Hi! My name’s Michael, and today I want to talk to you about time loops. You know, like the thing Groundhog Day was made of, or one third of all Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. Time loops are everywhere in gaming and entertainment these days, just like zombies were a decade or so back, and I think that means something. Specifically, that the next ten years are going to be an awesome time for media.
My reasoning is a little complicated, but it has to do with time loops, the Flynn Effect, the nostalgia cycle, our postmodern era and the connections between them. If you give me some time to explain, I think you’ll have some fun and learn a lot. But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s start over.
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Hi! My name’s still Michael, and today I want to talk to you about time loops. You know, like the thing Groundhog’s Day was made of, or one third of all Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. Time loops are everywhere in gaming and entertainment these days, and I can prove it. Between 1980 and 2009, Wikipedia lists 18 film releases about time loops. Between 2010 and now? 36.
That’s twice as many tipe loop movies in a third of the time. I’m talking about movies and series like Palm Springs, ARQ, Happy Death Day, Primer, Looper, The Endless, Russian Doll, Source Code, Predestination, Edge of Tomorrow...the list goes on.
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And the same is true in gaming, with time loop-based games like 12 Minutes, Deathloop, Quantum League, Outer Wilds, Minit, Quantum Break and others on the rise. It’s obviously a good time for time loop-based storytelling, but why? Well, before I explain why I think this is important, I’ll let Danny Rubin, co-screenwriter of Groundhog Day, do it for me. He says:“When I first came up with the idea it was just a structural trick, offering lots of fun scene opportunities. But I didn’t actually write the screenplay until a couple of years later when I was thinking about immortality and how a person’s life might change if they lived long enough. Realizing that a movie about forever would be cumbersome I turned to the time-loop idea: I could have a character experience eternity as an endlessly repeated day. Now the story was no longer just a structural trick, but it was about a long human life.”
So even the Godfather of Time Loops thinks there’s more here than meets the eye. Trends in storytelling can tell us a lot about ourselves, our shared values, and our place in the world. Mr. Rubin put it this way:[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CClearly%20the%20global%20pandemic%20has%20forced%20most%20of%20us%20into%20a%20much%20more%20restricted%20daily%20life.%20That%20puts%20focus%20on%20the%20routines%20and%20even%20the%20thought%20patters%20that%20we%20repeat.%20%20I%20think%20the%20political%20impulses%20that%20we%20are%20seeing%20emerge%20around%20the%20globe%20are%20also%20bringing%20to%20mind%20the%20loops%20of%20history.%22]
There are a lot of reasons time loop stories could be said to resonate with modern audiences. But what does their overall hotness right now say about our unique place in all of pop cultural history? What can we learn about ourselves, our storytelling tradition, and what comes next? Is it mere coincidence, or a manifestation of the Flynn Effect combined with the natural selection of memetic story chunks and our post-modern obsession with an accelerating cycle of nostalgia?
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I think it’s the third one with all the technical-sounding jargon in it! But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s start over. Again.
[poilib element="accentDivider"]Hi! My name’s Miguel, and today I want to talk to you about time loops. You know, those things where you keep repeating yourself but slight changes creep in. Time loops are everywhere in gaming and entertainment these days, despite how fundamentally confusing a time loop story is bound to be.
Modern audiences aren’t really fazed by them, and that’s because of a phenomenon sometimes called The Flynn Effect, named after James Flynn, who was one statistician who helped describe how IQ levels rose steadily throughout the 20th century. Folks are generally better at processing complex information than their grandparents were, which is why videos of old people using cutting-edge technology will always be inherently hilarious.
But more importantly, it’s why movie and game trailers have become infinitely more complex, and less spoon-fed, as time’s worn on. For example, take the OG teaser trailer for 1989’s Batman. We literally get told who our main character is, he introduces himself, and we then see him in a Batman outfit doing Batman things so we understand this is the story of some kind of -- if I’m following this right -- bat man. Now compare that to the 2020 teaser trailer for the latest Batman movie, The Batman.
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That’s it. A symbol you can barely make out and some Hans Zimmer-esque strings. Because we get it by this point. We know the symbol, we know the Batman, we’re good to go. Even the older movies and shows featured in this video spent far more time explaining how time loops work than the more recent examples of the genre. That’s because humans have the wonderful ability to pass knowledge down through the generations. Our knowledge base is cumulative, which is why I didn’t need to invent a computer and microphone in order to make this video.
In fact, that’s an important note about the Flynn Effect, and IQ in general: ancient humans weren’t dumb, they were simply working with less information. We’ve benefitted from all those that came before us, and all the great games and movies they invented and stories they told, which is why time loop stories no longer seem particularly confusing to a savvy gamer or modern filmgoer. As Balthazar Auger, Lead Game Designer and Game Director of Quantum League, told me:
[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CWe%20felt%20that%20the%20concept%20of%20time%20loops%20in%20film%20was%20entering%20the%20mainstream%20after%20starting%20to%20gain%20traction%20in%20the%20late%2090%E2%80%99s%20and%20early%202000%E2%80%99s%20within%20indie%20or%20sci-fi%20niche%20productions%3B%20it%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20a%20concept%20that%20you%20would%20need%20to%20explain%20from%20scratch%20when%20talking%20to%20someone%20else%20about%20your%20game%2C%20which%20made%20it%20much%20easier%20to%20pitch%20to%20others.%22]
So it’s no wonder that the Flynn Effect has led to an even-faster nichification of especially memetic story chunks like time loops. But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s start over.
[poilib element="accentDivider"]Hola! Me llamo Miguel, y esta dia I wanna habla to you about time loops. Time loops are everywhere in gaming and entertainment these days, and modern audiences take their complexities in stride thanks to the Flynn Effect. Another way we see this accumulation of working human knowledge impact our lives is called “nichification,” and I consider nichification just a fancy word for describing the process of natural selection as it impacts brands and ideas. What the hell am I talking about?
Well, in case you’re rusty, natural selection is the process that propels evolution, and it basically states that if something is adept at surviving and making more of itself, there will tend to be a lot more of those types of things in the future. If laser-eyes lead to survival and mating possibilities, then eventually there will be a lot of animals with laser-eyes running around, and that’ll be pretty neat. But laser-eyes aren’t the ONLY way to survive and thrive, so we’ll also see other types of animals. Basically, any animal that’s found a “niche” in which it can dominate gets to stick around and make more of itself.
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This leads, over time, to a natural “complexifying” of life on earth. Until we started killing them all, it was a basic rule of life on this planet that there would be more species around the further forward in time you went, meteor strikes aside.
We see the same process affect brands, products, and ideas. For example, the average grocery store in 2021 carries 40,000 more items than it did in 1990. And in case you’re wondering, no, we didn’t invent 40,000 new essential things in the last 30 years. We just took every single idea — let’s say “milk” — and diversified the types available. For example, now we have orange creamsicle-flavored non-dairy oat milk. Is the world better off? Not for me to say. But the point is: ideas, products, stories, animals…they all naturally tend to grow, diversify, and fill every available space.
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