Anemoia

tim-cain arcanum game-design setting nostalgia rpg storytelling world-building

Abstract

Problem: How can game developers create settings that players feel genuinely drawn to inhabit, even when those settings depict times and places the player has never experienced?

Approach: Tim Cain explores the concept of anemoia — nostalgia for a time and place you've never known — through examples from documentaries, Disneyland, and his own games, particularly Arcanum.

Findings: Games are uniquely powerful at evoking anemoia because of their interactivity. Settings that romanticize a historical period while embedding honest social commentary (without lecturing) create worlds players long to inhabit — even when those worlds contain dark realities. The key is making commentary adjacent to real-world issues rather than heavy-handed.

Key insight: When designing an RPG, strive to make a setting players feel wistful about — a world they wish they could exist in. That emotional pull is anemoia, and it's one of the most powerful tools a game developer has.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsZtvrDgKtg

What Is Anemoia?

Anemoia is the feeling of nostalgia for a time and place you've never known. Tim describes experiencing this while watching a documentary about Roman buildings in Cappadocia that have been continuously occupied for millennia. Despite having no desire to live in an ancient Roman building, he felt a strange longing for that world. The same feeling arises from old books, movies, and even walking down Main Street at Disneyland — environments that evoke a quasi-nostalgia for something you never lived through.

Games as the Ultimate Anemoia Machine

Tim argues that of all forms of entertainment, games create anemoia more than any other medium because they are interactive. You don't just observe — you live in that time and place. In his approach to RPG design (setting → story → system mechanics), the setting comes first because it's the world players imagine themselves inhabiting. Players create their own stories within the setting, and that personal investment deepens the emotional connection.

He notes that many commenters on his video about gaming in the 1980s reported feeling wistful about that era despite never having experienced it — a textbook case of anemoia.

Arcanum: Idealized Victorian Horror

Of all Tim's games, Arcanum seems to generate the strongest sense of anemoia. Set in an idealized Victorian era, the game romanticizes the period's aesthetics — nobility, the exciting rise of industrialization, trains, gadgets accessible to common people — while drawing a sharp contrast with magic, which required years of study and was exclusive by nature.

But Arcanum didn't shy away from the era's darkness:

  • Slavery and racism — explored through fantasy races as proxies for real-world prejudice
  • Classism — noble NPCs look down on you; city folk versus town folk tensions are reflected in gameplay reactivity based on character creation choices
  • The phosphor girls — poor young girls (often orphans) forced to make matches, holding phosphorus-dipped sticks in their mouths to dry. The phosphorus leeched through their gums, dissolving their teeth and jawbones, leaving them unable to work
  • Chimney sweeps — children who inhaled industrial-age soot that penetrated their skin, causing horrific cancers, particularly testicular cancer

Despite all this darkness, players still say they'd love to live in Arcanum's world — which is precisely the power of anemoia at work.

Social Commentary Without Lecturing

Tim offers practical advice: anemoia lets you embed social commentary without triggering resistance. Both Fallout and Arcanum are "riddled with social commentary," yet players rarely complain about it feeling preachy. The approach that works:

  • Make commentary adjacent to real-world issues rather than directly mirroring them
  • Don't lecture — players are there to play, not to be educated
  • Use historical or fantastical settings as a lens that creates just enough distance
  • Let reactivity and player choice carry the themes rather than cutscenes or speeches

Advice for Game Developers

When designing a setting, especially for an RPG:

  1. Think about how you want to play to nostalgia — make a world people genuinely want to be in
  2. Past settings work naturally for anemoia, but future settings can evoke it too (you can long for a time you haven't experienced in either direction)
  3. Prioritize setting — it's the foundation that story and mechanics build upon
  4. Balance romanticism with honesty — include the dark alongside the beautiful
  5. Strive to evoke wistfulness — if players wish they could exist in your world, you've succeeded

References