This post was made while on an airplane trip for work and contains very little editing. You’ve been warned! -Nick

This past week I began playing Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS and found myself realizing that I’ve played through the game literally dozens of times on the SNES, Playstation, GBA, and now on the DS. So this got me thinking…

What about this game is driving my inclination to revisit it again and again every time it’s released? Why is nostalgia so powerful? How does nostalgia play a key role in much of the games market today? Well, I’ll tell you my opinion at least.

Continuing to use Final Fantasy IV as an example, I think the answer lies once again in patterns and also with the time period in which the game was originally released. Back then, we had already seen the mighty hero tasked with a great quest to save the world in a variety of RPGs. While initially a challenge and therefore interesting to our brains, after a few variations on the same themes and mostly similar play mechanics (walk around, get randomly attacked, menu driven action selection with common options like ATTACK, CAST, ITEM, DEFEND, etc.) we began to find the pattern boring.. or at least less exciting then it once was.

So along comes Final Fantasy IV (masked as Final Fantasy II in the US) with a new iteration on the same familiar pattern. This time the story is much more in depth. There’s a more intricate plot, actual character development, and a fantastic musical score to drive it all home. It was the introduction of EMOTION into the video game experience, and it grabbed our attention.

Beyond that, there were additional additions to the standard RPG mechanics that allowed the brain new information to grok. Millions of gamer’s brains suddenly realized, “Hey, I know this pattern.. but yet.. it’s DIFFERENT! I’m INTRIGUED!”, and for that moment, all was right with the world.

That euphoric feeling when your brain finds a new pattern to learn that’s “familiar yet different” (assuming the pattern was one which it enjoyed the first time around), is what drives the power of nostalgia. It seems that we like to hang onto stuff (thoughts, memories, and patterns) and when we find something familiar to a positive experience, we are naturally drawn to it.

Sadly, the experience of the same game.. the same patterns.. gets repetitive, with each new visit generally not as satisfying as the first. The most successful dips into the realm of nostalgia in terms of games are those that CHANGE or ADD to the original patterns. FF4 on the GBA added new dungeons, somewhat improved graphics (but mostly the same), and some different challenges. FF4 on the DS added not only 3D graphics, but the addition of the original un-cut plotline never before seen as well as more strategic gameplay and increased difficulty.

Consider every game that’s part of a genre. Aren’t most within that genre essentially some iteration upon a previously used pattern, if not direct rip-offs? Why do you think MMOs are as successful as they are? They keep changing the patterns! (though admittedly in some ways, not nearly as much as they should… depending on which game we’re talking about).

So if you’re considering making a game and want it to have great potential.. Remember these mantras…

* Familiar… but different!
* Easy to learn, difficult to master

….and just for fun….

* Test driven development and continuous integration! The concept of crunch time MUST END! This is not a joke but a push to greater effectiveness of your development teams!
* A little scrum never hurts, as long as the entire executive team as well as the publisher is on board. For MMOG’s in particular I don’t believe there is a good excuse for NOT doing this (though I remain open to convincing if you think I’m wrong)