What Spoils a Game For You? 214
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?
Depends on the importance. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
A few talking points to jot down here... (Score:4, Interesting)
I am tired; Semicolons should be enough to make this readable.
Alright, here's my break down. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Difficulty is important. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:What really gets my goat? (Score:5, Interesting)
And time passed validates spoiling something for somebody.. how?
Let's say MindlessAutomata never played the Final Fantasy games.. he'd heard about them in the past, heard they were pretty good, but really he was out and about playing... I don't know, baseball. Whatever. But he grows too old for the game and they kick him out. Too bad, so sad. So what's he to do.. books, sure.. maybe some TV.. but then he thinks back to those computer games and figures 'hell, why not' and gets a buddy to drag over his old PS1 and a bunch of games including Final Fantasy VII. So he sits there on the couch, playing the game for the first time ever, enjoying it (presumably) and getting quite captivated by it.
Then YOU walk in and tell him "oh hey, fun game, eh? Yeah, Aeris dies."
See how f'ed up that is?
As far as Titanic goes.. that's not a spoiler. Even if you'd never heard of the Titanic, if you watch the movie for the first time, it becomes clear pretty early on that the damn thing will sink. But tell somebody who's never seen the movie that Jack dies, and I think they may be a bit miffed with you.
So many things... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but in roughly descending order
Leavers (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:A Different type of spoiler (Score:4, Interesting)
Good point, and that is also applicable to party oriented games. Guitar Hero and Rock Band make you go through the career mode to unlock all the songs, which is annoying if you have a party and want people just to be able to play whatever songs they are interested in, rather than which songs are in the next unlocked group.
Re:A Different type of spoiler (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think TFA meant "spoiler" in quite that sense, but following up on your point anyway...
In most cases, you don't need to tediously grind to get all the "extra" content if you just want to "win" the game. You only need to do the side crap if you want to.
RPGs make a good example - Most of them have a core plot that you can finish in 10-20 hours total, and with the perfectly normal equipment you get via the main plot, you can still kick the final boss' ass (in fact, I've noticed that many RPGs seem to scale the key boss battles down - or up - to your current level and even adapt to what you have equipped to make it hard-but-winnable). If, however, you want the 100% everything gained perfect finish, you can throw in up to another few hundred hours of play, doing all the side quests and hidden dungeons and seemingly-endless-arena and such. The rewards for that (usually the best items in the game) can pay off by making the final boss battle trivial, but you'd spend far less time skipping all that.
But it all comes down to asking yourself, "Why do I play in the first place". Personally, I game when I want to burn through a few hours (on a plane, in doctors' waiting rooms, etc), so "wasting my time" unlocking hidden features really doesn't annoy me all that much... If anything, I find it gives a game quite a lot more replay value after completing the main storyline.
As opposed to The Hero's Journey? :P (Score:3, Interesting)
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
About Nethack spoilers. (Score:1, Interesting)