https://twitter.com/s3rioussam/status/1283783492254535682?s=21 the whole network of tweets referenced here are fascinating: the generation appears to be strongly drawn to games with end-user customization (to put it in academic-speak)

Wild! I always ignored Roblox like copycat minecraft, but seems like whole another ordeal. Tried a similar game, Dreams on PS4, it’s basically a game engine where people build games and experiences and share them with others. There is a bunch of of “uuh…what…?” content and ton of unfinished stuff, but its also a goooooldmine of user made games

dreams is amazing. i hope you’re familiar with the random you tuber who’s started making an avatar the last airbender game from scratch in dreams, racking up literally millions of views

This may be a weird comparison, but I'm reminded of things like prison art, trash art, electronic music, and particularly chip tunes (a sub-genre a I particularly love.... much ❤️ for Koji Kondo and all the early Nintendo music designers.) Much of the beauty and history of electronic music is tied to people trying to imitate "real" music using limited technologies. Society constantly underestimates how creative humans can be given even what is considered "bad" tools. "Proper education" and "Proper tools" are often overrated. Really those things are more about virtue signaling and societal gate keeping, not creativity. People are often at their most brilliant when they have limitations. I think this applies to children even more so. “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” - Orsen Welles.

There is an old quote from Warren Spector about us millennials entering the game industry and him being excited to see what the first generation that grew up with video games would make, turns out we are super nostalgic and made a lot of great mario clones

lol, It's true, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think about it this way. A great musician usually doesn't start by making original music immediately. They learn by imitating existing masters and playing pre-written music first. In painting they do similar things with "Masters Studies". They literally try to break down and reverse engineer masters paintings. "New original ideas" aren't created in a vacuum. Surrealism happened as a response to realism. Cubism was a response to surrealism... (Sorry, my inner art history nerd is showing... 😛 ). TLDR; I think nostalgia is totally cool and not a bad thing, and I'm also excited to see how games evolve with the next generations.