I guess my point is that regardless of what particular label someone uses, the development of gaming can be split into various periods just like how the history of painting can be split into various periods. It's just weird to have a floating label that basically means "old." When I was a kid, "old games" were essentially just pre-1983 crash games while "modern games" were post-1983 crash games because gaming was only two decades old. But now, gaming is a little over half a century old at this point.
In the end, I think "retro" is used in gaming in the same way "classic" is used in film and movie. Casablanca and The Godfather are both classic films even though they have nothing in common outside of being old Hollywood films.
Classic seems to be a good word to use when trying to communicate considered good and worth talking about X years later where the line is arbitrary but X is probably something like 10 or 20 years. It'll include items that truly stand the test of time and others that are incomprehensible/boring if you weren't in it's historical context to "get it".
I guess my point is that regardless of what particular label someone uses, the development of gaming can be split into various periods just like how the history of painting can be split into various periods. It's just weird to have a floating label that basically means "old." When I was a kid, "old games" were essentially just pre-1983 crash games while "modern games" were post-1983 crash games because gaming was only two decades old. But now, gaming is a little over half a century old at this point.
In the end, I think "retro" is used in gaming in the same way "classic" is used in film and movie. Casablanca and The Godfather are both classic films even though they have nothing in common outside of being old Hollywood films.
Classic seems to be a good word to use when trying to communicate considered good and worth talking about X years later where the line is arbitrary but X is probably something like 10 or 20 years. It'll include items that truly stand the test of time and others that are incomprehensible/boring if you weren't in it's historical context to "get it".