Black (and White) Is Beautiful: Does Gaming History Matter?
Maybe the measure of the maturity of a subculture or medium is how much of its history has been forgotten. If so, I'd say computer games and video games are well on their way to becoming a mature and established. It seems many game journalists are too young to have clear memories beyond a full generation of console hardware. Mention the 3DO to your average gamer, and you are likely to be met with either a blank stare or the vaguest of recognition. I'm probably included in that description... I think I only played three 3DO games ever, on a company system, and only one - Road Rash - was actually worth playing.

Maybe that's why our industry has thrived so long and selling the same old recycled, gussied-up games to the public year after year. Although it's changing slowly as the "average" gamer threatens to age beyond the "twenty-something" crowd, we've traditionally been young enough to be very forgetful of our past. I find myself frustrated when I read glowing reports of a "revolutionary" game "inventing" a new kind of gameplay that I remember enjoying fifteen years ago. Like more than one article stating that "open-ended gameplay" somehow began with Grand Theft Auto.

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion must have stolen the idea from Grand Theft Auto. Riiiiiiiiight. What was the release date of Elder Scrolls 1: Arena, again? Or Elite?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like it's unique to our medium. I mean, Elvis and the Beatles were always people that our parents liked. I never did understand the phenomina around those performers or the music.

And film! I don't know when I learned to despise black & white (or just "older films"). Maybe it was after years of watching Our Gang and The Li'l Rascals, when I suddenly realized to my horror that the cute girl Darla was actually pushing sixty in real life (and died in 1979). Or maybe it was my being influenced by marketing. Surely the fact that everybody was TALKING about the new shows meant that they were more interesting than the old, right? The technology was poor, the special effects were embarassing, the studios hired pretty boys and girls to be "stars" instead of people with actual acting talent, the humor was over-the-top for a more naive audience, and what they thought was edgy and tantalizing was actually laughably tame (except when they referred to things that are now politically incorrect).

But a friend forced me to watch "It Happened One Night," and I was delighted. It wasn't that there was anything in particular that was in any way spectacular. Nothing knocked my socks off or showed me anything I hadn't seen before. But the whole thing was just... just a great movie. Since then, I've been going back and catching up on some great shows from the past that I might have missed out on. (Some recent discoveries: "Captain Blood" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn, and "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart were a lot of fun!)

When you are talking about a commercial industry, from a short-term perspective it's not in a business's best interest to promote the past. I mean, if you are spending $75 million on a movie remake, you do not want it competing directly with the original that viewers can watch for free on television.

Games have suffered additional cultural amnesia in that they have traditionally marketed to a younger audience, and that the rapid evolution of technology that has rendered older games obsolete (and even impossible to play, due to the loss of the equipment necessary to play them).
But that part is changing. The gamer demographic is maturing, as is the technology. And with the advent of emulation - emulation that copyright-holders are discovering they can take advantage of on the new consoles with downloadable retro games - we are seeing a few old classics being introduced to new audiences.

But I'm not expecting a retro revolution here. It's like AMC or the Western Channel --- I think those channels are primarily catering to an existing niche and only incidentally growing their market.

So am I just railing against the inevitable here? Is it such a bad thing that players (and developers) have forgotten what made M.U.L.E., Ultima IV, Elite, Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy VII, Mario 64, Doom, The Secret of Monkey Island, or Galaga so special? Am I just being an old fart, complaining about how kids believe videogames began with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater?


(Vaguely) related workings of a fevered imagination:
* Innovation in RPGs?
* R.I.P. Computer Gaming World
* What Makes a Game Great?
* Open-Ended Gameplay Began with GTA?

Labels: Biz, Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:09 PM (Permalink)