Nostalgia Trend in Gaming

[Nisarg]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that there appears to be a backward glance in gaming of late, that a lot of what's news in the market is nostalgia for games long past.

This is something that had never occured before; possibly because the industry wasn't really old enough till now to get nostalgic. But it does tell me one thing very clearly: you only really start developing nostalgia when the average of age of your "fans" starts slipping into near middle-age.

If we were a healthy industry, the market for games would be 14 year olds who wouldn't give a crap about the "return" of Paranoia, or Blackmoor, or what-have-you, because they'd never heard of the originals.
But more and more over the last couple of years I've had the distinct feeling that we're all a bunch of over-the-hill fogies who've just plain given up on recruiting new blood and are content to slip into an incestuous little "members-only-and-we're-not-taking-applications" mentality, where we won't be bothered by any of those dangerous teenagers coming into our legion hall and shouting too loud.

Rebuttals? Does anyone think this is good for the industry?

Nisarg

 

[Mark]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that there appears to be a backward glance in gaming of late, that a lot of what's news in the market is nostalgia for games long past.

This is something that had never occured before;

It's been going on cyclicly since the very beginning of RPGing.

The whole idea of medieval fantasy gaming, and historical wargaming in fact, is based on the romanticized pretense that the past was a time worth viewing with a certain nostalgia.

The industry is plenty healthy.

 

[Nisarg]

It's been going on cyclicly since the very beginning of RPGing.

The whole idea of medieval fantasy gaming, and historical wargaming in fact, is based on the romanticized pretense that the past was a time worth viewing with a certain nostalgia.

There is a difference between the hobby as a whole having a romanticised flavour to it, and a specific nostalgia trend that is INTERNAL to the hobby.
Even if I grant that there has always been a sense of romanticist nostalgia about THE past among gamers, it is very different than the current romanticist nostalgia about OUR past, I cannot recall another time when the gaming industry was nostalgic about its own old games.. time was when we were looking at the future and the next big game. Today its like its 1985 all over again: we've got Paranoia, Gamma World, Blackmoor, "return of" this and "return of" that, and rumoured to soon be getting Star Frontiers and even Tunnels and Trolls.

The industry is plenty healthy.

Are you basing that on anything other than mindless optimism?

Because every statistic I've seen says that the average age of gamers is increasing steadily, and the overall sales of rpgs is in decline. Those two stats put together should be very unnerving.

Nisarg

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's been going on cyclicly since the very beginning of RPGing.

Yeah, but the nostalgia we had in the 70s was so much better than today's nostalgia.

 

[Desdichado]

I haven't seen any stats either way about the average age of gamers. Even if it is going up, that's to be expected as gamers get older even if new gamers are coming into the fold. Back in the day, it was almost exclusively made up of younger folks.

Anecdotally, a co-worker told me, via his son, that D&D is all the rage in junior high again. Or at least it was two years or so ago.

 

[jester47]

I agree with you on some points.

Yes I think we are nostalgic. However I do not think it is because we are a bunch of old fogies. I think it is because there was a point where Adventure Gaming in general was really really hurting (like the late ninties or thereabouts). I think a large portion of the nostalgia is the people in the industry looking back to see what worked and what did not. Almost every "nostalgia" product is accompanied with the explantion of why it worked so well and why it is remembered. You could also say that the "return to" series of the 25 aniversery line was sort of an experiement to see if they could peg what people liked about the products.

The other thing about adventure gaming is that it works off of story. So in the same way a 14 year old can get excited about Lord of the Rings or some other fantasy, they can also get excited by the world of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, Blackmoor, the wilderlands, and such.

A big change is that D&D has lost its fad status. In the 80s it was a big fad. "Everyone was doing it." So the growth experienced in the 80's was bad growth. It was quick growth. The problem with quick growth is that it sets things up for quick collapse. The bottoming out in the 90s was a result of that. However, the core group of players has been slowly growing. Which is good. We want slow growth, thats the kind that sticks around.

I think there are several things that contribute to the nostalgia: The first is looking back and asking "what was good, the thing that everyone remembers? Why? How do we replicate that? Was it so unique that using the thing that made it good would just be a rip off? Or was it a concept of (say module design) that can be used over and over?" Another is that printing and art have become more accessible. So where there were these wonderful worlds, they can now be re-represented. This leads into repackaging for the newer generations, which is the last use of nostalgia that I can think of.

Now the big things that adventure gaming has going for it, and the reason it has survived computer games, MMORPGs, and other such creatures is that it is one of the last bastions of hospitality in modern society. If you go outside gamer and certain religious circles, hospitality is dead. No one invites people over for dinner anymore. People rarely open their homes to people they don't know. Profressionals have taken over. But Gamers do it all the time. Its why we have so many freaky people stories and people that don't game don't.

Playing pen and paper role playing games almost requires some form of hospitality. More often than not, someone has to open their home to other people so you can play the game. More often then not people say the reason they play is that they get to spend time with friends. In fact I do not think "lifestyle games" is a good moniker, but I think "hospitality games" is.

And I think that is the reason RPGs will survive and thrive in the future. As things are going it will be very necessary as a social institution. Indeed with the way parents are teaching their children the games, I think it will grow.

So in short I think the nostalgia is a good thing in that it helps the industry refine what works and what does not.

Aaron.

 

[Mark]

There is a difference between the hobby as a whole having a romanticised flavour to it, (etc.)

Of course. The above quoted passage is two paragraphs because they are two thoughts.

(Regarding the industry being healthy) Are you basing that on anything other than mindless optimism?

Of course not. Everything I do is based on mindless optimism.

(Regarding the industry being healthy) Because every statistic I've seen says that the average age of gamers is increasing steadily, and the overall sales of rpgs is in decline. Those two stats put together should be very unnerving.

Since the primary target of the market is "the young" (both because it can be and because the earlier they join the longer they can be consumers), and since the hobby has only been around for less than a generation, the average age of gamers will continue to rise until the number of gamers dying levels off and the induction of new gamers at young ages can far outstrip those lost to old age and death. It's fairly simple reasoning, Nisarg, and no need for you to become unnerved. There aren't overall sales figures anywhere, if if there were I doubt they show an overall decline. You are mistaken.

 

[MonsterMash]

There seem to be a lot of gamer parent who'se kids play, but most of those kids are too young still to be a major market (usually pre-teens), and the gamers with the highest disposable incomes are the 30 and 40 somethings so its not too surprising to see products targetted at them.

 

[Henry]

I humbly submit that the markert for gamers IS younger gamers who don't give a crap about the older games, because they don't remember them. The Internet is a marvelously skewed viewing window, making those who have minority opinions seem vastly more prevalent than they really are. Those who visit ENWorld and other fan sites are dedicated fans who enjoy the minutiae of D&D (albeit in different proportions). The actual core market, those for whom it's a game and activity for fun first and foremost, and not a hobby, do not visit these forums in great numbers (when I say "great" I mean by the tens or hundreds of thousands). Instead, while the market is on average 4 million monthly gamers (according to Charles Ryan in a recent thread), maybe 8 to 10,000 of those come to ENWorld, another 600 go to Dragonsfoot, a few thousands more go to RPG.Net, and all told there may be 30,000 die-hards out there. That figure of 4 million compared to those 30,000 fans out there is huge, and this, and listening to the WotC forums, is what convinces me there are FAR more younger gamers out there than most fans realize. I have 8 gamers in my current group; of those, 3 have only gamed within the last five years, 1 is only 10 years or less into the hobby, and the other 4, me included, are the only ones with multiple non-d20 systems experience under our belts. What I've seen at conventions and book stores makes me believe that this is the case. This is anecdotal, but does help form my take on the matter.

 

[Torm]

Maybe the whole nostalgia thing is less a case of, "hey, our entire market is old farts who'll buy stuff based on old stuff they remember fondly," and more a case of, "hey, look at all these new players who have never even heard of Star Frontiers, but are going into gaming stores. You realize this means we can repackage all the old stuff real pretty and sell it as something new again, right?!"

Not that I blame them. If it is still good enough to sell, so be it.