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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?
Hacks
Unpleasantries.
Does it for me.
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.
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.
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.
The worst part about people spoiling a game for you is them telling you that Aeris dies.
Dude, that game is 12 years old now. If you don't know that she dies, I have some bad news for you: The ship sinks at the end of Titanic.
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.
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.
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.
No, the Christmas special was the only *real* Star Wars film.
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 promise of cake is actually a lie. Instead of getting cake, you were to be incinerated in a fire pit.