Also, and I’m just throwing this out there, maybe the circlejerk of nostalgia bait for Gen X/Millennials means fuck-all to younger people in general because it’s the nostalgia of their parents, not their own thing?

Like, aren’t we seeing this in so many different properties? As time marches on, interest wanes? Nobody cares about Marvel movies anymore. Nobody cares about Star Wars anymore. The most hardcore fanatics tend to be older and had the originals, which were literally original content, as things they grew up with. Part of the mystery and excitement of them was how much was left unexplained. Seriously, the Clone Wars was this mysterious fucking thing when it was just an offhand comment by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope. Now we have entire TV series dedicated to the background of the Clone Wars. Mystery gone. The first season of The Mandalorian brought back a sense of mystery to the series and then promptly dropped it to mix it in with every other piece of Star Wars memorabilia.

Young people want their own stuff that they’re growing up with, they don’t want rehashes of the shit their parents obsessed over.

Look at the continued interest in Adventure Time spinoffs, for example. Adventure Time first came out when I was just shy of 29. It would be fodder for the children of people just slightly older than me. It was also enjoyable for older folks who enjoyed silly fantasy, which gave it wider appeal. It persists more because it was an actual original thing that some people grew up with.

We live in an era where copyright that lasts 100 years after authorial death has broken corporations brains and they are scared to death of anything original in case it might not be a clear moneymaker. Letting interest in a new property grow over time is almost unheard of in the Netflix era of two seasons and then fuck you, it’s over. So even when new properties are explored, most aren’t given enough time to mature into something that becomes truly nostagliac for a younger generation.

If corporations want people to be as invested in long-lived series, they have to allow the option for new, interesting series to take the stage. Is it really a shocker that people are over games that started in the NES era? That young people want stories and ideas that reflect the world they live in, not the one their parents grew up in? Young people absolutely lose their shit over Undertale and Deltarune, both games made by a single auteur developer. Pokemon, referenced in the article, were sleeper hits that took time before they became an absolute craze.

I’m in my forties, and I constantly talk about how the world our parents brought us up to live in was dead before we were born. It’s the same but at an accelerated pace for kids these days. The world we know and are trying to prepare them for no longer exists. Our stories and nostalgia become meaningless for our kids because it doesn’t speak to their experiences.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I’m of the opinion that it really depends on the nature of the game.

For example, the children are super hyped for GTA VI, because even though GTA V came out before some of them had object permanence, they’ve been playing it for years. It’s remained in their consciousness this entire time.

Compare that to Skyrim, which came out only a year or so before GTA V, and we haven’t seen an Elder Scrolls game since… The young don’t give a toss. They weren’t playing it then, they aren’t playing it now, so there’s absolutely no attachment to Elder Scrolls as a series.

Games used to stay in the consumer’s consciousness before by having sequels made every few years, sometimes even every year! Now? It’s all live services, so it doesn’t feel like the game hasn’t had a new iteration for over a decade.

In other words: Kids aren’t attached to franchises anymore because the game industry is stagnating.

Really short article but kind of an interesting point. To be quite fair, the games don’t just take very long to produce but their appeal keeps shifting towards more adult themes so younger players might not even play them. FFXVI was basically Game of Thrones and prior to that you had… whatever the fuck FFXV was what with a road trip royal theme? Hell, even DQ12 was announced to have adult themes.

DQ spinoffs have a better shot but they haven’t been particularly good and FF spinoffs are money grabs, so there’s that too. The article points to more popular franchises in Japan like Pokemon, although at my kids are literally watching Pokemon TV designed for toddlers, that’s kinda cheating with how everywhere that franchise is, lol.

Existing franchises are missing the young people because they’re about squeezing pennies out of nostalgia, rather than making good games.

The Indie developers of today are creating tomorrow’s lasting franchises.

It’s a tale as old as game development.

It’s all there from day one in the history of Atari and Activision.

Atari’s CEO decided that game developers should wear ties, keep standard work hours and be happy with a salary instead of any equity. This brilliant leadership vision led to the founding of Activision.

Atari went on to become a brand husk company.

Activision went on to become Blizzard / Activision and get bought for more money than I’ll ever see.