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What Spoils a Game For You?
MTV's Multiplayer Blog is running an interesting piece about what constitutes a spoiler in video games. The interactivity of a video games, argues the author, often makes it necessary to spoil or reveal at least general characteristics of a game during a review or other informative article. He says, "I believe that writing about games is overly careful. I believe that game scripts, game plots and game endings have been given a pass because critics tend to avoid them or address them with the most ginger touch. I'd at least like the discussion about spoilers to cease being so binary. There is room between avoiding mentioning a plot event and reporting its main details. There is value to addressing anything and everything that is most interesting in a game, and value in doing it with words that express meaning rather than those designed to mask it." So, what do you consider a spoiler for a video game, and how do they affect your enjoyment of the game?
Yep.
Hacks
Unpleasantries.
Does it for me.
I don't mind when there is some repetition, but it can be really bad. What really terrible is when you don't feel like you accomplished anything cause you pretty much have to do it all over again for the next level. I usually play till I get bored, but then I don't get the whole story line.
The worst part about people spoiling a game for you is them telling you that Aeris dies.
I think one of the worse type's of spoilers, which has really come out on the wii (and some of the other console games), is with casual games, having to spend 10-20+ hours unlocking content for a game that is a "casual" game, that really spoils it. Seriously, if i'm only playing a game here and there like an hour a week, on some games it can take years to unlock it all.
For a video game story I would base the quality of a spoiler on the importance of the story in that game. So for almost all games what the writer suggests, "deals with death/love/groundhogs" is fine and writing exactly what happens would not hurt them.
Late game twist should be more likely to be left out of the text unless they are for the worse. While an early game plot device should be free to cover.
Spoiling actual gameplay surprises may be a trickier subject but I am short on examples.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
I won't even buy it if it is infected with DRM.
"Boss" levels. Games are supposed to be fun. If you make them too difficult then they cease being fun.
This is about pre-cooked, semi-interactive movie-like game-substitutes. The games that I play cannot be 'spoiled'. This question is an insult.
wow, way to justify your job with a fluff piece and get it on slashdot no less.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
When reading a review about a game, I want to know what the game is about, in a general sense. I don't need specific details, but I do want somebody to tell me if the end game isn't worth my time. Its certainly a grey area when deciding how much info is too much, but movie critics have been doing it for years.
Some reviewers will tell you the puzzle highlights but spoil the solution in the process, making the best puzzles trivial. Some will spoil surprises (like in Metroid Zero Mission). I don't mind plot spoilers if they're about the kind that's blindingly obvious anyway (e.g. that the big government/organization in any jRPG is evil).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Characters named after people whose stories I know, like Merlin, Atlas, Midas, etc; Overdramatized situations (if I'm the last best hope of humanity, you're fucked.); Bad music; Bad graphics (this, seriously, does not take much, just make sure that what I look at is easily identifiable and consistent with the other graphics in the game); Really glaring inconsistencies (walk into a 5x5 house, and the indoors area is as big as a gymnasium); Any "race" that is basically just a renamed version of something from some other setting/game; Vampires (exception: when said vampires are killing nazis); Any futuristic game with melee weapons (use your fucking gun); Any game that thinks the attractiveness of a female is defined by her attire (hint: posture, voice, face, and attitude. Past that it could be a toaster and still be hot. Consult: Baltar.); Grinding through boredom to get to something new, and then being slapped in the face with something so trivially different it's insulting. (see: world of warcraft armor in northrend);
I am tired; Semicolons should be enough to make this readable.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Preformance problems and wasted resources due to DRM or just poor game design. GTA4 has this one real bad.
Going from cd to dvd based games the game sizes have exploded. But we've not really seen a comparable jump in quality. In a word. Bloat.
Poor control layout or the inability to remap controls to what *I* want and am used to using.
Console ports are notorious for this one.
Missing content. Stuff you can tell was supposed to be there but isnt. Empty and bare gameplay areas.
Broken content. Unpatched games. Untested games. Games where it's totally obvious nobody sat down and tried to play thru as a player before release.
Like fallout 3 or mass effect. SO much potential. SO much epic fail.
Games that are not nearly as cool to play as you were lead to believe by the paid reviews before you bought and found the truth. Spore anyone?
Multiplayer games where my FUN relys on other people not being complete assholes. especially team based games that provide no ways to keep your team from being tools.
Oddly enough all but the last item are also all reasons i rarely BUY games anymore. I've learned the lesson the games makers were teaching. Even if they didn't intend to teach that.
Stuff you can tell me:
The big nonos are the ending and any major plot twists. Also, subplots should count as full-on plots within themselves - they may be relatively minor, but don't give me the endings or twists to those either.
The best spoilers are the ones that leave me wondering when and how (even if) they are happen - these have to be very vague, and just pique enough interest. As I said, betrayals are always good. But some other good ones include a pacifist character killing someone intentionally, or someone doing something else totally unexpectedly. This is the sort of thing that keeps me reading/playing/watching.
Stupid 12 year olds screaming incorrectly spelled, angry crap at random people and generally being annoying spoils games for me but obviously that only applies to online ones. That and cheaters that make it impossible for honest players to win. Both of those can be proven by looking at Halo 2.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Those 14 year old's who can't even spell, that either consider themselves "l33t" when they outnumber you 4 to 1, or cry "hax" when your the better player and won fair and square.
Until recently I viewed the vitriol spewed by anti-DRM zealots with mild suprise. I'd never really felt it was all that bad. Then I bought and installed Bioshock. CD keys and mild disc protection I can live with, but those PLUS activation PLUS forcing a 10MB patch download every single time the game is installed took my breath away. After a few hours trying to install it under Wine I was ready to put my foot through my screen.
THAT ruined Bioshock for me. Spoilers I don't really mind.
Won't bring me chocolate milk!!!
To be honest, what really spoils a game for me, is when every single publication and media outlet for video game reviews praises a game beyond belief for the most trivial of aspects but fails to mention the overarching and incredibly frustrating and ubiquitous downsides and shortcomings of a game.
Obviously spoiling plot twists, game endings, or surprise moments and easter eggs, is a major fau paux. But game reviewers rarely ever engage in writing those revelations and leave them for the reader (or player) to discover.
Video game reviews have been going on since video games have been around. The fact that one reviewer received one single complaint saying that the MTV.com writer spoiled Killzone 2 requires an entire discussion around it is a tad bit reactionary and absurd.
The real way that game reviews spoil a game for me is when they review a game for being 'perfect' or 'near perfect' but when I get my copy of said game it's filled with bugs, glitches, bad writing, plot holes, lackluster story, bad endings, overpriced DLC, archaic or intrusive or disruptive DRM, the game costs more than its worth as you can beat it in two days making renting it a better option, or that the game is all around terrible but somehow managed a score in the eightieth to ninetieth percentile (with some even scoring perfect scores.
Oddly I've yet to see a game score a perfect with the review mentioning only positives, there is always one negative. Wouldn't that negative imply a flaw hence negating the perfection that a game allegedly has?
Yes spoiling plot elements or easter eggs is a terribly thing for reviewers to do, but they've been doing far worse things in the industry for years.
I play the game for pleasure, not for torture
For me, I play games for the (and I know this will be a shocker) gameplay, not the storyline, so there isn't really much you can spoil in a review unless the knowledge you're granting me would change how I'd play the game.
That being said, I mostly just play games that involve killing things.
Sure, there might be some underlying "rescue the hostage" plotline, but usually that just means you kill things to get to a destination, walk up to the target and press "x" and pee while a cut-scene plays, then kill things to get to the next destination, I don't get emotionally involved enough in the hostage's well-being to care either way, and you can be sure that knowing he'll betray me in a cut-scene later won't change anything if the game won't let me proceed unless I rescue him and avoid shooting him too much for now.
I enjoyed BioShock which had more of a storyline then most of the games I've played in the past (I'm sure SOCOM had a story, but ultimately, the gameplay wouldn't change at all if the entire story disappeared, so the storyline is just filler to me) so I'm not entirely story-adverse.
What ruins a game for me is when a game makes me sit through multiple cut scenes or witless dialog (I'm looking at you Gears of War) over and over without offering a way to skip them after restarting a difficult mission. I can live with a game making me sit through the story once, but when a mission is intentionally difficult, put the damn checkpoint AFTER the "oh my god, that guy looks like he might smell bad" discussion and the cut-scene showing my heavy-on-the-A-lacking-on-the-I AI companions peeing their pants.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
It's his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There. I just saved you two long, boobless hours.
When I read the GP's post I pictured Dom DeLuise's Nero from History of the World Part 1.
"Nice, nice. Not thrilling, but nice."
Them being in any way involved with the gaming industry makes me embarrassed to be a jobless shut-in.
Your ad here.
Totally spoils it for me.
So, what do you consider a spoiler for a video game
Bugs and unfair sequences in the game that have to repeated very often to get through it.
and how do they affect your enjoyment of the game?
I personally have decidet that i will never buy a game on release date anymore. I'l wait a couple of months and see what other gamers say about it.
I know this is not in a correct connection to what spoils the game. But for me it has always been a real downer when a game has a sewer part or a maze which you have to go thru, it just seems as the dev's put it there to lengthen the game. One especially comes to mind in Star Wars : Dark Forces. The sewer level there was the worst ever.
Well, I've played games that are rated as the most difficult ones and I can tell you, if you have to time sit a game, you will master it. Take a look at Super Contra or Megaman X. These ones are difficult like hell. At Super Contra, as a kid, I could see the end of it. Today, I die after few steps in level 1. :) I still cannot image how I've done it.
Now I'm playing DDR Hottest Party a lot, because it's fun and I want to lose some weight ;)
If this game(s) would be easy, I would not play it, because they are not challenging. I have a lot of fun at getting fast and faster, but it appeared _very_ difficult for me when I started to play DDR a few months ago. I failed many games at beginner level when I started to play it. :) God, this is really embarrassing. ;)
The point is, if a game is not difficult, you don't need to play it. You don't have a challenge. It's like watching an interactive movie. Boring!
I find that I enjoy games more when they surprise me. They can surprise me in terms of story (Metal Gear Anything, I played MGS3 with intentionally avoiding spoilers, it was well worth it, I didn't do that for MGS2), or in terms of fun gameplay mechanics (Mario Galaxy, Katamari Damacy), or just by being a better game than I expected (Zack and Wiki, Okami, World of Goo). The surprises are in different ways, so having them spoiled comes in different ways. For a very story heavy game, like a Final Fantasy or Metal Gear, the plot twists are what you should hide. Gameplay mechanics, I'm fine with. For a game where you're supposed to be constantly impressed by the gameplay mechanics (say...Zelda), you shouldn't spoil everything you can do in the game. It should suffice in the review to say that the reviewer was impressed with what mechanics are available. For a puzzle game, obviously, don't spoil the puzzles. And for any game, don't hype it beyond what it is. Sometimes I'll play a game after hearing a tremendous amount of hype about it, and I'll be disappointed, not because it was a bad game, but because the pleasant surprise of how good the game is is ruined. As a general rule to the reviewer, consider what about the game you enjoyed because it surprised you. If this occurs more than a few hours into the game, and it isn't critical in making a decision to purchase the game, leave it out of the review. Let the player be pleasantly surprised. If you want to say something like "Mario saves the princess", that's ok. We knew that was coming anyway.
Seriously game makers, is it hurting your game at all if i am allowed to skip the cutscene. I your game involves half hour long cutscenes (metal gear solid) i expect to be able to skip them. The fact that i am forced to watch them on each play through means i will likely not ever play it again or even finish in some cases.
Attention dear readers, spoilers ahead as examples what constitutes as spoilers.
To be able to spoil a game by a review, the joy of playing the game has to consist to a sizable part on the game having a story. This pretty much means that most multiplayer-heavy games cannot be spoiled by a review. How do you want to spoil Call of Duty? By telling me the Allied won the war? No duh, really? How do you want to spoil Left 4 Dead? L4D has no story to speak of. It's never explained what the disease is that turns people into zombies (sorry for the spoiler), it's never an option to "cure" them any other way than by accelerated lead and the dangers of the "special" zombies and how to kill them sensibly (or how to better avoid them altogether in one special case) is shown in the intro movie. And even if you told me the whole story of any Call of Duty part you would, at best, spoil the single player mission part, which is becoming more and more pointless with every CoD game.
In short, multiplayer games cannot be spoiled by a review. The fun of the game is in the interaction, not the story.
A completely different thing is single player games. Take Portal. It's no spoiler to tell about the features of the portal gun. That's what makes the game unique and that's explained in the "tutorial", i.e. the first few test areas. The same applies to using the portals to gain speed and momentum to jump over obstacles. Again, this is shown as part of the tutorial. A spoiler would be telling about the cake, the endgame portion and the ultimate goal of the game.
In short, you can give away everything the tutorial tells the player, you can talk about everything the player encounters in the first few hours of gameplay (i.e. the same you see when playing a game for a review only, when you unwrap it and play it for a few hours so you can write something about it), but don't tell how it ends.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hate games that throw in one impossible level. For example, I was thoroughly enjoying Dead Space on PS3 until the shifty asteroid level. Call me lame, but I cannot get past this bit, it serves no purpose to further the story and the gameplay is totally different from the rest of the game. Why? I haven't been back to the game for months and will likely never finish it. Plus, I now feel ripped off for half the price of the game.
IMHO it's more complex than "don't write about plot twists", and as the summary notes, some games have gotten a free pass with some really bad ones just so the reviewer doesn't spoil it. Basically I'd propose the following distinction, and IMHO it's a major one:
A) Telling me _what_ the plot twist is. Bad.
B) Telling me about the quality of plot twists and their implementation. Good.
Basically I don't want to know stuff like "it turns out you're the feared Sith Lord", but I do want to know if, say, the plot twists are cliches that you can see coming a whole disk before they actually happen.
Also, I don't really mind examples if:
A) They happen in the first half an hour of the game anyway, so it's not like it's such a major loss. The rest of a game _should_ still be enjoyable even if I know what happens in the tutorial. Or,
B) Even the most cursory read of the manual would reveal the same information. I mean, seriously, e.g., in Persona 2 Eternal Punishment you only needed to have played the previous game or read the manual to know what's with Maia or the mysterious boy. But in game for your characters that comes very very late. So basically the manual itself spoils a major element of the plot. Obviously the designers didn't mind you knowing that.
Should a reviewer really avoid it for those who can't be bothered to read the first 3 pages of the manual? (Then again, I doubt that _some_ people can read more than a paragraph;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A small thing but a nnoying none the less.
When the first few level are just long drawn out tutorials. The first time around it fine but it really hurts the replay value if you have to grind through that shit again. Tutorials should be separate or at least skippable.
I'm looking at you, Fallout 3...
Hopefully this gets fixed by one of the upcoming expansion packs, otherwise my boycott will continue.
...and as such, anything that would spoil a book/movie would spoil a game.
Now to continue talking at a completely different tangent, you think Fallout 3 and Masseffect are hard for the player, I cant help but think of an original Playstation game, (cant remember the title) this was a game where there wasn't a single walkthrough on the web that had managed to get past the halfway point, of the first level. On the topic, anything that ruins the final movie sequence ruins the plot for me,
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
Plus, of course, nearly all of the DRM out there.
I'll buy native games, as I have done in the past, and NOT buy games because they don't play on it.
Griefers, exploit abusers and asshats who give out quest info on public channels.
Also players who couldn't be arsed working things out for themselves.
The difference between games and movies is that the former is replayed often. I would never bother buying a game that is designed to be played exactly once, if only because the plot in games is always so boring and poorly written, that it is not even worth knowing. If Fallout 3 were a book, I wouldn't buy it. If Bioshock were a book, I'd burn it. If Half-Life 2 were a book, well, it wouldn't be much of a book. With that in mind, it is obvious that knowing the plot is pretty much irrelevant, since most of the time I would be replaying and know it anyway. So I always read every walkthrough I can find even before I get the game, to make sure it will be worth playing more than once.
they totally kill the game for me. let me give an example:
there are many games coming out set in spanish main, bent on buccaneering, privateering, pirating and such, after the success of pirates of the caribbean movie and all that pirate hype.
you get the game, its set in 1600s, there are huge towering carracks and all that galleonish piratish ships advertised in cover of the box. but you start playing, but you immediately notice 2 things :
ships are not of 1600s, but 1700s. it matters a great deal, because with that specific 100 years you go from towering carracks, galleons to low, flat, standard age of sail frigates. the main focus of the game, the ships, are totally out of place.
and another thing, music, atmosphere sucks. some put in carribbean/reggae music, something that does not have any realistic connection to the age game is portraying. a product of late 150 years is being put in, because some people think its 'caribbean'. couple this with all the other atmosphere elements that are out of place, like 1600s people wearing 1750s outfits, even napoleonic hats and so on, you totally lose the atmosphere. it doesnt feel like it anymore.
same important criteria is valid for every other game. be it star wars or call of duty, any game needs to follow the two important premises of realistic elements (even if its a fantasy game, we have certain acceptable limits to what can be shoved in), and atmosphere. if these two lack, the game sucks. big time.
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Automatic health regen ala Halo and now Call of Duty. Basically it devalues looking after yourself - as long as the other guy dies just before you, you'll be back up to 100% in a few seconds. Also means people can hang onto powerful weapons and camp the same spot for a inordinate amount of time.
The things that spoil MMOs for me are mostly related to obnoxious player behaviour - 1) Griefing 2) Camping 3) Exploit abuse 4) Spamming and giving quest solutions on public chat channels.
turns on the lights, and tells you it's time to brush your mossy teeth and go to bed. I'd wager that's what really ruins games for most of the slashpussy crowd.
...but in roughly descending order
Obvious cheating (by the game). In one game I remember, a bunch of enemies came flooding out of a barracks building when you passed a certain point in the map. So the next time I enter the building first, eliminate all enemies and then continue, safe in the knowledge I wouldn't have that particular problem anymore. I pass the same trigger point, and... the door opens and the same enemies come streaming from the building that I cleared only moments before. That's a big no-no.
Another one (though less serious) is motivation of the main character. At a few points in Far Cry I found myself thinking why on Earth my character would be doing what he was doing. I would have gotten the hell out of there, but he seemed eager to seek out more danger. Why?
Of course, we're all guilty of this from time to time (shit happens), but some make a sport of it (e.g. countdown leavers, solo-lane feeder leavers, etc).
Warcraft and DoTA could use a slashdot-like karma system to rate players. Build karma by completing games to the end, lose karma by leaving anytime after countdown begin.s
1. Overly complex control systems
2. Pointless backstory that really adds nothing to the actual game.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
A lot of little things have ruined games for me.
For instance, I bought Tetris DS for my Nintendo DS recently, hoping for some good old school Tetris gaming, but a lot of the little things they've changed have ruined it for me.
Like the fact that you can basically hold a piece at the bottom of the screen by rotating it, essentially destroying the fast-paced nature of the game. You can turn-off/change a few of the other game settings, but they don't give the player the option to turn off the one thing that ruins the game for me.
So I decided to try another game mode (Catch mode), and really liked it... until I found out that the game ends at (from memory) level 25. I'd much rather continue playing higher and higher levels than be forced to beat my high score in a limited number of levels.
Another thing that really annoys me is the lack of customisable control schemes. Things like not being able to have multiple buttons perform the same actions, no mouse sensitivity, etc. But most of these issues are gone these days.
There's an imp in cabinet #666
I enjoy a little bit of torture every now and then... just make sure you don't draw blood with the cat o'nine tails :D
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
In a MMO game - You have hacks, people who are there for no other reason than to be an irritant, glitchy games, SOE, games that receive no updates, games that developers try and make into more successful games by mimicking other games, reviewers who glorify games to remain in the good graces of certain companies, games that attempt to unsuccessfully imitate movies.
In a console game - Online gamers who act are out to boost their own ego, reviewers who glorify games, games made off of movies in order to add more money to the license holder's pocket, hacks, games that are only released on one console in order to promote the sale of THAT console and may or may not be developed for other consoles, games that are released simply because someone put out a movie, games that are overpriced at "market price" and are beaten in a day or so, knock-off games, sucky sequels to successful games, sucky sequels to successful games and have received rave reviews, when my 10-year old can sit down at a game and beat me or the game after playing it once and I have been trying for hours or days just to get past the first part.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
First, the ontopic.
I'd at least like the discussion about spoilers to cease being so binary.
Who the fuck are you?
There is room between avoiding mentioning a plot event and reporting its main details.
Not really. I like to know absolutely nothing besides genre and whether my friends whose opinions have proven to be worthy will think I like it.
Put another way, this is a matter of opinion. The simple truth is that any and all plot details (and yes, vague information is a detail of the plot; information about the plot point is detail on detail) are spoilers, but some people have higher thresholds of what spoilers annoy them.
Okay, no more ontopic. A better question (IMO) would be what about the games themselves spoils them. Anyone want to talk about that? I've been playing Xbox lately so... This is what has chased me away from certain games. Mechassault's level design blows total chunks. Crimson skies won't let you use DLC in any single-player mode, even on subsequent trips through the game. Yager has the worst control schemes ever (all two of them) and even has a cutscene where your character bitches about how he customized the controls and will have to do it all over again - but the game won't let you. DIE. Panzer Dragoon ORTA has some of the worst camera control ever. Sega GT's physics are poop (Rallisport Challenge has an excellent feel, oddly enough. Who wrote that one?) These are all games I stopped playing even though they were excellent in every other way because of one stupid fuckup (again, IMO, whee. Although the control scheme on Yager is bad by any reasonable standard, being just slightly but significantly different from every other game.)
Let's take this thread over and talk about what ruined an otherwise perfectly good game. The discussion over spoilers will never be resolved and has already been done to death. Flagellation of deceased equines is counterproductive in the extreme.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Running FreeBSD/amd64. ;)
I am ashamed to say that I absolutely suck at video games. Especially for someone who has spent as much time with them as I have. I completely attribute my suckiness to cheat codes, because I often used to have the codes for a game looked up and ready to go before I ever even opened the box or took the time to try legitamately. From Doom (iddqd how the crap do I stil remember that) to original warcraft to Half-Life 2 I have missed a bunch of the enjoyment from my games because I never had to get good at them. I also hate multiplayer games (a la halo) where I get pitted against real life humans who are good, and I have no way to dominate them. Its kinda stressful. Mothers don't let your kids use cheat codes!
For me, the real spoiler for a computer/video game is the availability of cheats and codes. If you can't get there using your own skillz, you don't deserve to be there, period. Can't get those special abilities or car, etc? Too bad...you don't deserve them, period. Amongst other numerous other reasons for me to want to cull the Human herd, cheating is right up there. To me it's no different than cheating in sports, business, or politics.
Obligatory XKCD
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
Peace
These being the tags at the time, I wonder if there's an article, which no one would ever read of course, that could yield Developers Developers Developers Story?
Maybe some sort of bizarre Ballmer fanfic?
'Nuff said.
Well, while I see how that might have made you think harder, but
1. If it's possible to see it coming, then it's possible to see it coming. You could have started using the little grey cells (to paraphrase Hercules Poirot) for any other reason, or for just happening to be the kind of guy who thinks ahead.
2. Did you really need that nudge? I mean, _the_ major spoiler of the century is everyone adhering to the same script called the Monomyth, a.k.a., the Hero's Journey.
And I don't mean just the vague general idea of it. The movie industrie actually standardized exactly in which minute of the movie (well, actually as percentage of the movie length) should which element of the monomyth happen. Seriously, there are courses, consultants, etc, to teach you in exactly which minute should the hero meet the mentor, for example, or how much time you have at the start to make the case that he's an everyman John Doe.
And if you did't obey and somehow sold the rights anyway anyway, a director who did learn that lesson, will take your original and highly innovative story and basically do this to it. He'll cut out everything that deviates from the prescribed mould, change what can be changed to fit it, and add the parts of the Monomyth that were missing. Because there's no way Hollywood would publish anything else.
So once you've seen enough movies in a genre to know the approved timings and twists for that genre, don't tell me you can't already predict most of a movie after 15 minutes. E.g., once it's clear that Jane Doe is the hero's love interest and it's an action movie, you can know not only that something will happen to her to push a Joe Everyman into the hero role, but even in which minute of the movie it'll happen.
The same applies to any other genre. E.g., having had to sit through a couple of romance movies for women, I can tell you that they follow the same script with different props too. E.g., once they revealed who'll be the guy supposed to fall in love with the heroine, you can tell in exactly which minute he'll disappoint her (e.g., by coming late because he's a heart surgeon and was in a fucking operation, instead of rushing home to fawn over her) and in exactly which minute he'll come crawling back to her and beg for forgiveness.
Well, I guess now I've just spoiled 99% of the movies for you. Sorry :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the question is 'what spoils a GAME for you'.
which dumbass modded parent offtopic ?
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Spoilers below:
As Regards Spoilification
Yeah, revealing spoilers about the plot or telling me how to solve puzzles "spoils" the game for me. But that's not a patch on what MMOG asshattery does to my game experience. The 13-year-olds don't just spoil the game, they rape it with a baseball bat, beat it unconscious, and leave bleeding to death.
You want to REALLY ruin somebody's game? Make them play with arrogant, ignorant, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, inarticulate, semi-literate, foul-mouthed little punks.
I piss off bigots.
The grind in MMORPGs for example. Get a quest to bring back a dozen troll ears, go to turn in the quest and you are rewarded with another quest to kill stronger trolls, ad nauseum. Titan Quest was a single player game that just had too much repetition. I would have enjoyed the game more if it had been half the length.
A few other peeves:
Impossible end bosses. There have been several games I have got all the way to the end and just cannot kill the final boss.
Not knowing that you needed an item until the end of the game only to find that you used it long before.
Loot glut. Titan Quest was a prime example, there was just so much junk that after the first area I didn't even bother to pick something up unless it was a magical or special item.
The inverse of that is having nothing to spend it on at the merchants. You get better gear from the drops than what you can spend your hard earned money on.
I have been collecting computer games for a long time. I spent over $1000 for games for my Atari 800. I spent over $1500 for games for my Amiga. I spent over $1500 for just MSDOS games. I have spent over $2000 for Windows games.
I play most of my games in some kind of emulated or virtual environment. Not because I want to. It is because I HAVE to.
The normal state of a game is to be for an unsupported OS. At this point, Microsoft has made a powerful argument (via DirectX10) that they consider only Vista to be a supported gaming OS.
The normal state of a game developer is to be out of business.
It is pointless for me to purchase a game with functioning DRM. It will only be playable for a blink of an eye. If I hear that a game has DRM, or a copy-protection scheme that is tied to the existence of a company, I will not buy it. Nor will I miss it. I have a LOT of good games. Games that I can play whenever and however I want.
Now, excuse me, I have a game of Master of Magic to get back to.
Miles
Nethack is great. I've read dozens of nethack spoilers, but however hard they've tried, they haven't been able to spoil the game for me.
The sound of my hard drive, reading. Essentially telling me :look, we, here in the box, are making the next bad guy and we just needed some info off of the disc, we'll have him ready by the time you reload"
The Cake is a lie.
I love games which have an open environment. There's nothing wrong with walls - in fact there should be walls, but a constant tunnel throughout the map forcing the player down one path throughout the game drives me nuts. I will not play through a game like that.
Also, putting a pile of rubble down and making an invisible wall there, a technique used often in Fallout 3, is an aggravating method as well. I should have been able to walk/climb right over that rubble - I'd be able to do it easily IRL.
You do... you really do.
In fact I usually search for them or hear them from someone whose seen it before I play a game or watch a movie. People will always want to whine about something.
Sig is for Signature, so you don't have to manually sign every post.
Boring parts
For example, I used to put away Final Fantasy when I'd have to spend 10 hours earning experience just to fight some boss. That's just silly.
Super Paper Mario had a stupid part where you had to hold a button down on the controller for 5 minutes. That was disrespectful to me, the paying customer. I looked up a cheat code on the internet.
Zelda on the Wii has a silly part where you need to go fishing. It doesn't really do anything but kill 3 hours of the game when you just want to have fun.
No, I will not work for your startup
Can't say as I've ever played a multiplayer game, aside from old-fashioned board games like go or parcheesi. If you mean stuff on a computer played by one person at a time, then I'd have to say hack-em-slash-em ADHDrrhea is pretty boring. I don't mind plot spoilers if I seek 'em out; that falls under the general rubric of General Tzu's predilection for knowing one's enemy, the lay of the land, etc. The converse, what makes a game good, is harder to think of, but I'd say in general that genuinely droll or self-aware AIs rank high on the list. Good games come from the bleeding edge occasionally, but consistent high quality comes from well back in the techological pack where the issues are known, the workarounds have been found and the development team is working with artists, musicians and cap-and-bells ludimeisters to fill the corners of existing limits. Great examples abound; Star Ocean 2 and Final Fantasy IX on PS1 come readily to mind. Just giving away a plot point? Depends, doesn't it? Othello kills Desdemona. There, the secret is out.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Unfortunately some people are stuck at that age even though their tree-rings reveal them to be as old as 35.
I don't have a little circle of friends. I play alone... for a reason.
I piss off bigots.
Oh, I agree. You may not be 12, but that may accurately reflect your maturity level.
It becomes amusing to me, though, in two scenarios. When it gets applied to stereotypes, and when the person making the accusation does so in an immature fashion. Bonus points for when both occur. (I saw a news article once where it came out that a certain politician played WoW, horde side. The reporter explained this away as saying the Alliance was mostly played by pre-teens. I'm sure you have to be older than 12 to get through journalism school, but he wins the "immature award" for that one...)
4chan
How about single player games with appalling AI which simply cheats to be better? I like strategy games and even over the last ten years or more I have not noticed AI in games getting any better.
Why is this when computers have exploded in power, and games are one of the few programs which use this power. However it all seems to be channelled into the graphics. Where ten years ago a few people could create some blocky sprites and come up with a good game, now companies spend millions just on the graphics. How much do they spend on the AI?