2023 | 1

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Editorial. Paradise Lost: Romanticizing as Playing the Imagined Past
Bosman, Frank; Ornella, Alexander Darius (2023) , S. 7-11
“Giving Back”. An Interview with Video Game Designer Ken Wong, by Frank Bosman and Alexander D. Ornella
Bosman, Frank; Ornella, Alexander Darius (2023) , S. 13-24
In this interview conducted by issue editors Frank Bosman and Alexander D. Ornella in August 2022, Ken Wong discusses the relationship between video game design, video game aesthetics, religious imagery, and cultural storytelling. He discusses how (secularized) religious tropes, ideas, and images can become part of the game design and the story of the game, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. He discusses how the ideas of “giving back”, of atonement, and forgiveness can become elements of successful and very well received video games.
Paradise Lost: Presentation of Nostalgic Longing in Digital Games
(2023)
Since Milton’s poem, the notion of “Paradise Lost” (1667) has found its way into popular culture in general and digital games specifcially. While digital games have been an arena to imagine the past since their early days, in the past decade, there has been a surge in retro-gaming as a kind of narratological, ludological, visual, and technological longing for the early days of gaming, prime examples being CUPHEAD, CELESTE or UNDERTALE. Linked to such a longing for the early days of gaming is an emergence of various remakes of old-school classics, like ODDWORLD: ABE’S EXODDUS as ODDWORLD: SOULSTORM. Yet other games explicitly and deliberately employ and reflect on the idea of a rupture in human history; that is, the loss of an earlier (potentially utopian) state one strongly longs for but is beyond reach, like HORIZON ZERO DAWN. Articles in this issue reflect on and discuss the various phenomena in digital gaming that play with and cater to an idealized, romanticized, and glorified past, a more innocent time in human history.
Video Game Romanticism: On Retro Gaming, Remakes, Reboots, Game Nostalgia, and Bad Games
Bosman, Frank (2023) , S. 25-44
In recent years, a relatively new phenomenon in the video game industry has emerged: the re-appreciation of games from previous generations by individual gamers in combination with the production of new games aesthetically and/or ludologically clearly based on these older games. The phenomenon has been described as ‘retro gaming’, ‘game nostalgia’ or ‘vintage play’ and has been associated with parallel phenomena like reboots, remakes, and ‘bad games’ (or Kusoge). As ‘primer’ of this special issue of the Journal of Religion, Film, and Media on ‘Paradise Lost’, the author identifies and describes all these interrelated by distinguishable notions as forms of ‘video game romanticism’: the appropriate a romanticized version of our collective past to construct an appealing digital, interactive, narrative complex.

Browsing 2023 | 1 by Author "Bosman, Frank"

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