A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of his existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine how nostalgia can create great products for the young & the experienced.
Don’t Mock the Past – You Will Buy it in the Future
The act of romanticizing the past can be a strange beast as it can lead those who lived & experienced a time long past ignore the present’s greatness. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who didn’t get a chance to see, feel, hear & lived during eras & generations constantly promoted by their ancestors & elder pupils sometimes feel a need to argue against what is celebrated in hopes of not having their generation dismissed & demeaned. But the power of the past can greatly influence the future and even become a profitable avenue for companies looking to turn nostalgia & intrigue into cash … lots of cash. Don’t believe me? Just look at the past twenty years of video games and see there’s great truth to my claims.
Those old enough to live through the early days of gaming will understand the feeling of experiencing something that looked beyond comprehension and the need for everyone around you to experience it, too. With game consoles getting stronger and having better storage devices like the evolution from cartridges to disc-based media, gaming developers & distributors were able to bundle older games released many years ago and put them into collections purchased by those who played the games on systems no longer functional, in production, or even owned by people who had moved on to the next generation of consoles and gamers wanting to discover what all the hubbub was attached to such old games. With a simple cash exchange or card swipe, gamers from multiple generations become one in the sea of video game nostalgia. Over the last couple of years, collections have moved from simple disc compilations to full blown miniature consoles be it from Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, and even Sony with a remodeling of its online Playstation Network. While it’s easy to mock the past for not being as super cool as the present, the fact is the time before your existence has a great hold on the present & even future to point that the same thing you once made fun of is something you’ll eventually buy.
Have you learned any major life lessons from playing on old video game consoles or any video game for that matter? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.