this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
449 points (98.1% liked)
Greentext
5886 readers
1153 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As Yahtzee has suggested, people aren't nostalgic for old games, but for how they felt playing old games. Much harder to capture that, and beautiful pixel art alone isn't enough.
Because as a child, everything is novel and new for you so you get that sense of high and awe seeing something new. But now as adults, recreating that feeling is almost impossible because you have already experienced it before.
This is the biggest problem for games like these. It's trying to capture the childhood nostalgia. But to any modern gamer it's: FANTASY SETTING 319, of course it feels hollow and stale. Even if the designers are passionate about the game, it you set it in the same type of world as all your favorite final fantasy games or fire emblem or whatever you're making a terrible setting for a new game. It may not be a bad game, but the world you chose is actively working against it by making it stale.
I mean, it's going to be a problem forever. The way you break out of this is by having a good 'ol visionary developer who has a unique story to tell. Unfortunately for every one of those there's a hundred passionate developers either trying to make a quick buck or who lacks the imagination/skills to make a transformative game.
Nothing hammers this home like raising a kid.
The sense of joy and wonder they feel about something as simple as learning how to turn on a faucet. Suddenly, they're magical and can summon water.
It makes you feel jaded.
You can get that feeling when learning something new as an adult, too. Your first python program is running? You renovated something in your home that your haven't done before? Planted a tree and it's having fruits for the first time? Changed the tires on your car? It's awesome!
You can also choose to embrace bringing them joy with each new experience, and share in their happiness that way.
try envigorated. I don't know if you watch let's plays at all, but me I mainly do it with games that I've finished but can't play again with the knowledge I already have. great puzzle and mystery solving games like obra dinn, the witness, etc. or games with amazing twists like prey... some things you can't live through twice, but you can witness the joy in others when they do it for the first time. that's why I do it. with kids, it's literally everything.
you should watch the Love Death and Robots episode Pop Squad.
This is why I started hiking and summiting mountains. I mean, not literally why, but it’s chasing that new and novel high.
You're also literally chasing new highs though. Sounds like the whole package..
This has been language learning for me. Learning new words and expressions every day gives me that high. Stumbling through a conversation in a language I'm uncomfortable with is so scary and daunting, but when you actually have a meaningful conversation where both parties get something out of it, it's an incredible feeling.
that's why you should seek out new things to see wonder and novel in. as a person with hyperfixation/-focus, that is very easy for me.
And that's why I generally avoid games that advertise themselves as "pixel art." I have no problem with pixel art itself and I play many pixel art games, but the art style is secondary to whether it's fun.