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Minecraft, Elden Ring, and Disco Elysium: On Video Games Altering Nostalgia | Wiktor Dymkowski
from Issue 9 Games
Wiktor Dymkowski
Minecraft, Elden Ring, and Disco Elysium: On Video Games Altering Nostalgia
Svetlana Boym in her phenomenal work Nostalgia and Its Discontents diagnoses the 21st century as an age in which:
[…] globalization encourages stronger local attachments. In counterpoint to our fascination with cyberspace and the virtual global village, there is a global epidemic of nostalgia, an affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world.
She outlines the experience of modernity as one’s placement in a culture of homecoming and homebuilding, where an imagined view of the past is often fabricated to serve a certain outlook on the present and the future. Feeding on memories, it fosters “stronger local attachments” – fondness of regionality –cultivating the sense of home. In my opinion though, this very “longing for continuity,” with the rising dominance of digital entertainment, became not a counterpoint, but another symptom of a fragmented world. Its fragments, having multiplied in the so-called cyberspace, have turned into yet other places subject to our desire for continuity. And so, our fragmented world is made of scattered memories. Some of these memories take refuge in cyberspace, filled with signs of nostalgia: the digital world of video games.
Much like every adult cherishes their beloved form of childhood fun, every player surely remembers their favorite games from adolescence – or rather the essence of time spent on virtual playgrounds. This sense of nostalgia related to video games may well be due to associating these activities with simpler, carefree days.
Video games are one of the most timeconsuming entertainment forms. The level of engagement they offer is unsurpassable, as they are capable of creating a distinct realm of physical agency. This is evident in the way our constant button-clicking organizes the on-screen reality, providing us with a sense of control. It is a phenomenon evident in both single-player and multiplayer experiences. Whether it’s fighting for a high score, experiencing its unfolding plot, chasing its secrets, building something more pretty than useful, or going over the hill to see what’s behind it, time goes unnoticed.
Modern operating systems, emulators, etc. often allow you to launch any older game, so you can start it up whenever you want. You can instantly return to cyberspace, to the digital world of a game, along with its sights and sounds. In a virtual Minecraft (2011) village, a dog waits for our return. You’ll find there a house full of ladders and too-low ceilings – probably altogether smaller and less imposing than you remember. Or you can have games such as Elden Ring (2022), where no one awaits our arrival –the world is already dead, mummified.
The world of Elden Ring is bleeding out, showing no likelihood of change. The trope of the player responsible for saving the world is challenged. The game’s universe is a sphere of forgetfulness, a time capsule of collective memory unable to reconstruct its former glory. The player tries to prevent this amnesia – a foray into the fictional realm of memories. Taking on the role of The Tarnished, they attempt to break this miserable standstill. Over and over, after many failures the protagonist delves into the Lands Between, cutting through its rich lore. Memories of the lost world help us understand and navigate it.
Video games can give us not only a sense of return sparked by nostalgia “in” the world, but also nostalgia “for” the world. Nostalgia “in” the space itself is similar to an old part of town, where time seems to have somehow frozen. It means that this place is a witness of history. It encapsulates stories – it is inherently nostalgic. Whereas nostalgia “for” the world refers to a personal sense of longing for a time gone by, for example, missing the time captured in a happy photo from childhood.
Similarly, Minecraft, is now an exemplar of these two nostalgic experiences: “in” and “for.” Not only does it serve as a repository of cherished memories and a sense of childlike discovery of the block-built world. After numerous updates, it also becomes an uncanny world of flashbacks. It aims to compensate for the past sense of discovery with a world design similar to that of Elden Ring – filled with ruins, which are new to the player, but ancient to the world. Archeological escapades into the new structures (Bastion Remnants, End Cities – ruins of other civilizations in different dimensions and new enemies to fight in Deep Dark Cities) might be intriguing, but they are not as fun as the first adventures years ago. Mining those first diamonds or climbing over a hill seem to be better. Mind you, I am well aware that today’s version of Minecraft is much more advanced than the one ten years ago. The game was simple, and so were the days. It has all changed now. What has not been altered is the inaccuracy of memory and the ever-growing “longing for continuity in a fragmented world”, to quote Boym again – a call for homecoming. All the information buzzing around pushes the mind to resort to a good memory or the atmosphere of a given event, rather than its factual properties. We create “places” of nostalgia that we are able to revisit whenever we want – boot up an older version of Minecraft, visit our beloved dog in a digital village, without leaving our real house. These “places” do not have to be filled with our nostalgia (for the world) – but its general penetrating feeling (in the world).
Undoubtedly, nostalgia is becoming more pervasive, especially in our fast-paced world. It has even made its way into cyberspace, where we often spend a significant amount of time. Nostalgia makes us confront our vulnerabilities, in the setting of a game or a website, a place where we’re supposed to feel safe. Stylized with a VHS overlay, videos of old Minecraft landscapes with its iconic music might just pop up on YouTube’s main page instilling yearning, where comfort of undisturbed time consumption should reign.
In my opinion, games have evolved precisely because of the capacity to dwell on nostalgia like no other entertainment medium, exploring it in various ways. This is achieved by the use of aesthetics: pixel art, an illusion of cinemascope screens – visible for example in Loop Hero (2021); or in gameplay design: retro shooters with gameplay stylized to fit the past memory of its rawness – as in Doom from 2016, rewriting the experience of Doom (1993); or using dialogue-dependent narratives: my favorite examples being Night in The Woods (2017) and Disco Elysium (2019).
The latter is a detective RPG game with the plot set in the fictional world of Elysium, in the city of Revachol, in the Martinaise district. This part of the city has witnessed the collapses of both the monarchy and its “murderer”: the communist revolution. Yet both sides have been blown out of the water by international government and capitalist thought. Although these events, including Disco’s People’s Pile recalling the Chernobyl tragedy, are fictitious they are not much different to our reality; they mirror it. And so does the architecture of the Martinaise with its desolate tenement houses. They are designed in a manner of expressionist paintings, which hints at its decadence. This is amplified by the hauntingly beautiful, calm, yet dredging music and the omnipresent horns heard once we leave the first location.
Our role as a detective-alcoholic, who wakes up in a hostel room with no memories, is to solve the hanging of corporate-hired mercenary. We also have to reconstruct our character’s psyche through interaction and dialogue with the world: by discovering the properties of items and traits of other characters. We might very well be drawn to the majestic ideals of monarchy through the pride and longing for the glory of a former member of the royal army. Perhaps we shed a tear or two for Kras Mazov’s (Disco’s Karl Marx) bust and vouch to bring back the revolution, a fantasy now more impossible than ever.
We get to develop our statistics and abilities by “internalizing thoughts”: memories of the character’s past and the world, which appear gradually over the course of the game. The implementation of game mechanics into the narrative as well as dice-rolling call back the origins of tabletop role-playing games. This, alongside the aforementioned audiovisual presentation, constitutes one of the most poignant nostalgias “in” the world. Nostalgia “in” the world is a result of contact with something that evokes sentiment. It is the noticing of nostalgia felt by its characters, their wishes and fascinations, the world’s ruins, and stories. The sentiments become our own because of creating a bond with the world by inhabiting it and investing our time and emotional capacity. Once we leave that digital world, we remember it. And we feel nostalgia “for” it – missing the experience of a certain time in our lives.
That leads to yet another way of exploration (and therefore capitalization) of nostalgia, perceptible within the phenomenon of sequels, reboots, and remakes – but different from that of the cinema. It’s because we remember the gameplay. It is a feeling of the countless hours spent on that Sandbox, MMO, or FPS game, eventful gaming sessions, and the exchange of experiences with fellow gamer-friends. The sense of active participation in fictional events is unachievable in cinema.
That leads to a series of questions: would hypothetical Disco Elysium 2 feel nostalgic because of the memory of my involvement in the play-through of the first game, or would it evoke a sense of longing by itself? Would it be possible to differentiate these two sensations? Because I surely will feel nostalgic “for” Revachol, and surely will play Disco Elysium again once some years pass.
Such attempts (replaying, remakes, sequels) at resurrecting past experiences highlight the imperfections of memory. Games’ replayability exposes that to the bone. Yet, it is not always a negative experience, even though it may seem sad and rather painful. I might not be able to enjoy nostalgia “in” the world of Minecraft like I long “for” the experience of its place in my upbringing, but it is nonetheless a worthwhile game. To enter these digital worlds – spaces of memories to come – means to embrace their rules and their temporality. Play subsequent games, cherishing what you remember well from the previous ones, without actively romanticizing your own fantasy. Send a postcard from time to time to your already remote, old, digital worlds of the past. Walk around them, sweep some dust. Ask them innocently, with utmost care: What’s up? What’s changed? How is my digitalized nostalgia doing? Will it prevail?
