Nostalgia in Game Development
As of 2019, the video game industry has existed for almost fifty years. Over the years, technological innovations have radically transformed the landscape of the industry. What once required a dedicated arcade cabinet to play can now be played by a phone that fits in your pocket. Characters that were crudely represented with 8-bit pixels can now be rendered as photorealistic three dimensional models. Despite all the innovations in the video games market, many people still prefer playing games from the past. In the past decade, the nostalgic attraction to past games has become a major part of the industry. As a consequence, game developers have begun exploring the potential uses of nostalgia in the creation of video games. This paper seeks to determine the extent to which nostalgia is used to justify creative decisions when producing video games. Explicitly, this paper will focus on the art, music, mechanics, and marketing of modern games.
A unique feature of the video game market is the fact that many franchises have existed for long periods of time. For example, Mario has remained a constant presence in the video game market since the Nintendo Entertainment system was first released. While Mario may be a nostalgic figure for some, his current games do not seek to elicit nostalgia in the player. In this paper, the focus will only be on games that actively use nostalgia as opposed to games that merely have characters that have existed for a long time.
Another distinction that needs to be made is the difference between restorative nostalgia and reflective nostalgia. Restorative nostalgia is the desire to rebuild the past, and reflective nostalgia is the desire to remember the past as it was (Boym 41). In relation to video games, reflective nostalgia takes the form of replaying the games a person experienced in their childhood. In a way, this transports the player back to the situations that they are nostalgic for (Wulf “Once Upon a Game” 4). Restorative nostalgia however is what drives the creation of new games with nostalgic content, and is what this paper will be examining.
Two recent games provide different examples of how nostalgia can be incorporated into the process of game creation, Shovel Knight and the remake of Resident Evil Two. Shovel Knight is a game that was purposely designed to give a “a rose-tinted view of an 8-bit game” (D’Angelo). Conversely, Resident Evil Two is a remake of the 1998 game of the same name. The remake updates the original to the modern standards of the game industry. These two games will be examined by their approaches to the use of nostalgia in art, music, game mechanics, and marketing.
The first thing a player will notice about most games is the art and animation. In keeping with its 8-bit theme, Shovel Knight tries to make every image used in the game conform to the technological limitations of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short). This means that all the characters in the game were limited to five different colors from a very limited pool of potential colors(D’Angelo). Despite this dedication to recreating the past, the team did bend the limitations of the NES in places. For example, the team added several colors that the NES hardware was incapable of rendering so that darker gradients could be shown in the game (D’Angelo). This exemplifies how Shovel Knight seeks to include only the positive aspects of the past, which appeals to the nostalgia of the player. Resident Evil’s developers on the other hand, completely redesigned the simplistic models of the original game in order to make the game appear more visually appealing. In addition to increasing the quality of the graphics, several changes were made to the design of characters to make them fit with modern expectations. A producer for the game explained in an interview how the “symbolic design” of the main character’s shoulder pads had to be changed to remain believable, but still keep the “feel” of the original (Plante). While the original nostalgic images have been changed, the resemblance is close enough to trigger nostalgia in the player These two games approach their graphics from different angles, but both are very concerned with their impact on the nostalgia present in the game.
The next thing a player will notice when playing is the music of the game. In keeping with its retro aesthetic, Shovel Knight’s music is composed in such a way that it would run perfectly on an actual Nintendo Entertainment System. The only change is that sound effects will not cause parts of the music to drop out when playing, because the effect is “not pleasant” to listen to (D’Angelo). These decisions were made to maximise the nostalgic impact of the music while minimizing the negative qualities of the past systems. This is another example of restorative nostalgia being used in the creation of something completely new. Compared to Shovel Knight, Resident Evil uses music in a much different way . Because it is a horror game, music does not play during regular gameplay. Instead, atmospheric sound effects play to immerse the player in the game. These sound effects were composed for the remake specifically, so there is no nostalgic quality to them (Frederiksen). However, there is one instance of music being used for nostalgic purposes in the game. The ending credits song was taken from the original game and re-orchestrated in order to give it a more melancholic tone. The composer was specifically tasked with evoking nostalgia in players that played the original game. This resulted in the new song being much more melancholic than the original (Wan). This is a rare example of a game actively appealing to reflective nostalgia over restorative nostalgia. Both games use their music with the express purpose of evoking nostalgia in the player. In Shovel Knight, the music evokes the feeling of childlike wonder at the world, which fits with the adventuring premise of the game. Resident Evil’s more melancholic take on their ending song fits with the dark tone of the game as a whole.
Nostalgia can also impact the mechanics of a game. Game mechanics refers to the rules and situations that the player is exposed to in the game. Shovel Knight was designed so that the gameplay feels similar to the games of the NES era, but without the frustrating aspects of the original games. Because the NES era was the first generation of home consoles, many games retained the unfair difficulty of their arcade counter parts. Games would punish the player unfairly by requiring that the player memorize the exact actions needed to succeed. Shovel Knight sought to mitigate this by removing any potential areas in which a player’s death could be completely out of the their control. This furthers Shovel Knight’s attempts to produce an idealized version of past gaming. Resident Evil went further and completely redesigned the control scheme of the past game in favor of a more modern play experience. The most obvious difference between the original game and the remake is the change in camera angle. In the original game, the camera jumped between fixed locations whenever the player changed rooms. In the remake, the camera is changed to an over the shoulder view from the main character’s perspective. The remake also changed the movement of characters to be more intuitive. These changes were first introduced in the fourth game of the Resident Evil series and have been constant ever since. While the original camera and control scheme may hold some nostalgia, the developers of the game decided that the game had to be updated to the “standards [players] expect today” (Plante). In the case of mechanics, both games made substantial changes to the original designs of the games that they draw inspiration from. This suggests that the frustrations caused by poor game design far outweigh any potential nostalgic benefits.
While not directly involved in the game design process itself, the marketing strategies of the two games are worth examining as well. Nostalgia can be a strong marketing tactic, because nostalgia has been shown to increase desire to interact with the source of the nostalgia (Wulf “Running Head” 61). Shovel Knight displayed its nostalgic influences in its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. The Kickstarter campaign marketed the game as “a hot mashup of new and old” (Shovel Knight Kickstarter). This description of the game was intended to induce a feeling of nostalgia for the 8-bit era which would make viewers want to support the campaign. The success of this tactic is evidenced by the fact that Shovel Knight raised more than four times its goal. Contrasting the independent development of Shovel Knight, Resident Evil’s marketing strategy was much the same as any other modern game. This is because the developers of the game already knew that there was a large group of people with nostalgic views of the game. Using nostalgia as a major part of the game’s appeal resulted in the game being recognized as one of the best announcements of E3, a conference in which major publishers unveil their latest products (Fogel). Both Shovel Knight and Resident Evil banked on the effects of nostalgia for their marketing campaigns, and in each case the success was remarkable.
In the process of designing video games, nostalgia can be used as a defining feature of certain games. Different games use nostalgia in different ways. In this paper, two different games were examine to determine how nostalgia guided their game design and marketing process. Shovel Knight is a modern franchise that is made nostalgic by its developers use of the best parts of the past. The Resident Evil Remake on the other hand, takes a game that is nostalgic for many people and updates it to fall in line with modern game design. Despite working in different directions, both games provide excellent examples of the way in which nostalgia can impact all facets of a game’s production. It was found that it is easiest to incorporate nostalgia into the art and music of a game, while evoking nostalgia with the mechanics of a game is much more difficult.