The world of entertainment and pop culture certainly is a vast one, with plenty of stimulating content to choose from. When you begin to think that everything has already been filmed, made, recorded, or written, there’s always a new and interesting approach to the matter. Sometimes, however, companies and developers tend to go back in time to bring around some of the oldies.
Rebooting is a process of reusing existing concepts behind a movie, a game, or similar, and incorporating them into new projects. Whether it is a general idea, basically the whole thing, or a part of it such as gameplay mechanics, backstory, plot fragments, characters and so on, there’s always something to build on. This stands in opposition to coming up with something completely new, taking inspiration from something else, or basing your creation on some other concept, just like the famous Witcher series is based on best-selling novels.
The reasons behind rebooting some former hits, in the gaming industry and virtually any other, are pretty straightforward. One of them is to trigger nostalgia for the days that have passed. The hit Netflix series Stranger Things does it very well to fuel the warm feelings we have for the 80s. The old games are like our friends from the past. They remind us of the old days. Even though we grew apart, we used to spend a lot of time with each other, and it’s not the time we consider wasted. When the titles we know and love come around, in a refreshed form, we may be inclined to rekindle the relationship.
This is also why it is beneficial from a financial point of view. Having a strong fanbase already consolidated for a particular title bears much smaller risks of failure for the rebooted one. That’s why a lot of games from way back are worth looking into. Even if they seem a little forgotten, they are still the classics. So, no wonder that developers keep finding value in making those games feel new again. You can probably notice a lot of suchlike operations in the movie business, but it is happening for games, too. Among the most successful reboots, we can mention Grand Theft Auto III, Tomb Rider, or the God of War.
