Nostalgia

With all the nostalgia for “old” games that’s picked up steam some couple years ago or so, I’m wondering what’s the cause? Why now?

One theory: In 1995, Windows revolutionized personal computing, leaving an impact that’s still felt today. In 2007, the iPhone reimagined smartphones and instantly obsoleted all the (non)competition. Though in the 2010’s smartphones continued to evolve and mature (and in the case of games, often devolving), smartphones at this point are basically like young adults (maybe teenagers) with more room to mature, but to a limit; and Windows is so mature it often takes 2 steps backwards before advancing forward to keep up to date with the bells and whistles of new functionality. So I was thinking that the reason for all the nostalgia might be the lack of revolutionary advances in the past several years–which gives people a breather to reflect upon those things which worked just fine. (Though I’m not entirely convinced of my theory here being even a primary reason for newfound nostalgia.)

In the case of causal games going back to the 90’s, they don’t look so antiquated when compared to contemporary mobile games (suffice it to say in-app monetization). Can anyone look at, say, Among Us (it’s real popular with kids) and really say this is better than the popular DOS games of the early ’90s? Or, dare I say, even Flash-based web-games common at the turn of the century.

Addendum:

In the spirit of nostalgia for less “sophisticated” times, I’ll just add here that I was listening to some Computer Chronicles episodes and come across one from before my time which reported that a university survey found, among other things, that documents written on word processors are 27% longer than those written on typewriters. To that, I’ll add, most of the documents we’ve been graced with in this century are not 27% more informative either. Maybe in 20 years we’ll be looking back to those simpler times, up to this year, when documents were 27% shorter and nigh 100% written by a human who, at least, had to expend effort in the creation of more material (therefore making it more likely for what they wrote to teach you something new). Now get off my lawn, you little whippersnappers 🙂