{"id":16478,"date":"2024-07-23T11:41:50","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T09:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/?p=16478"},"modified":"2024-08-07T10:10:28","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T08:10:28","slug":"nostalgia-gaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingkong-mag.com\/en\/nostalgia-gaming\/","title":{"rendered":"When the video game (over)does nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nRemake, reboot, revival of licences we thought had vanished. For several years now, the video game industry has been recycling hand over fist the titles that made it an outstanding success story several decades ago. The reason for this trend: the videogaming industry\u2019s use of nostalgia. A powerful marketing argument, but one which has its limits.\r\n<\/p>\n\n\n

Tomb Raider was released 28 years ago, Final Fantasy 7 27 years ago, Spyro the Dragon 26 years ago. Does that make you feel old? In fact, the video game recently celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Quite the milestone for an industry which has never ceased developing, evolving from an occasional slightly guilty pleasure for nerds into a hugely popular social phenomenon (both in the playgrounds and at the workplace) and one more profitable than the cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This longevity ensures that, today, the medium can draw on an extremely wide pool of players. There are of course the very youngest, who are discovering their first games, controller in hand, and who, for the publishers and the studios, remain a favourite target market because they are relatively easy to keep happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of that, there is another type of audience which is just as attractive, and maybe even more so for the industry. These are the experienced players: those who have racked up countless hours over time. Those who grew up with video games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u2018well-to-do\u2019 audience hungry for nostalgia<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Today they are aged between 25 and 60. They are adults and they work. They therefore have more means to buy themselves games. But it is not an easy audience because, having had the opportunity to try their hands at numerous different titles, they are more critical and harder to convince. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, the industry has for a number of years employed the same tactic: attempting to innovate, offering games with new concepts, with ever more attractive graphics, worlds which are ever bigger, storylines which are ever more layered. The whole package developed by ever larger teams, sometimes made up of hundreds of employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But, as a consequence of this, the commercial flops have become more painful, financially speaking. At the same time, this audience greedily targeted by the industry has become more and more difficult, with an ever-expanding range of games from which to choose. A solution had to be found, and the publishers came up with a neat idea: playing the nostalgia card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By reviving the licences and the titles idolised by these players years (even decades) previously, they have managed to play on their heartstrings, evoke lived moments, good childhood or teen memories intrinsically linked to happy periods in their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough to lower the guard of these reputedly \u2018difficult\u2019 players, with the means to spend lavishly to get one more taste of Proust\u2019s madeleine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reboots and remakes galore<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another advantage of this strategy is: it costs less. There is no need to start from scratch. As the basic material already exists, all you need to do is adapt it. For several years now, the video game industry has largely relied on three techniques to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is the remake. The recipe is a simple one. Take a video game which left a mark on its generation several years ago. Reuse pretty much the exact same storyline, as well as its gameplay (in other words its rules and the way it is played), and adapt the graphics and the menus with today\u2019s technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major advantage of this technique is that the risk involved is low, because material which has been tried and tested is used and retained as-is, in addition to ultra-low production costs owing to the limited resources and personnel required to successfully undertake this work. Some striking examples from recent years include The Legend of Zelda: Link\u2019s Awakening, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Dead Space and Resident Evil (in the latter case, Capcom, the publisher and owner of the franchise, has produced a remake of the full set of Resident Evil games published).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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