Something I’ve been thinking about recently, is how we developed into the current era of mobile games. Like, when I was a kid, which in the grand scheme of things wasn’t that long ago but because I was born just before the 2000s I grew up with the mobile device revolution. Games like the original Pokemon, the Kirby series, tetris were all things that filled up my time actively avoiding the outdoors. And recently, as many of have been while stuck inside most days, I’ve been looking back into the things I enjoyed in my childhood. One of those being, my copy of Pokemon Crystal on a gameboy color I picked up from Pax East two years ago.

A screenshot of Pokemon Crystal, featuring Bayleef and Pikachu.

And my first thoughts from playing one of the games that absorbed my childhood was… Man this game is SLOW. There’s no sprinting so you can’t get from place to place quickly, battle animations look great but battles overall take such a long time, and don’t even get me started on having to navigate the PC to store Pokemon. It almost makes me want to stick to just the first six Pokemon I catch; it's so tiresome. And while this is certainly putting a hamper on my enjoyment of the game, I’m still REALLY enjoying it.

A screenshot of Pokemon Crystal, featuring Sandslash and Charizard.

The old Pokemon sprites look AWESOME, they have so much character to them, and it really throws me back to being a kid playing Pokemon in various situations, like in my friends attic, on the gazebo during recess, and on the twin bed at my uncle’s beach house. Especially holding a game boy color again, it is just so… Satisfying? The console feels amazing to hold, each of the buttons have a very distinct tactile feeling compared to modern day controllers, and the sound/music coming out of this tiny speaker are just great.

A picture I found online of the same model of Game Boy Color that I purchased.

It really got me thinking about how great it is to play older games on their original old console, and I’m not sure if it’s just my nostalgia speaking but I think I enjoy playing games this way much more than through an emulator. I’d honestly call this a pretty authentic experience, being able to play something the way it was intended. And it got me thinking, is this a known trend?

“One of the biggest marketing trends we are seeing in 2020 is authenticity. Authenticity is taking a life of its own. While a lot of companies and personal brands are trying to show engaging behind-the-scenes content, they’re doing it in a way that may be too contrived.”

George Carlin, a famous stand-up comedy.

Look at all of the things that we took for granted before much of the US had to shut down. Things like in-person dining out, live experiences like stand-up comedy and music, even things as simple as going to school or work have been drastically changed. They haven’t necessarily gotten worse, in fact I think this time has shown a lot of us the importance of virtual experiences, but it has also proven that certain experiences are best served “authentically”.

I’ll take stand-up comedy as an example, and the somewhat lack of it during this past year. And this isn’t the fault of the comedians, they have special and long form shows that have all done really well in an online environment, however the act of your usual stand-up comedy in clubs isn’t really seens as much. Instead, many stand up comics have instead decided to give their audience a more authentic experience, podcasting. It allows them to talk directly to their audience, just like stand-up comedy, without the censoring of publishing or broadcast companies.

Pokemon Crystal running on the Game boy Color.

But this is a blog about games, not comedy, so let’s bring it back around. We know that people want authentic experiences now, but how does that relate to games? Well, let’s think back to what was said earlier, playing Pokemon Crystal on a game boy color. Now there is a word for the feeling I was describing, authenticity! People like the authentic experience of playing on old consoles, regardless of how outdated the control scheme might be, how inconvenient some of the mechanics are, or how slow the game’s pacing might be.

A screenshot from Goldeneye 64, a FPS game from the N64.

And this isn’t to say that playing reworks, remasters, or just emulated experiences is incorrect, or that you’re getting less of an experience. A lot of the things from old games (for instance, the controller from the N64) got left behind in the past for a reason. We’ve made a lot of improvements to games in the last three decades, and many of them have allowed us to enjoy some of the older games even more (I’m looking at you Goldeneye 64, and how much better you play with a mouse and keyboard), but that still doesn’t make the experience authentic. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

So, what can we take away from this? Sure we know people want authentic experiences, but why does that matter? Ultimately, what makes an experience “authentic”?

The full quote from Bong Joon-Ho, taken from ABC News when he accepted the academy award for Parasite

Taking a quote from Boon Joon Ho, and Martin Scorsese, “What is most personal, is the most creative”. That might seem like a bit of a jump from what I was talking about previously, but in all honestly, they are very much aligned. Authentic experiences can only come from what people are intending for players to… Well play. Put another way, I think this video by The Royal Oceann Film Society says it best, “...What the next day, or in two months, are people going to think about...?” This is taken from an interview with one of the great visionaries of Pixar, as he talks about the lessons he learned from the people working at Pixar.

Essentially, the only way you can make an Authentic experience is by putting a part of yourself into the medium. To make an experience feel authentic, you need to be sure that you're imbueing your own feelings, into it. Authenticity is directly linked to how personal something is. Tying your feelings into the media you create is integral to making it as impactful as possible.

I'm sure many of you remember a time when you played browser games as a kid. They were quick little games, usually not that complicated, that you could either play during your time in the computer lab, during lunch break in the library, or even sometimes when your parents would allow you computer time at home. Whilest I was being a teacher's assistant, I would often sit in the back of classes, and see students playing a variety of browser games in class instead of paying attention to the lecture. And it got me thinking, what ever happened to browser games? Were they simply left by the wayside in favour of other mediums? Were they just becoming more unpopular over time?

One of the game genres that I feel has absolutely no respect is the idle game genre. People are very quick to trash on them, because they aren't really that involved of games, they don't really require any skill, or that when you boil them down they are basically just watching numbers go up and down on a screen. While I do agree that there is certain some benal when it comes to the idle game genre, likely because of how quickly one with little to no game developing skills could make one, a perticular game really opened my eyes to the possibilities that the genre held. I never imagined I would feel vested in the narrative of an idle game, and yet Loop Hero has done exactly that.