AC. Or even dare I say RE6?

[SJPFTW]

Call of Duty 4 was great. Assassins Creed 2 was great. Resident Evil 4 was great.

[MrKim12]

Just because I'm nostalgic doesn't mean I'm refusing change, nor do I believe that nostalgia is even an important factor as to why some developers choose to milk franchises. I think you're just generalizing too much.

[Summons75]

So true! Nostalgia may be a great thing when chatting with friends and remembering good times but go back and play the games again as an older more mature person and you will see they are completely different. LIke I've said before, did the original Resident Evil make me jump? Yes, but that dose not make it a "scary" game. Jump tactics are made for cheap thrills true horror is getting into someone's head and making them think that something is right behind them breathing down their neck when nothing is really there. Playing Metal Gear Solid 1 is something too. As a kid you remember it being this amazing spy thriller with robots and a boss who could read your mind. Play it again now and you follow the story and actually understand a lot of the political things they are talking about and you can easily get sucked up into the emotions and development of al the characters.

Nostalgia is not a bad thing but it is definitely a powerful and blinding thing that could harm the industry.

[majiebeast]

I dont hate Resident evil 6 for straying too far from the franchise i hate it cause its a bad game at its core with its dumb implementation of QTE,re-using of bosses,horrible camera at times and annoying load screens for a 5 second boss battle cutscene.

Same for final fantasy 13 i dont hate it because the battle system is different. I hate it cause it was a boring game with a bad story,terrible characters,bad voice acting boring battle system and just 1 gigantic corridor for 20+ hours.

It has nothing to do with nostalgia when the game is just bad.

I still play chrono trigger,TMNT turtles in time and super metroid once a year. Those games are just good because even if they are 20 years old and outdated by todays standards, they did the core gameplay right and no ammount of physx,graphics or AI can beat that.

[TacoTaru]

Changing everything to action/shooter is not necessarily improving things. Trying to please the masses instead of making something special that will appeal to a smaller number of folks may improve investors moods, but doesn't mean better games.

[breakpad]

No...you cant blame the nostalgia because gamers react to cheap (from every aspect)games... to try persuade us to buy bad made games with the excuse that they are changing, it s not nostalgia that ruining the games,developers are...Kojima himself has said that back then the games were made with the quality in mind (not with the budget in mind) by people who put their dreams into the job ...

[Man-E-Faces]

Very few games will be remembered from this gen why? The majority rely on a repetitive multiplayer online game play to keep or have interest in their game. Fast forward 5-10 years from now when servers are shut down exposing the crap single player portion of these games then you will see how bad this gen was compared to previous gens. Games from past gens are remembered because of their great single player game play/stories/characters, multiplayer was never the main focus as it is today.

[joel_c17]

Agreed. Imagine gears of war 2 without multiplayer? Eww

[IWentBrokeForGaming]

Games are becoming too "HOLLYWOOD"... and it's been a longggggggggggggg time since I've seen a truely awesome batch of movies come out...

Remakes of old films all truely suck...

or

you have PG-13 "HORROR" films? that's truely a crime amongst the genre itself!

The OLDER versions of games/movies are THE BESTand MOSTLY the most ORIGINAL in concept out of a series (in MOSTLY ALL cases with few acceptions)... thus why franchises now/as of the last couple of years just haven't aged well or are purely just out of ideas!

[MeatAbstract]

Ju On:The Grudge is a 15 and that is terrifying. Granted it's subjective, what scares you may not scare me but I've seen many, many horror films and watch them regularly and that one still sticks with me as something terrifying.

[DogtagDuke1992]

I really enjoyed this article and I agree probably 80%. I do believe that change needs to naturally occur in franchises. However, I also believe that this change should only come from what is accepted in the franchise. As a wise man once said: "It isn't about making a game (sequel primarily) that is gonna throw you a curve ball, or give you a one-two punch to the face in terms of all that is new in the game...its about building on what is right-on what works. Videogame sequels aren't supposed to be REVOLUTIONARY, they are supposed to be EVOLUTIONARY." For example, Splintercell has completely changed their formula for stealth/infiltration gameplay. There is no more "go through the whole mission without killing anybody" or "use your gadgets and goggles and interrogations". Its more likely that you are, in Conviction or Blacklist, going to "shoot first, then try and divulge information out of bleeding corpses" (once you've roundhouse kicked a few doors down and blown up a few rooms, of course). And sure, these aren't TERRIBLE changes-Convictions was a good game...but it wasn't Splintercell, and they had no reason to change what everybody liked and make it what it isnt. They should have evolved on the key successes of the franchise and not scrapped half of it to make something else. It you run out of ways to evolve a franchise, they honestly, I think it is time the franchise is retired- NOT expanded on and stretched to its breaking point until it's initial intentions and "what made it what it was" are lost to future gaming generations. All in all, building on successful formulas is tricky, but VERY IMPORTANT, and developers need to understand the difference between EVOLVING a franchise and REVOLUTIONIZING it. Because if you are going to change it too much, you might as well just call it something else. Don't destroy a franchise just to get rich off the name. Keep 'em kosher! ...well that.........that's about all I got to say about THAT.

[MeatAbstract]

It's kind of like the music industry when people say "Aw man I wish I grew up in the 60's/70's/80's it had all the best music" when all we hear from that era was the most popular good stuff.

Same with films and games. You think there wasn't bad films in the 80's? PLEASE!

Same with games. Think back to how much serious crap there has been over the years. It's a lot. I see comments here saying "Aw but all games this gen suck, it's all multiplayer" but I know in 10/15 years when I look back on this this generation I'll remember stuff like Demon's/Dark Souls, the Gears of Wars stuff, Red Dead, Mass Effect, Uncharted games. I'll remember spitting diet coke everywhere because Portal 2 made me laugh THAT hard. Screaming down the mic with 4 friends on L4D2. Doing my first jump assassination in the AC games. Don't forgot Batman, probably one of the best superhero games in god knows how long. The philosophies of Bioshock.

I could go on and on but you'll look back fondly on this generation just like the others.

[jambola]

i think resident evil 5/6 are good games but bad resident evils