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Grim Fandango’s teaser image (and discussion of spoilers in general)

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Joined 2012-05-21

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Thanks all, my concern has been assuaged by the replies in this thread.

Mods, feel free to lock the thread (not that you need my permission).

     
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I have not read the study thoroughly but I’m a spoiler sensitive person and I love the big emotional and mind blowing events. After experiencing one I often think back in the story and consider its “authenticity” - as in does it fit to everything we’ve seen so far and is there at least a couple of subtle hints so that it does not come from completely out of the blue. I don’t mind an unreliable narrator if there is something in the story already that can make you think “something’s not right”.

The enjoyment of all this really does lessen if a big moment is revealed beforehand. I might not be completely right in my head to represent “the average person” but I’m not overly critical either: unlike with myself, I tend to focus on things that were done right in entertainment.

I think the picture in question in here is a bit too vague to count as a major spoiler, it can mean a lot of things, but I probably wouldn’t use it personally.

     

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AstroChicken - 24 February 2015 08:32 PM

Thanks all, my concern has been assuaged by the replies in this thread.

Mods, feel free to lock the thread (not that you need my permission).

Actually, I’m going to pop this thread over to Chit Chat so everyone can keep griping about spoilers…

wilco - 24 February 2015 07:20 PM

they should conduct a study with The Sixth Sense. I doubt a lot of people knowing the twist will get the same enjoyment of the movie.

15 years ago (!) People Magazine spoiled it for me in the most ridiculous way and I’m still bitter about it. (Spoiler below for both The Sixth Sense and the season 3 finale of Sex and the City, oddly enough.)

People printed a photo of Charlotte’s wedding that was taken during the episode’s filming, months before it actually aired. This was maybe a year after The Sixth Sense came out. Some person who’s angry about the Sex and the City spoiler writes a letter to the editor that’s basically like, “How could you do that? That would be like posting a review of The Sixth Sense that says Bruce Willis is dead!” AND THE MAGAZINE PRINTED THE LETTER. And the next week they printed an apology that was like, Oh sorry, we figured everyone had seen that movie by now. Pan

Uh anyway, yeah, that movie would have been way better if I hadn’t known that. Someone ruined Fight Club for me, too. Frown

 

     
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One thing about “minor” spoilers - or spoilers that seem as such but really aren’t - is that they can change the way you go into playing the game or experiencing whatever it is (of course, really any kind of information). You go in with a preconception, you are expecting something out of it, you interpret things in a certain way without being allowed to make your own interpretation.

One of the most annoying to me was with The Stanley Parable. I had avoided reviews etc. because I knew I wanted to play it and I knew it was best to know as little as possible. And then I went and read one review. And, innocuous as it may seem, in that review they said that it’s a metaphor for game development and the way the players don’t do what the developers want them to do etc. etc. Now, whether I fully agree with it or not, that instantly altered (negatively) my experience of the game, because it forced that one interpretation on me and I started looking at the game, every event, from that perspective instead of any own that I would have. It took so much work to get it out of my head and really enjoy it in the way it was meant to be enjoyed

As for this GF one, I haven’t seen what it’s about so it’s not a comment on that Smile
(Edit): Now I did. While it is pretty much as others before have said, I do have to wonder about why it was chosen. Of all possible screenshots, this one does, after all, have a potential to be (or at least feel) somewhat spoilerific.
(Well, quoting Jackal: “That said, I’ve never been particularly happy with the pic for purely artistic reasons, and had to settle on that one as the best of a weak lot.”)

     
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Your edit beat me to it while I was writing. But yes, it was the best of “all possible screenshots” I actually had to work with. I can only use what’s available, and all Double Fine provided was a very meagre crop of entirely uncinematic pics. As I said in the GFR comments, people are always welcome to send us a better screenshot selection to choose from.

In the meantime, I’m still not at all concerned about leaving it as is. It isn’t a major giveaway, and as TimovieMan said, with no context there’s no spoiler anyway, only blind guesswork. Without knowing a thing about the game, I could easily rhyme off any number of plausible scenarios (dream, flashback, mistaken identity, etc.) Frankly, the viewer has to take some responsibility not to spoil their own experience purely from assumption.

As for spoilers in general, I don’t think there’s any dispute that stories entirely built around climactic twists shouldn’t be ruined. Nor vital twists along the way. But everything else has to be fair game. Any article/preview/screenshot/trailer, etc. is by its very nature spoiler-laden. The trick is show enough to entice without overdoing it, and it’s a constant balancing act. I think AG does a good job of that, but there will always be some who complain no matter where we draw the line. I remember people squawking back in the day that I “spoiled” that Crow was in Dreamfall. Yeesh.

On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve had to start literally looking away from the screen AND plugging my ears during trailers for movies I want to see. They’re becoming ridiculous.

     
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Personally I’m not really too worried about spoilers, I mean 90% of the time we know exactly how the movie/game/book will end after watching/reading/playing the first 10 minutes. We know that the good guys will win, who dies and who lives, who betrays who, who fall in love with each other etc. But that is rarely the important stuff or what interest me, instead it is about how you get to that ending, the journey instead of the destination you could say.

Also there is a word closely related to spoiler and that is foreshadowing. It is actually used very often in fiction especially in literature, and it usually works very well in my opinion. The difference is of course that when you foreshadow something you only give people a general idea of what will come, but you don’t reveal the details.

This should imo also be the goal of trailers and reviews etc. Give people a general idea of what they can expect, but don’t reveal any more details than you have to.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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I try never to look at screenshots because then I know which locations I will visit. That is detrimental to my enjoyment of the game.

     

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