Embracing the new genre of gaming “millennial cringe” | games

II’ve noticed an interesting little trend emerging in the last few years: millennial nostalgia games. Not just games that embrace the aesthetic of the Y2K games – think Crow Country or Fear the Spotlight’s fuzzy polygons in the style of the old PS1 – but semi-autobiographical games specifically on Millennium experience. I’ve played three in the past year. Despelote is set in 2002 Ecuador and is played through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy obsessed with soccer. The award-winning film “Consume Me” is about being a teenage girl battling an eating disorder in the 2000s. And this week I played a point-and-click adventure game about being a college student in the early 2000s.

Perfect Tides: Station to Station is set in New York in 2003, a year that is an example of nostalgia for the young generation who grew up without the Internet but are connected to it. This was before Facebook, before the smartphone, but firmly during the era of late-night forum browsing and instant messaging conversations. The Internet wasn’t yet a means of mass communication, but it could still bring you together with other people who liked the things you liked, people who read the same hipster blogs and liked the same bands. The protagonist, Mara, is a young student and writer who works in her college library.

The seriousness with which Perfect Tides presents the college experience — quoting entire paragraphs of pretentious scripts, awkward interactions with classmates, and intermittent phone calls with Mara’s boyfriend back home — precedes the concept of frustration. The main difference between Millennials and Generation Z is that Millennials did not grow up curating an image online on social media, and therefore have a much lesser fear of being… tangible. We’d put up entire albums of horrible, distorted photos from one night out, write non-stop on LiveJournal, produce horrific events and then post them on fan forums or art forums.

Naturally, we find this embarrassing now, as do the younger generation, who enjoy making fun of millennial groveling. But Perfect Tides takes place at a time when no one had to worry about being embarrassed online or in person. It was a time before the term “hipster” came to be seen as an insult. Mara inhales everything around her—an anarchic philosophy book, music and movies, everything she hears professors say in class, new relationships—and reading, talking with other characters, and writing essays deepen her understanding of these topics, opening up new avenues of conversation in turn. It’s a nice way to add a game feel to the process of expanding your intellectual and taste horizons. She is in an age where every experience and idea is considered new.

Perfect Tides shares an aesthetic with Consume Me. Each embraces the sometimes chaotic pixel art of ’90s computer adventure games – but Consume Me’s tone is comedic and sarcastic where Perfect Tides is serious. However, both are part of a long tradition of coming-of-age stories emerging from every generation that had the luxury of an education and a free adulthood. “Emerging adulthood,” a phrase coined by psychologist Jeffrey Arnett in 2000, is a useful description of this stage of life: the extended period of identity formation, distinct from adolescence, which typically occurs between the ages of 18 and 29 in societies where it is economically and culturally possible for young people to continue education.

For many people, this is an unforgettable and unforgettable period of life, which is why there are so many novels, films and TV shows about young adulthood. Perfect Tides reminded me of Douglas Copeland’s young adult memoir, Generation X, which was part of the cultural heritage when I was a teenager. It makes sense that the first generation who grew up with games – my generation – now understands those experiences through creating games. The 19th-century bildungsroman has become the standalone autobiographical game of the 2020s.

It’s the specificity of Perfect Tides — the year, the place, Mara herself — that makes it feel so human and personal. You don’t have to be part of a particular generation to appreciate that generation’s art: when I read an autobiographical novel set in the 1960s or 1980s, I learn something about what it felt like to be alive then. When I play these autofiction games, I relate to them more closely—there are aspects of Mara’s youthful experience that closely mirror my own—but I still learn something. By spending time in these imaginary memories, I learn how someone else learns Those formative years witnessed themselves.

What are you playing?

Look, I can’t face any other capitalist dystopia-type piece of media right now. So I’ll have to save Alien Warlord Child Trading Simulator Later in the year, when I feel more flexible. In this simulation game that combines strategy games and the stock market, you can bet on the outcomes of the lives of fictional alien children, and watch their lives unfold in text alerts. This anti-capitalist satire comes from the folks at Strange Scaffold, a studio that’s now made a lucrative habit of turning long-winded Twitter jokes into full-fledged games (see also Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion and An Airport for Aliens Run By Dogs).

Available on: computer
Estimated playing time: 1-3 hours

What are you reading?

• Sony has patented the idea for the character Artificial Intelligence Podcast Hosted by characters from its games. I’m both horrified and darkly amused by the idea of ​​rapper PaRappa reading the patch notes.

• Toy retailers in the UK game It is dead again, according to Game Business, after struggling since early 2010. Its last three stores will close their doors, and most of its other operations have already ceased. It will continue to be located within Sports Direct and House of Fraser stores.

• I still haven’t finished thinking Hollow Knight SilkSongSo I enjoyed this article by Nicole Clarke, on the new feminist gaming site Mothership, about unexpected empathy in game.

• Bloomberg visited Obsidian — one of Microsoft’s most interesting developers — in this profile of the studio, in which its leaders talk about how they ended up releasing three games in 2025.

• And finally: my country A book about Nintendo It will finally be released this week in the US, and next week in the UK. I’m doing a range of launch events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, London and Brighton. Would love to see you there – tickets here.

What to click on

Question block

This week’s question comes from a reader Gavin:

“Can you explain the current debate of physical game ownership versus physical game ownership? digital? And the gray area of ​​buying a digital token in a physical box? I can’t imagine these tokens will be exclusive to collectors Items in 10 years of time…”

Once upon a time, all video games came on cassette tapes, discs, or cartridges, usually in tragically damaged cardboard boxes, with paper booklets. Then, when digital downloads became practical, we had a choice: either buy your game on disc in a box, or choose the downloaded version that sits on your hard drive. However, many games are now difficult or even impossible to purchase physically. And even when you do, the disc simply prompts you to download 50GB, or the box contains nothing but a redeemable code.

Digital downloads are preferred by companies that run the gaming industry, for two reasons. First: There are no manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs. Second: Sony, Apple, Steam, Microsoft, or Nintendo take a roughly 30% cut of every game sold digitally on their platforms, which is essentially free money for them. At one point, game retailers had so much power that the owners of these platforms could not give away physical games: too many copies of FIFA and COD were sold in GAME branches. But now, with brick-and-mortar gaming retail disappearing, digital downloads have become the norm.

Digital downloads are convenient for gamers, of course, but they also come with major drawbacks. What you’re purchasing is a license, which may expire at some point in the theoretical future or become unusable, rendering your games unplayable. You cannot sell a digital token or transfer ownership. That’s why many people still prefer physical media of all kinds. and everyone He hates the code in the box. It’s the worst of both worlds.

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