I was watching NakeyJakey’s video on Starfield. I know it has become a cliché of his to title his videos “_’s game design is outdated” but I’m all about both defending old games and talking about how we talk.

I have three posts I believe about remakes and the discourse around retro video-games. My thesis, summarized: video-games don’t age. At least not the parts we’d consider “art”. When people say they do, they are actually making value judgments: talking about what they don’t like.

Nakey’s “_’s game design is outdated” videos are a clear example of this. They are critiques. His video on Starfield doesn’t even discuss his points in a “this game is outdated”‘-framing actually. He just lists things that suck about Starfield. He even says, and I paraphrase:

Starfield wouldn’t be good if it had came out in any other year. But it came out in 2023.

I think Nakey and I agree more than what people could, at first glance, believe.

What was bad now was bad then, too

I hope this doesn’t come as if I were plagiarizing myself. But I genuinely think this is the case. It’s valid to say that we may be too forgiving of the faults of a game when talking about it in its time, perhaps because of the then relevant hype or because that particular game was one of a kind and set paradigms that would be iterated on by future titles. When this happens it’s just natural to think that something was improved over the course of several iterations, i.e. the first iterations are now outdated.

It’s also not weird for any work of art to be lauded on its time just for the popular opinion to shift in the future after a series of retrospects. People change, their judgments do, too. Specially when influenced by experimenting more down the road.

We all have played a game of our childhoods for nostalgia’s sake just to realize that, it may have not been as good as we remembered. This happens to a lot of people: of course a lot of them will talk about that game being outdated, and not about forgetting about the bad stuff and only sticking with the good, or on the fact that they’re no longer children.

You know what happens to me a lot? Playing a game of my childhood and enjoying it more. I was a really bad player, I didn’t finish a lot of games back in the day. I got stuck constantly, thanks to either getting lost or the game getting too difficult for my 8 year old brain. Or just being incapable of understanding it — I didn’t know english when I was 8.

Paraphrasing myself again: I don’t want to come across as lessening or disqualifying the opinions of others. You can say whatever you want, X aged badly. Y is outdated. What I’m asking for is honesty. The honesty to accept that you’re not being objective — you’re being subjective. “X is outdated” is a fact. Either something is or isn’t, regardless of what you think. The things that do age do so because that’s reality and that’s it. But if you instead say “X is bad” we can actually have a discussion.

Shifting tastes

Saying that the game design of X video-game is outdated goes against everything I believe about video-games. A lot of the discourse around modern titles centers around more about talking what we think is no longer admissible in the current year to what we think is actually good or bad. Nothing of substance can be said when that’s the framework.

I’m going to say “X is bad” instead of “X is outdated” in the following examples. And what will make them interesting is that having those opinions on their time doesn’t sound too crazy.

I remember finding Arkham’s Asylum’s Riddler trophies boring and frustrating. Even as a middle schooler with 10 hours of free time each day. I remember liking the game, the meat and potatoes. Not the filler.

I think saying “Arkham’s Asylum open world design is outdated” wouldn’t be weird in current year. Or in 2015, when Arkham Knight was published. In Arkham Knight you had an entire, actual city to explore! Gotham, you know — Not just an island cosplaying as a “city”. Turns out Arkham City has been outdated since 2015. And Arkham Asylum since 2011. You know, in Arkham Asylum you only had… the asylum. In Arkham City you had an entire city at your feet!

Sorry for being snarky, let’s get serious for a moment. In current open world games (Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Baldur’s Gate 3) we value player choice. We value the actual world’s design: for the fact that thought was put into building this game’s world to be noticeable. We value that the game rewards player creativity: we like that such massive games feel like immersive sims, but are not constrained by the bounds of typical games of that genre.

With this shifting taste, it’s no wonder we realize in retrospect we don’t like Ubisoft’s open worlds. We don’t like searching for hundreds of green trophies hidden behind esoteric riddles. But that doesn’t mean Ubisoft’s game design is outdated now. It means it just sucked. It always did, I’m sorry. I realized this when I was 16? 17? Playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. What I enjoyed about that game was getting lost — then I opened the map and my cortisol spiked.

What’s the difference between Bethesda’s stealth or Ubisoft’s open worlds and having more than two weapons available? We dislike the former and like the latter. There are no other reasons for games to stop having multiple weapons selectable by the player between 2006 and 2016 other than the fact that Halo: Combat Evolved came out in 2001. And players didn’t use a keyboard on console.

It’s not because having only two weapons at a time made having a lot obsolete. Actually, that sounds kinda bizarre: we’d expect the contrary to be true instead. Then Doom (2016) came out, alongside a lot of indie boomer shooters and we rediscovered the joy of having a shotgun bound to the number 3 key and a rocket launcher on the number 9. And weapon wheels were invented to make having a lot of weapons not suck on console.

Games as technology

Yes — things related to games do get old. Do become outdated. The PS1’s MIPS CPU is, by all sensible criteria, outdated. The NES’ and Neo-Geo’s Motorola 68000 is no longer being manufactured. It’s outdated.

I think the fact that games, unlike any other medium, are bound to their technology is what convinces us to say that they can be outdated. Even aspects that aren’t exclusive of them, like game design.

I like Risk. If I actually thought game design can become outdated, I would find it reasonable to say that Risk’s player elimination is, by all accounts, outdated. It has been since eurogames entered the scene, at the very least. But board games aren’t bound by the technology of their time. Not in the degree games are, at least. Chess hasn’t changed in centuries.

After playing Catan of course I will dislike player elimination, on Risk or any other multiplayer board game. But, is it weird to think that, in the 50’s, maybe Lamorisse, Risk’s creator, of all people realized it kinda sucked to be eliminated one hour in from a game that probably had a couple more hours ahead of it?

Let’s change our vocabulary

Let’s wrap this up. Say “X suck”. You’re laying the groundwork for an interesting conversation. Saying “X is outdated” is just a thought terminating cliché.