Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
College/Unit
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department/Program/Center
Communication Studies
Abstract
This article conceptually integrates research on the experience of nostalgia—defined as a predominantly positive, social, and past-oriented emotion—into the fold of video game research. We emphasize the role of nostalgia as an explanation for contemporary retro gaming trends, and suggest that nostalgia towards gaming events is a necessary area of research. To those ends, we broadly review existing literature on nostalgia before specifically focusing on media-induced nostalgia, and demonstrate how theoretical and empirical observations from this work can be applied to understand video game nostalgia. In particular, we argue that engaging in older gaming experiences indirectly (via memories) and even directly (via replaying or recreating experiences) elicits nostalgia, which in turn contributes to players’ self-optimization and enhanced well-being. Moreover, as gamers and the medium mature together, nostalgic experiences with the medium are likely to become increasingly prevalent. The broad aim of this article is to offer future directions for research on video game nostalgia and provide a research agenda for research in this area.
Digital Commons Citation
Wulf, Tim; Bowman, Nicholas D.; Rieger, Diana; Velez, John A.; and Breuer, Johannes, "Video Games as Time Machines: Video Game Nostalgia and the Success of Retro Gaming" (2018). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1237.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1237
Source Citation
Wulf, T., Bowman, N., Rieger, D., Velez, J., & Breuer, J. (2018). Running Head: Video Game Nostalgia and Retro Gaming. Media and Communication, 6(2), 60-68. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v6i2.1317
Comments
© Tim Wulf, Nicholas D. Bowman, Diana Rieger, John A. Velez, Johannes Breuer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
This article received support from the WVU Libraries' Open Access Author Fund.