Transforming Nostalgia Marketing with Generative AI: A Review of China’s Mobile Gaming Market

Nostalgia marketing influences emotional connections to shared past experiences, cultural identities, and collective memories among target audiences to evoke positive engagement. In China's mobile gaming market, this strategy frequently manifests through re-releasing classic games, collaborating with films and television intellectual properties (IPs), and creating content that recreates players' formative gaming experiences. Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) over the past few years have prompted an increasing number of game publishers and developers to use this technology to generate nostalgic content for marketing campaigns. However, prior scholarly discourses have often treated nostalgia marketing and GenAI as distinctive domains. To address this gap, this study employs a narrative review and three case studies to analyze the applications of nostalgia marketing campaigns within the current Chinese mobile gaming market. It demonstrates that GenAI is currently integrating with traditional nostalgia marketing strategies and has the potential to transform existing nostalgia marketing frameworks in mobile gaming. Specifically, GenAI tools offer novel possibilities for conducting nostalgia marketing with greater efficiency, dynamism, and personalization. Consequently, this review aims to demonstrate how generative AI can reshape nostalgia marketing by augmenting its efficiency, diversification, and personalization.