Finally, I argue that these modern re-presentations of gaming’s past teach us much about the construction of gamer identity within contemporary gaming culture. Third, I introduce retrogaming culture by discussing in greater detail exactly how retro games are being represented and taken up in popular culture, emphasizing points of division between their marketing by the industry and critical and popular reception by audiences. Second, I touch on scholarship in the field of game studies, scholarship that offers a variety of methodological approaches to this topic. The essay will proceed in four stages, beginning with a discussion of what it means to study retrogaming from the critical perspectives available to scholars of collective memory here I briefly highlight the similarities and differences between studying games and studying other memory artifacts. The rhetoric that emerges from this back and forth can help us understand not only how gaming history is being created but also how the contestation of public memory constructs authority and identity. The construction of this history is often marked by contentious discourse that pits the “official” narratives of video game history offered by game publishers against the “vernacular” histories found in retrogaming communities. More specifically, this essay investigates how the current discourses surrounding retrogaming practices function to shape a collective memory of video gaming history. This essay examines this trend and makes an argument as to its significance for contemporary gamers. This coverage has included sections for retro games in existing media (such as print magazines Game Informer or the website IGN.com) as well as the development of new content (such as the monthly Retro Gamer magazine, website Hardcore Gaming 101, or G4’s television show Icons). This deluge of releases has also seen a corresponding rise of print and electronic media devoted to covering retro games to meet the growing market demand. Titles have included developer compilations, such as the Sega Genesis Collection, EA Replay, Activision Hits, Intellivision Lives!, Taito Legends, and Atari Classics series specific titles, such as the Dracula X Chronicles, The Sonic Mega Collection, The Gradius Collection, and the Metal Slug Anthology and new titles that provide twists on original games, such as New Super Mario Brothers or the Sega Classics Collection. In the past seven years, game developers have released numerous titles that repackage, reimagine, or group together older games. The success of these services, which make available what are often referred to as “retro games,” has coincided with what seems to be a larger and growing interest by consumers for playing older video games. Microsoft and Sony also sell older games through similar models, with both companies seeing strong sales of games that were originally released for older home consoles or previously available only in gaming arcades ( 1). According to an interview from 2008 with Nintendo’s President and CEO Satoru Iwata, the service had sold over ten million downloads in just its first few months (Ogawa, 2008). In the years since the introduction of the service Nintendo has released over 350 games in their U.S. In late 2006, shortly after the launch of their Wii video game console, Nintendo introduced a library of downloadable games available through a service nicknamed the “Virtual Console.” This library consists entirely of games that were created for video game systems whose technologies are now considered outdated: Players can pay for, download, and play games for consoles that are no longer in production and are no longer supported by their manufacturers or game developers. “The double imperative derived from the obscuring of the future and the obscuring of the past makes remembering the distinguishing feature of our time.” (Pierre Nora) Highlighting the tensions between official and vernacular versions of gaming history, the essay goes on to suggest a rhetorical theory of nostalgia is needed to explain the ways in which retrogamers have negotiated their identity within and against the context facilitated by the gaming industry. After explaining the relevance of public memory scholarship for studying gaming culture in general, the essay provides a study of the discursive practices found within contemporary retrogaming culture. It argues that recent arguments about this history function to reshape the identities of retrogamers and retrogaming communities. This essay explores the success of retrogaming to show how new public memories about gaming history are being rhetorically constructed. Public Memory and Gamer Identity: Retrogaming as Nostalgia
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