Retro Required!

Partly inspired by an editorial on the same subject from Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s John Walker, Jay “Rampant Coyote” Barnson has penned a blog post of his own on whether indie gaming and Kickstarter have been too focused on nostalgia rather than evolving videogames.

Here’s a snip:

This is not where it ends, people. Yeah, we’re gonna get a huge crop of retreads, and I doubt that will ever stop. New developers are always going to be making My First Platformer, and while they are introducing absolutely nothing new to the genre, it’s going to be a magical game for them. They are learning their art. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.

But eventually My First Platformer is going to become three or four games down the road (if they stick with it) something different. That’s where this all leads. Once they’ve had a chance to gain some mastery over the craft, they are going to explore. Revisit old assumptions. And they are going to do some amazing things.

They already are. Some commercial projects. Lots of not quite prime-time stuff. But the horde has been loosed, and this new era of gaming is still in the oven.

Ditto for the old-school professional developer crews who are now Kickstarting retro projects. First of all, I do not believe for a second that all they will be doing is a clone of one of their past hits. I do not believe they are approaching this with the view that, in hindsight, everything they’ve learned over the last 15-20 years is bunk and they had it 100% correct in 1997. That’s silly. But I think they are recognizing that there’s a certain flavor, certain feelings, certain style that has been lost, and they are working to regain it with modern technology, with their more seasoned skills, and take it to newer audiences. I will personally be quite disappointed if all that comes out of these (big name) projects are games I feel like I already played fifteen years ago treated with a new coat of paint.