Seeley has some theories himself: the fast pace of technology that quickly becomes obsolete, or the proliferation and easy access to digital images and interfaces from the past. "It's definitely a trip." Many have theorized on why it is millennials, more than any other generation, feel so tied to the nostalgic totems of childhood.
"Like the technology, these people have changed too, leaving you with only memories to look back on," Seeley says. They're us, but weirder, dorkier, and a whole lot less cynical. "It loses the obtuseness of waiting for someone to get online after school, or having to sneak down and use the family computer at two in the morning."īut Emily is Away Too is not just a portal back into digital history, but more of an exploration of the people who populated that old web. Describing both games as love letters to AIM more than anything else, he says the platform "was such a pivotal part of my self expression growing up." Not only are the kind of internet personas and interactions had through AIM a thing of the past, but the advent of texting also now means that everyone's always "online" to some degree. While AIM still technically exists, the collective exodus from it left a hole in young Seeley. Image: Jess Joho, Emily is Away Too Facenook profile And because of how technology evolves there will never be another experience quite like it." "It's overall a pretty sobering thing, remembering these old platforms," he says. Facebook wasn't just a place to share memes or post pictures, but a virtual space to share with only your closest friends. Particularly for sites still alive like Facebook and YouTube, the mutual evolution between platform and users made it easy to forget that they didn't always used to play the same role in our lives. Throughout the design process, Seeley was constantly struck by how much the web has changed since 2006. "It's interesting how we as a digital culture began to see that as immature and moved collectively away from it." Old web culture, he even went back on the WayBackMachine to pull real Youtube comments and original usernames from 2006 which, if you think have terrible grammar now, a decade ago almost exclusively consisted of "all lower case, misspelled words, acronyms, and excessive characters," Seeley says.
Or they'll comment on whether each other's carefully curated AIM icons or profile quotes align with the same tribe. "If the first game is about how we communicated online in the early 2000's, this game is about how we portrayed ourselves online."ĭuring chats, characters organically share their favorite music videos through Youtoob links during conversation to ask the player what they think of it. "Pushing the story out of the chat window allowed me to explore more of how we defined ourselves online in 2006," Seeley told me over email. A more innocent time, a more innocent internet audience to be sure, which only several years later would be saturated by an entire YouTube subgenre of viral Pop Culture Through the Ages Video Content. Facebook transitioned into the primary platform for establishing your personality, connecting friends through the things they "Liked." That same year, The Evolution of Dance garnered millions of views, all six minutes of its grainy, camera phone footage of an unassuming teacher-type clad in jeans doing mildly recognizable dance moves from various decades. The game not only captures the social and dating experiences of its creator from that time, but also a year of transformation and expansion for digital culture.
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