[1]skip to main content [2] [logo] • [3] Archives • [4] Works • [5] About • [6] More... My Enjoyment From Engagement With Media Deepens As I Grow Older 15 June 2026 I am not yet done thinking about nostalgia. In [7]Nostalgia Always Includes a Temporal Context, I claim that we can never fully relive a nostalgic moment from the past precisely because of its temporal context—the past. In this article, I claim that my enjoyment from engaging with media, that in ten or twenty years yields the juicy fruits of nostalgia, deepens as I grow older. This idea can work as a remedy for an acute case of midlife crisis or nostalgic depression. The problem with my nostalgia for games from yesteryear is that it can sometimes be asphyxiating up to the point that I think I won’t enjoy anything else. Even worse, if I do decide to replay said game, because of the shift in temporal context, I can’t recreate the same moment and will feel disappointed. You shouldn’t try to “restore” that nostalgic moment: instead, you should “reflect” on it and enjoy your happy moments. Engagement with new material might result in more disappointments precisely because of that obsession with past media. Yet I think the present has kept one huge joker close to its chest: the older you get, the deeper your engagement with media. Or at least that is my personal experience. Time becomes much more valuable thanks to other obligations. The more games you play, the more you know what you like and what you don’t, and the better you can fillet its gameplay mechanics and storytelling. The more I write about games, the more I look into its background and creation process. For me, writing a few thoughts after I’m done with it is an extension of the gameplay, prolonging my engagement (and thus fun) with that game. When I was younger, I just played whatever I was gifted or could afford. I cared less and could stomach endless grinding because it felt like I had endless amounts of time on my hands anyway. I didn’t explicitly add context by looking into its development process. I didn’t read reviews or game experience reports of others besides the “official” ones from PC Gameplay et al. In short, I don’t think I appreciated media as a piece of art [8]like I do now. I didn’t yet nurture that skill. Yet you could argue that with growing older comes being more critical which could easily hamper the enjoyment, but I say that having well-placed critique means being able to contextualise precisely because of that deeper engagement. Also, playing mediocre games doesn’t have to mean you’re not enjoying yourself. In Daniel J. Levitin’s [9]Successful Aging book, a case for complex cognitive activities is made as a cure for the negative aspects of ageing. I think that happens almost naturally provided you keep on learning and exploring new things (such as games?). In Levitin’s own words (my translation from the Dutch version I read): One of the most protective things you can do against the negative consequences of ageing is learning a craft when you are young and keep on practising it. The second best thing you can do is learning something new when you are older. In the case of engagement with media, playing a new game, exploring a new genre, looking up the history of one of your favourite games, or investigating other ways to play older games such as fiddling with [10]randomizers could qualify as “learning something new”. This is also a wake-up call for the hopeless nostalgic who keeps on replaying the same old games but finds less and less satisfaction at the credits screen. As I write and think about nostalgia and video games, my pattern matching brain yields new connections and ideas. That’s the essence of Brain Baking! But that’s also the essence of what I’m trying to say here: you will more deeply engage and enjoy things if you fully dive into it and you can only do that if you’ve been diving for years and years. To me, that message is reassuring. It means it’s okay to get older. I will still enjoy things. No, I will enjoy things even more—I will just not be able to enjoy as much. And that’s probably also a good thing. It reminds me that my grandfather who still enjoyed Lego and the odd video game when he was still with us in the early nineties probably enjoyed it more than the little kid he was playing with (that would be me). Does my taste for media change? Of course, but not just my preference, also my ability to complete them. I have no idea how I managed to finish Hollow Knight and I’m scared to start Silksong even though I want to: my reflexes might not be what they used to be and my patience to backtrack to retrieve my dead body might have diminished. I’ve been wanting to start a Dragon Quest game for so long now, but the grinding is off-putting given my limited ability to only play a good hour a day. The fact that a game can be viewed as a piece of art is for me a relatively recent development. In narrative-heavy games such as Morrowind, I never really took the time to flip through the various books that add lore to the game world. Now I do. I never really gave the environment my playable character lives in a thorough look. Now I do. That reminds me, I should put Morrowind back on the backlog—it somehow failed to keep my attention back in the day. It’s also easier to place these games in their historical context. I play old games for old video game systems, new games for old video game systems, and new games for new video game systems. As my older self, I can trace their influence, compare their different aspects, and form an opinion based on that. My younger self just wanted to get lost in the virtual game world to not have to cope with the real world. Perhaps, in a way, I might even like getting older. [11]learning   [12]nostalgia  You Might Also Like... • [13]Nostalgia Always Includes a Temporal Context 27 Apr 2026 • [14]Why I Play Games (And So Should You) 23 Jan 2022 Bio and Support [avatar2024] I'm [15]Wouter Groeneveld, a Brain Baker, and I love the smell of freshly baked thoughts (and bread) in the morning. I sometimes convince others to bake their brain (and bread) too. If you found this article amusing and/or helpful, you can support me via [16] PayPal or [17]Ko-Fi. I also like to hear your feedback via [18]Mastodon or email. Thanks! JavaScript is disabled. I use it to obfuscate my e-mail, keeping spambots at bay. Reach me using: [firstname] at [this domain]. ↑ [19]Top | [20]Archives | [21]RSS Feed | [22]© CC BY 4.0 License. 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