The Retro Game Revival – A Synopsis of History, STats and speculation

For this week’s challenge, we had to find an object that we think that has a story to reveal, and use that as a starting point to our research and gather our findings in a short synopsis. The aim of this task was to explore research methods and interpreting findings.

It started off by me going looking for an object, and I chose this relic:

And before I continue, have a look at this clip.

In the last couple of years, numerous video game developers were relaunching remakes and remasters of classic game titles, as well as spin-offs and the like. Being a child that grew up with these classic video games and I was ecstatic when I got to know that some of my favourite games are going to be relaunched, I thought it would be an interesting topic to investigate further.

I started off with jotting down a couple of points to see what I want to achieve from this research. In the end I decided that I would like to find out which console is the most popular, why is there such a craze over these games again (because personally, I am that person who still thinks the 90s were ten years ago, so it hits home), if other people, who are not necessarily that into video gaming (gamers are obviously up-to-date) are aware that this is happening. Following this, I thought about putting together a questionnaire and send it out to my colleagues in the offices and share it on social media. In addition to this, I also looked at various blogs, particularly finance blogs, as it was evident that there was a high return on investment for the video game industry.

The questionnaire turned out to be a good idea. In total I managed to collect 82 responses, and from the online articles a managed to get some useful statistics and also some expert insight on were the industry in headed. With that said, I should make a mental note to avoid checkbox questions and short answers unless it is really required. I had to do some math to cross reference some of the data.

In conjunction with this, I wanted to see if there are books that are relevant to this topic. I figured that it is best to look at books that explore the history of video gaming. The search led me to The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox, by Evan Amos. It is a recent publication that talks about the history of video gaming through the gaming devices that were created over the last 50 years. It is a very colourful and interesting book, and it can be found also on Google Books.

I was really lost in the beginning of this week and I did not understand fully what was required of me to do, and of course I went into a mini panic state. Plus I really did not expect that I would be researching and writing about some of my favourite video games as a child. It turned out to be a really enjoyable exercise. I admit that I do enjoy digging up and delving deeper into topics to unearth more information. Finally, this is my synopsis. Enjoy.