The Past through Stereoscopic Lenses. Video Games Nostalgia in Virtual Reality

Paweł Grabarczyk

Titles

Abstract

The paper examines the phenomenon of retrogaming in the context of virtual reality. Author begins by introducing two categories of gaming nostalgia (homo- and hetero-medial) and argues that almost none of the existing VR experiences belong to the former category. In the next part of the paper, he applies two distinctions used by scholars to analyze nostalgia and discuss four case studies illustrating each of them. Author argues that in all of these cases the main focus of the developers concerns the external circumstances that the games of the past were played and not the games themselves (a factor that Mark P. Wolf called a “mode of exhibition”). He finishes the paper by discussing two problematic cases of retro VR experiences that do not fit the classification used previously. He argues that both of these cases simulate the mode of exhibition of contemporary retro practices.

* This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European

Union’s H2020 ERC-ADG program (grant agreement No 695528).

The paper examines the phenomenon of retrogaming in the context of virtual reality. Author begins by introducing two categories of gaming nostalgia (homo- and hetero-medial) and argues that almost none of the existing VR experiences belong to the former category. In the next part of the paper, he applies two distinctions used by scholars to analyze nostalgia and discuss four case studies illustrating each of them. Author argues that in all of these cases the main focus of the developers concerns the external circumstances that the games of the past were played and not the games themselves (a factor that Mark P. Wolf called a “mode of exhibition”). He finishes the paper by discussing two problematic cases of retro VR experiences that do not fit the classification used previously. He argues that both of these cases simulate the mode of exhibition of contemporary retro practices.

* This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European

Union’s H2020 ERC-ADG program (grant agreement No 695528).

Keywords

virtual reality, retrogaming, nostalgia

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Information

Information: Arts & Cultural Studies Review, 2020, Issue 2 (44), pp. 54 - 74

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.20.014.12378

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

The Past through Stereoscopic Lenses. Video Games Nostalgia in Virtual Reality

English:

The Past through Stereoscopic Lenses. Video Games Nostalgia in Virtual Reality

Authors

Paweł Grabarczyk

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1268-7474

IT University of Copenhagen

Published at: 2020

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Percentage share of authors:

Paweł Grabarczyk (Author) - 100%

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-

Publication languages:

English

View count: 1713

Number of downloads: 1005

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