The nostalgia dream criticism has been levelled before, like 'get with the times! Don't you know you're too old to matter now? Just deal with it and move on! or hurry up and expire' hehe. So I'll respond to that again briefly. In short, it's probably correct, maybe that is what it is, but I'll elaborate a bit further just for the sake of conversation.
In virtually every area of actual life I'd consider myself highly progressive, meaning that I indulge the notion of progress as a positive force. I never buy into the argument that things were 'better before, in the good old days.' I know the 1950s were a trash nightmare for most people, and that any wish for a return on that count is indeed pretty misguided. Even from my own knowledge and direct experience, the 80s sucked compared to now in general terms. I feel that way pretty strongly in regard to real life, the general advancement of knowledge and also in politics, as well as most other arenas, but almost never with the arts.
For some strange reason, my attitude and general predisposition regarding the arts is the exact opposite. Inexplicably, I'm a stuffy curmudgeon on that count. I blame modernism in 20th century painting for doing this to me. Among other things, evaluating what happened in the 20th century in painting, how traditionalism was demoted in favor of the avant garde and the foundations derided, has shaped my views here in a puzzling way. I suppose because in my estimation the high water mark for visual poesis and visual representational language was achieved towards the end of the 19th century before the advent of photography and true mimesis arrived to kill it off. Basically we were cruising in the Rolls-Royce of painting and design, then made a hard left at WW1 and drove it straight off a cliff. 2000 years of knowledge and development that built on prior foundations was nixed and we climbed out the smoldering wreckage into a new wilderness with no compass to guide anymore. The world of anything goes, where art becomes philosophy with it's attendant aporia writ large. In no other disciplines has this occurred with such a stark about-face as it did in the visual arts and to a lesser extent the letters in the 20th century. They used to be a bit more like the sciences, building on previous knowledge and advancing incrementally with some deference to what came before, instead of throwing all that out the window in some kind of manic revolutionary fervor and desire for the new. Doing the undercut as it were. In the arts the countervailing narrative has ever been the dominant one. We almost never get a positive assessment of progress there. Just thinking how in Homer today 10 men couldn't lift that rock, whereas back in the day Achilles could handle it all by himself. Or in Hesiod, how there used to be a Golden Age, but now it's Iron, go figure. Or the sacred texts, how it used to be a beautiful garden free from woe but now we're all fallen and miserable hehe.
Then consider how we moved from a burn it all down, 'screw what our parents liked. We're on to the new shit now!' sort of mentality, to this strange situation where we now live in chameleon era, times unmoored from any sense of what's current. Unfixed in time, haunted by visions of the past constantly as the defining feature of the new millennium general aesthetic. You can see it in fashion especially. Curiously it grafts on to the general idea that people tend to hate whatever immediately preceded, whatever it was that their parents liked or who their parents were, but then have a sense of nostalgia (probably misguided) for whatever it was that their grandparents liked or who they were. We're slightly more forgiving of the grandparents and positive associations there. Taken further, a true love for what the great grandparents liked or who the great grandparents were (esp. since that last is too far removed for direct experience, so the impression is more pure flight of fantasy.) Perhaps also a general irritation with who's in charge currently that feeds into it all. I think this is how they can track trends and know in advance what each generational cohort will be into, vs what they'll reject in broader terms.
Since I think games are art, it doesn't surprise me that my views tack pretty similarly in the direction of conservation on that score. Maybe it's a failing of imagination, or just being stubborn. If I can see what's happening, be analytical about it, and yet nevertheless still see it in operation for myself. Maybe it's irrational, but we're also sort of irrational creatures when you get right down to it right? hehe
Originally Posted by DiDiDi
This has probably been posted a few times before, but:
