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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Them being in any way involved with the gaming industry makes me embarrassed to be a jobless shut-in.
Your ad here.
See that "if" there? That's the problem. Most of us don't have time to master games.
Kindly use the first person when stating your personal opinions. You may see no point in playing a game that isn't difficult, but some of us enjoy playing them for the story, or for the exploration.
One of my all-time favourite games is System Shock, which has a great difficulty selection system: you can tune several elements of difficulty independently. So if you like a challenge, you can make the enemies and puzzles tougher and slap a 7-hour time limit on the entire game, while if you suck at combat and just want to enjoy the atmosphere and story, you can even make the enemies harmless.
That's your personal opinion again. Some of us are quite fond of movies, and having an element of interactivity does not make a story less interesting.
Enjoy your DDR, but kindly refrain from telling those of us who like different kinds of games that we're wrong.
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.
...but in roughly descending order
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
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.
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.