Nostalgia on the News!

Last week, I spoke with Esko Kykkänen, a journalist from Aamulehti, about the rise of retrogaming in popular culture. Specifically, why is nostalgia and video games so appealing for consumers -- young and old -- and so lucrative for companies?

Our discussion touched on what Katharina Niemeyer calls digital nostalgia, which suggests that our nostalgia for old machines, consoles, or media products also involve the social relationships that were tied to it.

For example, my Mum feels some kind of nostalgia when she sees a bulky white-faded PC with the Windows XP background, NOT because she was an avid computer-user, but because she remembers seeing me grow up with the machine.

Nostalgia, an emotional brake

Nostalgia can also be a resource for coping with change. How often do we hear another news article that points to another 'unprecedented' story? Personally, since the U.S. elections in 2016, I don't think I've ever gone a couple of months, reading North American news, without seeing something 'unprecedented', again.

Sociologists and psychologists alike have theorized and shown that nostalgia provides a source of comfort for many people. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, nostalgic media use was related with feelings of escapism... but a 'functional' kind of escapism. Put another way, nostalgia is not just fantasy or regression -- as it is commonly branded to be -- but that nostalgia is akin to an emotional brake as we zoom through the constant changes of everyday life.

Nostalgia takes us back to someplace familiar, where we can freeze the time and remember what we did and who was there (digital nostalgia!). This pause allows us to reconsider our next move.

Especially in the context of retrogames, owning a piece of the past can be very comforting. For PC gamers like myself, I am a proud owner of the SEGA Saturn (my Dad's, actually), which I played as a tiny tot but hold no memory of (save file not found!).

Yet, I hold onto this console dearly because...

1. It is a form of digital nostalgia that helps me access the memory of my Dad and a particular time in my childhood, and...

   
   

2. I feel like I belong to a history of players who did live through and remember playing the SEGA Saturn.

Nostalgic materials helps people find pause, and more importantly, it gives us a sense of belonging in the present.

We can use these consoles, or even the memory of it, as a 'golden ticket' to access gaming communities, connect with others who also feel digital nostalgia for it, and form a personal connection with the past... even though you don't remember it.

What should have been a return home, feels like someone else's house

But when media companies step in to help us remember the past, what happens? This past February, EA released the hit-PC game, The Sims 2 on Steam for 70 bucks. Although the price has dropped to 40 dollars, players like myself are hesitant to purchase the game.

Yes, I spent YEARS on The Sims 2. It is probably one of my favourite games of all time. But scholars and writers alike have shown that, when companies 'remake' or 'revive' beloved games, players are often disappointed in what they are given.

What should have been a feeling of returning home (albeit virtual), feels like someone else's house. I've written about this with Club Penguin, one of the most popular games of the 2000s for children, whereby the private servers that surfaced after its shut down in 2017, led players to 'remake' the remakes.

Put another way, nostalgia is not a one-size-fits-all. Those shoes only exist for Cinderella.

I didn't want to try on shoes that I knew I would struggle and trip in

The Club Penguin remakes available were either too rigid (restoring only a part of the game), too flexible (adding in completely new characters and events that did not exist in the original), or too different (some servers allowed players to swear, which severely shattered my nostalgic immersion of the original title, hailed as one of the safest children's online game). Also, many of these private servers were not safe.

In the case of The Sims 2, I didn't want to be hurt again. I didn't want to try on shoes that I knew I would struggle and trip in.

Willing to be hurt to go home again

It is funny that the original Greek for nostalgia is nostos for returning home, and algos, for ache. The resurgence of retrogames, and the successful commercialization of it, demonstrates that people are willing to be hurt, if only the promise is that they can return home, again.

Above all, retrogames and the culture around it show us that there are multiple ways to 'play with the past'.

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Read the full article on Aamulehti here.