@BelgarathMTH I was waiting to see if it would get back to the question at hand, you see when people start talking about these timeless games; its always filled with such "magic" and "wonder", but many never really question that magic and wonder. Most the time it gets written off as nostalgia, but isn't there many tings in the world beside video games that create just as much nostalgia for us, but we don't stay continue to do those thing years later down the line.
I kind of question writing nostalgia off as something "less than" other reasons for going back to play again. Nostalgia is a perfectly fine motivation to do something again.
And people do go back to other media. Christopher Lee re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy every year. I rewatch Buffy and Angel every couple of years (used to be every year) as well as Farscape. I used to read A Song of Ice and Fire every year. When I was young I read and reread the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland+Through the Looking Glass over and over. I will probably rewatch Lost soon, maybe Breaking Bad. All of these things have nostalgia for me.
You're post is limiting what I said to media, when I didn't put such limits in the statement above. When I was little I had wooden toy chest a little bigger than I was, it was filled to the brim with toys. Yet my favorite thing to do with that chest is throw all the toys out onto the ground and hide inside of the chest. Sometimes I pretended I was somewhere else. Other times I just did it because and every time I see similar chest I feel nostalgic of thise times but I would never try to do it bow a days.
Many things like when uae to go roaming in the woods with no preparation or informing anyone where I went, I would (probably) do it now.
OK that second one is a bad example, I grew up in the woods, so yea that is something I'll do no matter what lol.
@DragonKing Kids still do that today, my buddy was telling a couple weeks ago that he had bought something for his daughter's birthday and she was happier playing with the big box it came in. He said next time he would save the money and buy a big box instead and decorate it.
My $0.02 is that for the games that stand out to a lot of people and keep being heavily replayed many years later, there are two key factors:
1) The rush of wonder and interest upon first playing the game
2) The desire and reason to replay the game
Morrowind stands out because it was a unique, original-looking fantasy world. It's populated mostly by a race other than humans, the architecture is alien-looking to Western sensibilities, the animals are all fantasy creatures rather than horses and wolves and et cetera, much of the island is a blasted wasteland with little food or water, the religion is neither serial-numbers-filed-off Christianity or D&D-style polytheism, et cetera. It's different, far more so than either its predecessors or successors.
The replay value comes in the myriad race/birthsign combinations (even if they're horribly balanced), and the fact that it is near impossible to do everything in one playthrough (technically completely impossible without modding, but more practically). Make a new character focusing on THIS instead, go do THIS guild first, join THIS great house instead of that one. Plus, there's an extremely healthy modding community.
Final Fantasy Tactics stood out because it was the first significant tacstrat released in English, and defined the entire genre just like Dune II defined RTS games. It also had a serious political plotline (even if it was horrendously translated), and came at the height of Square's popularity and hold on the English-speaking RPG-enthusiast public along with the powerful Final Fantasy brand name. The central plot of "the real history behind the propaganda" and of friends forced to fight each other by the tides of politics and war was good stuff for a 90s video game (even if, again, badly translated, but that was par for the course then).
Its replay value comes in its expansive class system and the various synergies with special characters, fiddly stats (like Brave and Faith - I can make a character completely invulnerable to magic, but they can't be healed! Unless I give them the Chemist Item skill as a secondary, or perma-regen through an accessory...), various special items and so forth. Although the game generally ceases to be actually difficult by about 1/2-2/3 through depending on what the player's going for, many replays are driven entirely off of meticulous tweaking and constructing to get exactly the right team to utterly wipe out even the toughest AI opponents with virtually no effort. Plus, trying to get use out of wonky special characters like Cloud and Rafa/Malak can consume effort, or trying to steal all the useful pieces of AI equipment, et cetera. There's always a new trick to try, and so people keep playing Final Fantasy Tactics and every tacstrat since still sits in its enormous shadow (sometimes proudly, like Tactics Ogre, but in its shadow nonetheless).
Baldur's Gate has the same sort of qualities - initial wonder + high replayability (restartitis is a well-known affliction among the fanbase).
@mf2112 Yes kids, but the nostalgia from my doing it as a child and the fun I found in it isn't enough to make me buy a big chest just to climb in it. It is the very emotional sensation that the memories bring forth that play a part in us reenacting/redoing somethings from the past, but I don't believe nostalgia alone can cause us to return to everything we once did as children. Don't get me wrong nostalgia for some people may simply be enough, but I don't think that is always the case.
To this day I still watch a lot of 90s and early 2000 cartoons, not only because they are nostalgic, but because the spark a fire in myself as a artist. Watching the moving lines of Ed, Ed, &Eddy on top of the moving pastel colored background pushes me to want to learn more about oil pastels and who it help play a part in creating something I enjoyed from my youth.
There is also the thought that I could just be looking too deep into it >.>
@mf2112 Yes kids, but the nostalgia from my doing it as a child and the fun I found in it isn't enough to make me buy a big chest just to climb in it. It is the very emotional sensation that the memories bring forth that play a part in us reenacting/redoing somethings from the past, but I don't believe nostalgia alone can cause us to return to everything we once did as children. Don't get me wrong nostalgia for some people may simply be enough, but I don't think that is always the case.
To this day I still watch a lot of 90s and early 2000 cartoons, not only because they are nostalgic, but because the spark a fire in myself as a artist. Watching the moving lines of Ed, Ed, &Eddy on top of the moving pastel colored background pushes me to want to learn more about oil pastels and who it help play a part in creating something I enjoyed from my youth.
There is also the thought that I could just be looking too deep into it >.>
It is interesting to go back and watch some of those old cartoons now and realize that they actually had two completely different sets of meanings, one for adults and one for kids. Not necessarily that deep, but as a kid you just wouldn't get the other meaning which is clearly intended to keep the adults from going berserk after the 10th time looping the video that day....
@BelgarathMTH I was waiting to see if it would get back to the question at hand, you see when people start talking about these timeless games; its always filled with such "magic" and "wonder", but many never really question that magic and wonder. Most the time it gets written off as nostalgia, but isn't there many tings in the world beside video games that create just as much nostalgia for us, but we don't stay continue to do those thing years later down the line.
I kind of question writing nostalgia off as something "less than" other reasons for going back to play again. Nostalgia is a perfectly fine motivation to do something again.
And people do go back to other media. Christopher Lee re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy every year. I rewatch Buffy and Angel every couple of years (used to be every year) as well as Farscape. I used to read A Song of Ice and Fire every year. When I was young I read and reread the Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland+Through the Looking Glass over and over. I will probably rewatch Lost soon, maybe Breaking Bad. All of these things have nostalgia for me.
You're post is limiting what I said to media, when I didn't put such limits in the statement above. When I was little I had wooden toy chest a little bigger than I was, it was filled to the brim with toys. Yet my favorite thing to do with that chest is throw all the toys out onto the ground and hide inside of the chest. Sometimes I pretended I was somewhere else. Other times I just did it because and every time I see similar chest I feel nostalgic of thise times but I would never try to do it bow a days.
Many things like when uae to go roaming in the woods with no preparation or informing anyone where I went, I would (probably) do it now.
OK that second one is a bad example, I grew up in the woods, so yea that is something I'll do no matter what lol.
I didn't limit what you said to media. I limited my examples to media. I disagree with the idea that people only re-experience video games, so I provided some examples to demonstrate otherwise.
For me the answer to why I still play the Baldur’s Gate games after all this time is easy. I still get the same feeling of excitement and anticipation each and every time my protagonist drops into Candlekeep, or when I hear the first sounds and music in Irenicus’s dungeon. I know what I’m in for, and I’m never disappointed.
I don’t believe that it is merely nostalgia that keeps certain games alive while others come and go, anymore than I believe that the Mona Lisa is simply a painting that has been kept around because it was once popular, way back when.
In every genre there are pieces that stand out and stand the test of time. Why one succeeds in capturing the heart and another doesn’t, can’t always be easily categorized, or put into words.
Simple nostalgia might make you replay a game once in a while, but it doesn’t keep so many people doing so year after year. Nor does it inspire so many to repeatedly spend hours of their precious time designing new character concepts, creating portraits, writing fan fiction, or taking up the challenging task of learning to mod in order to add those touches that they always wanted in their own games. Not after all these years.
An illusive, indefinable spark does, and I personally believe that the motivations and personal investment of the people involved in making the game has everything to do with the end result. In the case of Baldur’s Gate, I believe that there were people involved who truly loved what they were producing.
Personally invested artists produce art, not corporately controlled employees.
If “it” could be defined, each and every game produced would have “it”. The game companies would be much richer and us gamers would be very happy campers.
I believe that a true masterpiece is able to continue to evoke joy each time you experience it. For me, the Baldur’s Gate games qualify.
Simple nostalgia might make you replay a game once in a while, but it doesn’t keep so many people doing so year after year. Nor does it inspire so many to repeatedly spend hours of their precious time designing new character concepts, creating portraits, writing fan fiction, or taking up the challenging task of learning to mod in order to add those touches that they always wanted in their own games. Not after all these years.
An illusive, indefinable spark does, and I personally believe that the motivations and personal investment of the people involved in making the game has everything to do with the end result. In the case of Baldur’s Gate, I believe that there were people involved who truly loved what they were producing.
Personally invested artists produce art, not corporately controlled employees.
If “it” could be defined, each and every game produced would have “it”. The game companies would be much richer and us gamers would be very happy campers.
I still don't understand why people are minimizing nostalgia as an emotion and a motivation. It seems very strange to me, like you're ruling out a primary motivation for replaying old games (or reexperiencing any old media) for the sake of arguing that it's really some other emotion other than what people are saying.
Anyway, the "it" that you can't define is basically "an enjoyable and rewarding game." The reason every game produced doesn't have it is because 90% of everything is crap. There's no mystery here.
@BelleSorciere said: I still don't understand why people are minimizing nostalgia as an emotion and a motivation. It seems very strange to me, like you're ruling out a primary motivation for replaying old games (or reexperiencing any old media) for the sake of arguing that it's really some other emotion other than what people are saying.
I would never minimize the power of nostalgia as one motivation for replaying a game, watching an old movie, or what-have-you. It is certainly the reason I do so, in many instances.
What I was referring to is my belief that it’s not the only reason that some games stand the test of time, while others don’t. And in the case of Baldur’s Gate, it certainly isn't the only reason I continue to replay it.
@BelleSorciere No one is minimizing or ruling out nostalgia, we are saying it isn't the ONLY reason. If nostalgia is the only reason for you, thats great but its not the only reason for everyone else. Like I said earlier when I brought up cartoons, to this day I still watch cartoons from 90s, and even 80s cartoons that I watched as a kid. I don't just watched them because of nostalgia, I watch them because as a artist I can learn from them; composition, color relationship, squash and stretch of animation, and so on.
You're simply ok with the simplification of nostalgia as the primary answer, and again there is nothing wrong with that but that doesn't make it the only one.
As a kid I totally loved and adored final fantasy (the first one on nes). I downloaded it for my phone a while ago, and despite its incredible improvements I was bored out of my mind. Deleted!
I have only just got into ultima 7, never played it as a kid when it came out (technically I'm playing the exult mod). That game is unbelievable, especially for its time. I wish more games were like that...
I love morrowind, but I was almost an adult when that had first come out and had been focused on school big time. No time for games at all. I didn't play morrowind until a year after fallout 3 had come out. I bought oblivion, morrowind, and fallout 3 all in one guilty gaming binge.
I found fallout to be way too dark and gory for my tastes, so I got rid of it shortly thereafter. I loved oblivion and played it more than morrowind (don't stone me, morrowind fans!) simply because it was easier (stressful time of my life that needed to vegetate), but I hated the leveling system (that was before I had really gotten into modding of any sort) and I got bored quickly.
Of those three games, morrowind was clearly the higher quality game, with better writing and more investment in gameplay...oblivion eventually turned into button mashing, and fallout was the same, but morrowind was... well, it just seemed special for some undefinable reason, even though I actually played it AFTER oblivion and fallout. It takes intelligence to play morrowind and enjoy it, almost like work...which consequently, at the time, was the main reason I didn't play it as much as oblivion, simply because I was too stressed out. Vanilla oblivion lets you veg and not pay attention.
I have been thinking of downloading it from gog (I eventually got rid of all those games for one reason or another) and modding it to give it another go.
I find Jade Empire nostalgic... just saying It had some cheesy writing, not so great combat at times, lots of bugs but I really love that game, the setting and theme. I actually considered replaying it before I started playing through the BG series again because I haven't played it in a long time, I remember it being fun and something completely different to the rpg's of late. I still long for a Jade Empire 2
I was never able to get the combat down very well in Jade Empire, but I loved the setting and characters. And the music, so much so that I still play the music CD from time to time.
I find interesting that many people have mentioned here Jade Empire, because for me it is the perfect example of game that did not survive because of lack of mods.
But I get it, not everyone is obsessed with mods like me or consider them essential for a game's longevity.
I recently caved and broke my vanilla-on-first-run rule and modded Morrowind to be able to play an actual Bard and added a fox player-race. Also used MGSO. When I choose a modded birthsign the game crashes but other than that everything seems to work well together.
I find interesting that many people have mentioned here Jade Empire, because for me it is the perfect example of game that did not survive because of lack of mods.
But I get it, not everyone is obsessed with mods like me or consider them essential for a game's longevity.
I would agree that being able to personalize your game can contribute greatly to the motivation to replay it. Even a favorite game can become repetitive after so many play-throughs.
Some players want a bit more challenge after playing it so many times that they feel like they can beat it with one hand tied behind their back. A mod can provide that.
Even a game that you love can have elements that you would change if you could. A mod can do that for you.
Personally, I can never have too many new interactions with NPCs. I love talking to a new one and discovering who they are, what might motivate them, and how they might fit into my protagonists journey. Adding just that little spark of “unknown” with a new NPC or quest pack makes the anticipation all the sweeter.
I wish more game companies saw the value in this, but I’ve come to believe that modern game companies may actually see this as a negative thing, when considering the bottom line.
The more a player is satisfied with his/her current game and is able to personalize it, the less likely they are to jump into buying the next shinny new game.
Imo the Neverwinter Nights 1 Player Resource Consortium and NWN2 Kaedrin's PRC mod make the games INFINITELY better. Like, they're probably the best games for people that are very familiar with 3e/3.5e rules since the NWN1 PRC adds almost every Class and prestige class and NWN2 Kaedrin's PRC adds quite a bit as well.
Don't get me wrong nostalgia for some people may simply be enough, but I don't think that is always the case.
Of course it's not always the case. The primary reason for continuing to do something is because you enjoy doing it. For many people, nostalgia is the thing that stirs that feeling. :-)
Nostalgia doesn't mean you'll go out and purchase something just to do that again. If you happen to find something after several years (taking your example, let's say you stumble upon a chest in the attic/loft), you might just think back to the first time you did it and do it again. However, nostalgia won't be the thing that keeps you doing it. You'll keep doing it for the original reason you did it—which, as I said in my Morrowind example, there are a multitude of reasons; all of which are mostly superficial without examining the science behind it. "What does it mean to 'like' something," and "what happens in people's brains at that time." But I think that's going to be outside the scope of the topic unless someone here just happens to have an MRI or EEG scanner in their living room for people to drop by and use. :P
Consider the fact that Video-Game storytelling has hit a all-time low, and the last good story to be out in memory of the masses is Mass Effect Trilogy. The Eastern Gaming Industry is dead, and taken over by Otaku Trash, and Western Gaming in some ways trying to hang in there since it has already hit it's plateau.
This is one reason Modders also exist to fill the void to keep the legacy going for older titles that were deemed good stories.
People like BG for it's story because it is something that has not been seen in many years now, and only in my opinion Mass Effect rivals with it in many ways.
Consider the fact that Video-Game storytelling has hit a all-time low, and the last good story to be out in memory of the masses is Mass Effect Trilogy.
That's pretty far from a fact. The "all time low" of current video game storytelling is a lot higher than it was in 1998.
Consider the fact that Video-Game storytelling has hit a all-time low, and the last good story to be out in memory of the masses is Mass Effect Trilogy.
That's pretty far from a fact. The "all time low" of current video game storytelling is a lot higher than it was in 1998.
Seriously, wasn't the 90s the era of minimal storytelling, but interesting design and fun to play games. I mean banjo kazooie, I loved the crash bandicoot series, and yes I was a pokemon addict of gen 1 and gen 2. I owned red blue yellow, silver, and crystal and I can tell you from experience of someone who could name the first 151 pokemon by heart, there was no story in that game, just objective.
Consider the fact that Video-Game storytelling has hit a all-time low, and the last good story to be out in memory of the masses is Mass Effect Trilogy.
That's pretty far from a fact. The "all time low" of current video game storytelling is a lot higher than it was in 1998.
Seriously, wasn't the 90s the era of minimal storytelling, but interesting design and fun to play games. I mean banjo kazooie, I loved the crash bandicoot series, and yes I was a pokemon addict of gen 1 and gen 2. I owned red blue yellow, silver, and crystal and I can tell you from experience of someone who could name the first 151 pokemon by heart, there was no story in that game, just objective.
I wouldn't say that it had NO story, just that it's very simplistic. All you need to have a story is a protagonist that wants something, and obstacles in his or her way to overcome through development and growth. Your protagonist in the Pokemon games is you, the small-town trainer. Your want is to become the League champion (and maybe fill out that pokedex). Your obstacles range from the gyms, other trainers, your rival, and Team Rocket's shenanigans, all of which require large amounts of strength and wit to overcome, strength and wit that is acquired only by growing and changing your pokemon, and by extension, yourself. Eventually, after a long journey full of hurdles and twists, all your hard work pays off and you become the Champion. And you lived happily ever after. The end.
Heck, Silver and Gold versions even had character development. When you first met your red-headed rival, he's a punk. He shoves you if you try talking to him outside of Elm's lab. He views pokemon as tools to meet an end, and he's not afraid to push them to their limits if it means he can attain great power. He wants the same thing as you--to become League Champion, the strongest trainer in Johto, and that makes him your natural antagonist. Yet after battling and being defeated by you time and time again, by the time you fight him at the end of Victory Road, your rival really reflects on himself on why he keeps losing, and realizes he was wrong about pokemon. They're not tools to be used, they're your friends, your partners, your allies. From that moment on, he strives to train differently, to treat his pokemon right, and becomes a better person than he was before.
(All that development is probably why Nameless Red-Head is my favorite Pokemon rival ever... But anyway.)
So yeah. It had a story. It's the story of you and how you became the champion. There's not much more to it than that, but it's there. A story doesn't have to always be deep or complex to be a story.
@Nonnahswriter Let me rephrase, minimal story telling. With the original pokemon, those were just set objectives, no different than just trying to beat already preset records in games like pong or tetris. There was no push for you to actually do any of that other than you're own will to. Its been a years since I played gold an silver but I don't remember any character development of the protagonist at all.
Mostly everything you placed forth are while sounding nice how you wrote it, is not how it is perceived by everyone who played the game. Like I said before, to me they were objectives to be achieved but another games that had "objectives" but no real story was plants vs zombies. There was no urge, no push, nothing that really moved the character along, even the most simplest of stories such as crash bandicoot even had that which made the player want to move forward.
Don't get me wrong, I played the game religious, beat the elite 4 countless times, caught all 151 pokemon, broke my games countless times messing with missing#. But all that came not from a story, but from me just wanting to explore the open world given to me. Everything you mention I more because of open world exploration and less because of "story."
Comments
Many things like when uae to go roaming in the woods with no preparation or informing anyone where I went, I would (probably) do it now.
OK that second one is a bad example, I grew up in the woods, so yea that is something I'll do no matter what lol.
1) The rush of wonder and interest upon first playing the game
2) The desire and reason to replay the game
Morrowind stands out because it was a unique, original-looking fantasy world. It's populated mostly by a race other than humans, the architecture is alien-looking to Western sensibilities, the animals are all fantasy creatures rather than horses and wolves and et cetera, much of the island is a blasted wasteland with little food or water, the religion is neither serial-numbers-filed-off Christianity or D&D-style polytheism, et cetera. It's different, far more so than either its predecessors or successors.
The replay value comes in the myriad race/birthsign combinations (even if they're horribly balanced), and the fact that it is near impossible to do everything in one playthrough (technically completely impossible without modding, but more practically). Make a new character focusing on THIS instead, go do THIS guild first, join THIS great house instead of that one. Plus, there's an extremely healthy modding community.
Final Fantasy Tactics stood out because it was the first significant tacstrat released in English, and defined the entire genre just like Dune II defined RTS games. It also had a serious political plotline (even if it was horrendously translated), and came at the height of Square's popularity and hold on the English-speaking RPG-enthusiast public along with the powerful Final Fantasy brand name. The central plot of "the real history behind the propaganda" and of friends forced to fight each other by the tides of politics and war was good stuff for a 90s video game (even if, again, badly translated, but that was par for the course then).
Its replay value comes in its expansive class system and the various synergies with special characters, fiddly stats (like Brave and Faith - I can make a character completely invulnerable to magic, but they can't be healed! Unless I give them the Chemist Item skill as a secondary, or perma-regen through an accessory...), various special items and so forth. Although the game generally ceases to be actually difficult by about 1/2-2/3 through depending on what the player's going for, many replays are driven entirely off of meticulous tweaking and constructing to get exactly the right team to utterly wipe out even the toughest AI opponents with virtually no effort. Plus, trying to get use out of wonky special characters like Cloud and Rafa/Malak can consume effort, or trying to steal all the useful pieces of AI equipment, et cetera. There's always a new trick to try, and so people keep playing Final Fantasy Tactics and every tacstrat since still sits in its enormous shadow (sometimes proudly, like Tactics Ogre, but in its shadow nonetheless).
Baldur's Gate has the same sort of qualities - initial wonder + high replayability (restartitis is a well-known affliction among the fanbase).
Yes kids, but the nostalgia from my doing it as a child and the fun I found in it isn't enough to make me buy a big chest just to climb in it. It is the very emotional sensation that the memories bring forth that play a part in us reenacting/redoing somethings from the past, but I don't believe nostalgia alone can cause us to return to everything we once did as children. Don't get me wrong nostalgia for some people may simply be enough, but I don't think that is always the case.
To this day I still watch a lot of 90s and early 2000 cartoons, not only because they are nostalgic, but because the spark a fire in myself as a artist. Watching the moving lines of Ed, Ed, &Eddy on top of the moving pastel colored background pushes me to want to learn more about oil pastels and who it help play a part in creating something I enjoyed from my youth.
There is also the thought that I could just be looking too deep into it >.>
Sorry, couldn't resist it!
I don’t believe that it is merely nostalgia that keeps certain games alive while others come and go, anymore than I believe that the Mona Lisa is simply a painting that has been kept around because it was once popular, way back when.
In every genre there are pieces that stand out and stand the test of time. Why one succeeds in capturing the heart and another doesn’t, can’t always be easily categorized, or put into words.
Simple nostalgia might make you replay a game once in a while, but it doesn’t keep so many people doing so year after year. Nor does it inspire so many to repeatedly spend hours of their precious time designing new character concepts, creating portraits, writing fan fiction, or taking up the challenging task of learning to mod in order to add those touches that they always wanted in their own games. Not after all these years.
An illusive, indefinable spark does, and I personally believe that the motivations and personal investment of the people involved in making the game has everything to do with the end result. In the case of Baldur’s Gate, I believe that there were people involved who truly loved what they were producing.
Personally invested artists produce art, not corporately controlled employees.
If “it” could be defined, each and every game produced would have “it”. The game companies would be much richer and us gamers would be very happy campers.
I believe that a true masterpiece is able to continue to evoke joy each time you experience it. For me, the Baldur’s Gate games qualify.
I still don't understand why people are minimizing nostalgia as an emotion and a motivation. It seems very strange to me, like you're ruling out a primary motivation for replaying old games (or reexperiencing any old media) for the sake of arguing that it's really some other emotion other than what people are saying.
Anyway, the "it" that you can't define is basically "an enjoyable and rewarding game." The reason every game produced doesn't have it is because 90% of everything is crap. There's no mystery here.
I still don't understand why people are minimizing nostalgia as an emotion and a motivation. It seems very strange to me, like you're ruling out a primary motivation for replaying old games (or reexperiencing any old media) for the sake of arguing that it's really some other emotion other than what people are saying.
I would never minimize the power of nostalgia as one motivation for replaying a game, watching an old movie, or what-have-you. It is certainly the reason I do so, in many instances.
What I was referring to is my belief that it’s not the only reason that some games stand the test of time, while others don’t. And in the case of Baldur’s Gate, it certainly isn't the only reason I continue to replay it.
No one is minimizing or ruling out nostalgia, we are saying it isn't the ONLY reason. If nostalgia is the only reason for you, thats great but its not the only reason for everyone else. Like I said earlier when I brought up cartoons, to this day I still watch cartoons from 90s, and even 80s cartoons that I watched as a kid. I don't just watched them because of nostalgia, I watch them because as a artist I can learn from them; composition, color relationship, squash and stretch of animation, and so on.
You're simply ok with the simplification of nostalgia as the primary answer, and again there is nothing wrong with that but that doesn't make it the only one.
As a kid I totally loved and adored final fantasy (the first one on nes). I downloaded it for my phone a while ago, and despite its incredible improvements I was bored out of my mind. Deleted!
I have only just got into ultima 7, never played it as a kid when it came out (technically I'm playing the exult mod). That game is unbelievable, especially for its time. I wish more games were like that...
I love morrowind, but I was almost an adult when that had first come out and had been focused on school big time. No time for games at all. I didn't play morrowind until a year after fallout 3 had come out. I bought oblivion, morrowind, and fallout 3 all in one guilty gaming binge.
I found fallout to be way too dark and gory for my tastes, so I got rid of it shortly thereafter. I loved oblivion and played it more than morrowind (don't stone me, morrowind fans!) simply because it was easier (stressful time of my life that needed to vegetate), but I hated the leveling system (that was before I had really gotten into modding of any sort) and I got bored quickly.
Of those three games, morrowind was clearly the higher quality game, with better writing and more investment in gameplay...oblivion eventually turned into button mashing, and fallout was the same, but morrowind was... well, it just seemed special for some undefinable reason, even though I actually played it AFTER oblivion and fallout. It takes intelligence to play morrowind and enjoy it, almost like work...which consequently, at the time, was the main reason I didn't play it as much as oblivion, simply because I was too stressed out. Vanilla oblivion lets you veg and not pay attention.
I have been thinking of downloading it from gog (I eventually got rid of all those games for one reason or another) and modding it to give it another go.
But I get it, not everyone is obsessed with mods like me or consider them essential for a game's longevity.
Edit: Umm... unless it's Skyrim
I would agree that being able to personalize your game can contribute greatly to the motivation to replay it. Even a favorite game can become repetitive after so many play-throughs.
Some players want a bit more challenge after playing it so many times that they feel like they can beat it with one hand tied behind their back. A mod can provide that.
Even a game that you love can have elements that you would change if you could. A mod can do that for you.
Personally, I can never have too many new interactions with NPCs. I love talking to a new one and discovering who they are, what might motivate them, and how they might fit into my protagonists journey. Adding just that little spark of “unknown” with a new NPC or quest pack makes the anticipation all the sweeter.
I wish more game companies saw the value in this, but I’ve come to believe that modern game companies may actually see this as a negative thing, when considering the bottom line.
The more a player is satisfied with his/her current game and is able to personalize it, the less likely they are to jump into buying the next shinny new game.
Nostalgia doesn't mean you'll go out and purchase something just to do that again. If you happen to find something after several years (taking your example, let's say you stumble upon a chest in the attic/loft), you might just think back to the first time you did it and do it again. However, nostalgia won't be the thing that keeps you doing it. You'll keep doing it for the original reason you did it—which, as I said in my Morrowind example, there are a multitude of reasons; all of which are mostly superficial without examining the science behind it. "What does it mean to 'like' something," and "what happens in people's brains at that time." But I think that's going to be outside the scope of the topic unless someone here just happens to have an MRI or EEG scanner in their living room for people to drop by and use. :P
This is one reason Modders also exist to fill the void to keep the legacy going for older titles that were deemed good stories.
People like BG for it's story because it is something that has not been seen in many years now, and only in my opinion Mass Effect rivals with it in many ways.
Go back an read the post of the person I was replying to, they are the one claiming it is simply nostalgia, not me.
Heck, Silver and Gold versions even had character development. When you first met your red-headed rival, he's a punk. He shoves you if you try talking to him outside of Elm's lab. He views pokemon as tools to meet an end, and he's not afraid to push them to their limits if it means he can attain great power. He wants the same thing as you--to become League Champion, the strongest trainer in Johto, and that makes him your natural antagonist. Yet after battling and being defeated by you time and time again, by the time you fight him at the end of Victory Road, your rival really reflects on himself on why he keeps losing, and realizes he was wrong about pokemon. They're not tools to be used, they're your friends, your partners, your allies. From that moment on, he strives to train differently, to treat his pokemon right, and becomes a better person than he was before.
(All that development is probably why Nameless Red-Head is my favorite Pokemon rival ever... But anyway.)
So yeah. It had a story. It's the story of you and how you became the champion. There's not much more to it than that, but it's there. A story doesn't have to always be deep or complex to be a story.
Let me rephrase, minimal story telling. With the original pokemon, those were just set objectives, no different than just trying to beat already preset records in games like pong or tetris. There was no push for you to actually do any of that other than you're own will to. Its been a years since I played gold an silver but I don't remember any character development of the protagonist at all.
Mostly everything you placed forth are while sounding nice how you wrote it, is not how it is perceived by everyone who played the game. Like I said before, to me they were objectives to be achieved but another games that had "objectives" but no real story was plants vs zombies. There was no urge, no push, nothing that really moved the character along, even the most simplest of stories such as crash bandicoot even had that which made the player want to move forward.
Don't get me wrong, I played the game religious, beat the elite 4 countless times, caught all 151 pokemon, broke my games countless times messing with missing#. But all that came not from a story, but from me just wanting to explore the open world given to me. Everything you mention I more because of open world exploration and less because of "story."