One of the highlights of the inaugural W.A.S.D. event in April was the series of scintillating panel discussions and talks by a wide range of games industry luminaries. If you couldn’t attend in person, don’t worry: we’re uploading all of the talks that took place at the PCGamesN stage at London’s Tobacco Dock to our YouTube channel, including one from several veteran developers about the role nostalgia plays in today’s games landscape.
Editor Richard Scott-Jones sat down with Team17’s Ashley Day, Revolution Software founder Charles Cecil, and Two Point Studios co-founder Gary Carr to talk about nostalgia in gaming. As Day points out, nostalgia is a normal human feeling – we experience it all the time, when we think of a departed relative, or the place where we grew up. So it makes perfect sense that games, which now have their own decades-long history to draw from, would cast a look back in time and seek to recapture treasured memories.
However, it’s not as easy as simply remaking old games and giving them a lick of modern UI polish and high-resolution graphics. Not all games that have attempted to capitalise on nostalgia have done so successfully. So what’s the secret to making good nostalgic games?
You can watch the full talk right here.
For more great W.A.S.D. insights, check out our panel of influencers talking about how to get streamers playing your game, and a lovely fireside chat with the director of Fights in Tight Spaces, a deck-building roguelike game about John Wick-style fights.
