Debunking the Nostalgia Myth

Because I read a lot of video game articles on websites like IGN, Gamespot, Joystiq, and Kotaku, I end up scrolling down to the comments section. I'm not sure why I do this. Because I know what I read there will infuriate me. The comments section is where free speech goes to live, and intelligent debate goes to die. And of course this is true for almost every site, not solely video games sites. Not The Daily Puppy, though. Go figure.

On sites like IGN and GameSpot, sometimes there is a truly enlightening, well-informed, or otherwise lucid comment, but 95% of the time the comments section will make you want to purchase the next ticket on Virgin Galactic and say goodbye to planet Earth forever. It really is incredible the amount and variety of idiocy that one finds in these comments sections and message boards.  Normally the most offensive comments come from Xbox or Playstation fanatics who argue for the supremacy of their system versus all others. But lately I've noticed a new chain of disturbing comments: those referring to nostalgia in a pejorative way. Let me explain more clearly. Commenters have increasingly been leaving text that implies or explicitly states that players who value older, "classic" video games over modern games are simply looking at the past through nostalgic lenses, and that a game released in 1996, for example, will never be as good as a game released 15 years later.

This is just nonsense, but it's a particularly vicious and effective canard because it totally delegitimizes the opposition. It's difficult to hold a debate between two sides when one is characterized as completely irrational.

Here are some examples:

brook44528 • 2 days ago •
except great games are only ever good for their time, they are always going to fall short in comparison to games released a decade later, whether it's down to technological improvement or changes in taste. 

xdevx518 • a day ago
I really hate the elitist attitude that people have towards Deus Ex. Yes it was an amazing game when it came out twelve years ago, but people are looking at it through nostalgia clouded rose colored glasses. The graphics have that gritty "realistic" look that doesn't hold up, the ai is pretty bad, and combat isn't ever exciting. I like and play many games that are 15+ years old still, but that's because I have nostalgia for them, not because they are as good or better than modern games, even if some are still good games. 

Let's break this argument down into its two parts. The first states that gamers who hold aloft classic games do so only by succumbing to nostalgia, to a sentimental attachment to a bygone era. Sentimentality is often difficult to disassemble from memories of the past -- especially one's childhood -- but most gamers know objectively what is good, and what is bad, and judge games accordingly. In the 2008 IGN Readers' Poll, users voted on their top ten games of all time. The result: seven games from the 1990s, three from the 2000s. The yearly average of all ten games: 1998. There is a good reason that games in the mid to late 1990s are consistently named to top ten lists by critics and fans, and it has little to do with nostalgia. Video games reached a creative and artistic peak in the 1990s.

I would also add that the novelty or "newness" of modern games can be just as seductive as nostalgia for older games.

Now, the second part of the argument: modern video games are inherently better than older games because of technological advances. Only in video games, a medium intimately connected with technology, could one even submit such a misguided argument. Well, maybe plumbing too. Although you don't need me to sell you on the benefits of indoor toilets. Now, you don't hear many people arguing that movies are better in 2012 because of 3D technology, or that popular music has finally hit its stride because of auto-tune. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Advanced technology can be used for good or evil; it does not imbue a medium with excellence. There is no doubt that video games have become more advanced technologically, but has that made this generation of games better than those that came before? No. One could argue that developers have brought new ideas and new models of interactivity to modern games, and thus made them better. But the argument that a modern game is better because 15 years of technological advancement separate it from an older game is preposterous. Video games are not firearms or operating systems. Video games are art. Players experience them not only with their eyes.