Abstract
This article conceptually integrates research on the experience of nostalgia—defined as a predominantly positive, social, and past-oriented emotion—into the fold of video game research. We emphasize the role of nostalgia as an explanation for contemporary retro gaming trends, and suggest that nostalgia towards gaming events is a necessary area of research. To those ends, we broadly review existing literature on nostalgia before specifically focusing on media-induced nostalgia, and demonstrate how theoretical and empirical observations from this work can be applied to understand video game nostalgia. In particular, we argue that engaging in older gaming experiences indirectly (via memories) and even directly (via replaying or recreating experiences) elicits nostalgia, which in turn contributes to players' self-optimization and enhanced well-being. Moreover, as gamers and the medium mature together, nostalgic experiences with the medium are likely to become increasingly prevalent. The broad aim of this article is to offer future directions for research on video game nostalgia and provide a research agenda for research in this area.
Highlights
Issue This article is part of the issue “Games Matter? Current Theories and Studies on Digital Games”, edited by Julia Kneer (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and Ruud Jacobs (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
From the Nintendo Entertainment System of 1984 that is largely credited with re-establishing the fledgling entertainment medium, games have gone through a number of critical, economic, and technological evolutions that have transformed them from children’s toys (Ivory, 2015) to an integral part of society (Bogost, 2011)
One explanation for the recent success of retro gaming is that it creates a sense of nostalgia, which can serve as a psychological resource for the players’ sense of self and well-being—in a way, retro gaming allows players to take a digital “time machine” to their bygone past
Summary
The emergence of the video gaming industry in the 1980s has provided modern-day video gamers with over three decades of experience with the medium. Over the last few years, video game developers have successfully relaunched a plethora of past video game content and technology. Developers have even taken towards releasing unique games made to resemble 1980s and 1990s releases (Webster, 2017) What makes these developments interesting is that the renewed interest represents a devolution in gaming—despite the rapid advances in technology and the playing experiences modern games offer, people choose technologically inferior or less sophisticated games and platforms. Such a preference is at odds with the traditional push towards better graphics and faster hardware.. We (a) summarize the state of nostalgia research (including recent studies on video game nostalgia, ) and (b) outline a conceptual and methodological toolkit for future work on video game nostalgia
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