Adventure Gamers - Forums

Simple enough question. I wanted to add a poll to this thread, but somehow that was impossible. So here are some options.

When are spoiler tags necessary?

1. Always
2. When discussing the plot/ending
3. When discussing solutions to puzzles
4. Both 2 and 3
5. Only for games released in the past two years
6. Not necessary for the old classic adventures
7. In community playthroughs
8. In threads about totally unrelated subjects
9. Never

I have three things to say about that.

I have always, yes ALWAYS, been dead set against spoilers of any kind both in reviews and forum posts. And I’ve been quite vocal about it too. I have even convinced Jackal once or twice that certain parts in a review should be changed.

I’m extremely annoyed to have Life is Strange spoiled for me. In general though it’s not Iznogood but tomimt (the other poster in that particular thread) who almost never uses spoiler tags and never replies to requests to use them.

I have noticed that people in general don’t care as much about spoiler tags as they used to. Here and at other forums.

i dont know about you guys but i think i can control my eyes and not read posts were i dont want them to, simply an alert at the start of the post would do, i ve did this many times and i dont remember anyone complain, but in general i am with Karlok here, a spoiler is a spoiler, especially when there are games which crucially need it, imagine The Black Mirror, or The Whispered World spoiled for you in a comment.. how would that feel.

the point is however you do it, do not spoil it for others who might turn their back on a whole title because of a single reply or a post they read.

I don’t mind it if someone uses spoiler tags. In some instances I can see where they are absolutely necessary. If I need a game hint, I hope the person supplying the hint puts puts a spoiler tag around it. I would hate to be the one that ruins a puzzle for another player.

But the poll kind of assumes that AG is the only place where “spoilerish” posts are read. If I participate in a thread, I will get an email notifying me that there has been a new post. It even quotes the new post. And that email does not include spoiler tags. So I am probably going to see the post without tags one way or another.

Depends. In community playthrough, I will use spoilers if I’m talking about the current act/chapter, but not if I’m talking about previous ones. Also, there’re minor spoilers, and major spoilers (like, Darth Vader is Luke’s father! Yes, really, I’m sorry I spoiled that for you!), and I’ll tend to use spoilers whenever I’m talking about major spoilers in every context. However, I also often tend to “announce” in the first sentences that the paragraph or post will contain spoilers in one way or another, and everyone who reads line by line, and not skipping, will simply enough take notice of it and will stop reading. Saves me using the spoiler tags often, and making my post more “fluent” and natural.

Using the most recent Community Playthrough as an example, if I post something such as “this” is my opinion, where “this” is my ranking for player likability, then nothing is spoiler worthy. On the other hand, if I were to ask “this” where “this” is an inquiry about an affair I suspect is happening between two game characters, I would “probably” put that in a spoiler because it might provide information that another player hadn’t uncovered yet. And there is this case which actually happened, where I list the relevant inventory items I have in my possession and ask what I am missing when it comes to solving a certain puzzle. In this case, almost everything would be a spoiler. As should be the response.

Community Playthroughs are “iffy” because, while there are chapter/act deadlines, not everybody plays at the same speed. So while a chapter may be over, deadline-wise, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t players still playing it. So I would still think spoilers are appropriate until everyone is on the same page.

I think everyone who was playing has completed the current Playthrough. So I think we should be able to post anything about the game without spoiler tags.

https://gizmodo.com/stop-worrying-about-spoilers-they-actually-help-you-en-1778452171

Spoilers actualy make you enjoy stories better according to a study.

Christenfeld thinks that spoilers free us up from having to pay too close attention to the plot, thereby enabling us to focus on other, richer aspects of the book, film, or TV show of choice—character development, sensory descriptions, or minor details we may have missed the first (or second) time around. “If you’re driving up Highway 1 through Big Sur [in California], and you know the road really well, you can now peek around and admire the view, the otters frolicking in the surf,” he said. But the first time you drive that route, you’re focusing almost entirely on all the twists and turns, and you miss all that scenic detail.

It doesn’t take much effort to use spoiler tags, give a warning, or even make a description less specific.  Even in a community playthrough, there are people who may not have had a chance to play at the time but may want to read the thread when playing the game later.  That being said, I have slipped a few times, especially when enthusiasm about something has carried me away, but a couple of reminders have made me more cautious about the info I reveal.

Lucien21 - 23 September 2017 04:59 AM

https://gizmodo.com/stop-worrying-about-spoilers-they-actually-help-you-en-1778452171

Spoilers actualy make you enjoy stories better according to a study.

Timovieman brought up that study years ago, probably in 2011 when it was published. Interesting, but I’m not impressed. For one thing, the subjects were psychology students, most of them female. Sure, they’re available and cost nothing, but they’re not representative of the population. Secondly, all the subjects had to do was rate their “enjoyment” of each story on a scale from 1-10. Pretty vague, especially since the researchers conclude the subjects enjoyed different aspects when reading a spoiled story.

But even if their bold interpretation is correct, there’s the relatively small investment of time and effort in reading a short story - in some cases as short as 3 or 4 pages. Would the subjects feel the same about a spoiled novel that would take them hours to read? And the subjects didn’t chose the stories themselves, so the very important aspect of emotional involvement was zero. Compare reading a 15-minute story handed to you with playing a 15-hour game by one of your favorite developers that you’ve been looking forward to for ages.

We all know that replaying a game is a different experience, we don’t need any researcher to tell us that. It may be more enjoyable than the first playthrough in some cases or for some players. The point is that a second playthrough is always available if you want it. But there is only one first time to discover things for yourself, to explore, to speculate, be surprised, overwhelmed, touched. Players who had their game spoiled can never have that unique experience the developers wanted them to have. They were robbed and have the right to feel robbed.