This is the same for me. The worst part is that it doesn’t even have to be a ‘real’ spoiler, it can be totally fabricated, but I can’t stop thinking about it the entire time I’m playing. I don’t get mad at people over spoilers, but I generally know if I want to play something or not from a couple of minutes of gameplay and the basic premise; if I want to play something, I’ll intentionally avoid all trailers, story discussion, etc, until I’ve finished it.
I avoid spoilers whenever possible, but the true deal breaker for me is hype. I’m probably an old man trapped in a twenty-something’s body, but I get curmudgeonly as hell about people coming at me with “Stranger Things CHANGED MY LIFE!” This was said to me once, and I haven’t looked in ST’s direction since. I knew the hype around No Man’s Sky was going to result in something truly dismal, but I went ahead and bought NMS anyway. It couldn’t maintain my interest past the second star system, and “dismal” was a pretty accurate descriptor for my feelings about it.
I worked door-to-door as a canvassing agent for a window company, and one of the first things I was taught was to match the other person’s energy. Sometimes, and I’m guilty of this myself from time to time, you love a thing enough to get up in someone’s face about it. I find that is usually the mind-killer for any potential interest they might have.
I’m not a “peppy” person, and being faced with pep exhausts me because I know I frequently can’t match the reaction they were hoping for. Don’t project your reactions onto other people, y’all, they hate that.
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almost never, except for games im explicitly told to avoid spoilers for like nier. with most games i find them annoying but never enough to ruin the experience for me
Feeling out of sync with something is a weird feeling these days. I watched Stranger Things and enjoyed it, but in the back of my head all I could think about were all the think pieces that would appear from it, all that nostalgia wringing and 80s love, when in reality a lot of the show felt largely surface level.
I completely respect people’s reactions to that show, since I will be the first person to go on an hour-long tangent about why the Hannibal show succeeded on nearly every level for fans of Thomas Harris. I have enough critical understanding of film language and storytelling to go into the minutia of “why?”
But I think that’s my hangup: people who shriek about their new favorite show don’t seem to have a lot to connect it to. When you say something changed your life and then prance away without a qualitative analysis, leaves me feeling like what I’ve just been told is insubstantial. Almost “put-on” like a Facebook post; it doesn’t feel sincere. Have I mentioned I have some capital-T, capital-I Trust Issues?
Maybe I’m just an elitist prick, with more intellectual pretensions than I deserve to hold, but I don’t think so. I think I’m most receptive when someone either gives me some good food for thought before going in, or says nothing at all and just shows it to me. I don’t think people should feel obligated to perform a heightened interest, simply to legitimize a “guilty pleasure” in their own minds. I can’t see their vamping as anything other than compensating for a lack of confidence in what they’re saying.
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Spoilers won’t always ruin an experience, but I try to avoid them to preserve the experiences they might ruin. For example, I heard about how the final ending of Neir: Automata goes down and I’m kinda bummed because, while really cool, that would have been a hell of thing to experience going in blind.
I think about some of the gaming moments that stand out to me the most such as Bioshock and The Last of Us and I can’t help but think their impact would have been lessened on me if specific moments had been spoiled for me (The big twist in Bioshock and playing as Ellie in TLOU and the ending itself)
I try to avoid them, sure, but I don’t find having something spoiled ruins the experience. I also find it odd that when it comes to movies and games people get up in arms about spoilers, however in theater and opera most people read the synopsis prior to the show.
Hannibal is dope AF though, an intricately crafted piece of wonderful entertainment with a plethora of incredibly smart references to the whole of the Hannibal world.
There’s totally nothing wrong with people loving something, but you’re right, you don’t need to pretend its more worthy. Though I am gulity of banging that drum with Battlestar Galactica and The X-Files. I think I just have a soft spot for shows that were cancelled or muddled with by the network before they could execute their plans. FWIW, I did enjoy Stranger Things, but I felt its references were more useful for introducing younger pals to the things it was aping, like that excellent intro that was totally borrowed from the amazing Altered States.
I have been avoiding the heck out of Nier as hard as I can. I have no time to play it right now, but it’s all over my timeline 24/7!
You can’t always control how strong you come on, either. I’ve definitely spoiled something for someone in the middle of an experience because I was just waiting for them to get to “that part.” Love can make you do some silly things.
Fake spoilers can be even worse!
I’ll never forget the time one of my friends saw Inception before I did and kept talking about how pissed he was at joseph gordon-levitt for something terrible he did in that movie. So the entire time I’m watching I don’t trust anything he says and just wait for the inevitable twist and betrayal… that never came.
Turns out my friend was acting pissed about JGL kissing emma paige because he had a crush on her. So that was why I spent the whole movie on edge about something that didn’t happen.
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What a shame, “Kiss me” was one of my favorite gags in that whole weird mess.
Not a deal breaker at all, most of the time I still enjoy ‘the journey’. There are some games (or other kinds of entertainment) that I knew didn’t work for me because of spoilers, but, I don’t mind that, I knew why it didn’t work and I tend to like stuff that go somewhere o that say something.
I had Persona 4 spoiled for me months before I naturally got to the twist, and that pretty directly ruined my enjoyment of it. I still think 3 is better for a lot of reasons, but I couldn’t really give 4 a fair shake when I knew what the deal was.
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Someone also told me to watch fight club and then spoiled the movie for me in the same breath, he is a monster and should be stopped
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At this point I’ve probably watched Giant Bomb’s Persona 4 ER 3 times and I still haven’t played the game myself, but I would in snap if I could. That game seems really fun, well, in a JRPG way.
In some cases spoilers for sure help boost excitement. I remember seeing the final boss for Metal Gear Rising and that made me go from just wanting the game to needing the game. Spoilers for most Platinum games usually have that effect on me, and Nier is no exception.
It’s always gonna depend on the game for me. In general I don’t go out of my way to avoid spoilers, but I almost always enjoy things more when I don’t know what’s coming. I loved Nier, and none of the big things in that game were spoiled for me, but I wish I had gone in completely blind because it’s a game that really thrives on its surprises.
I also feel like it’s a unique issue for certain types of game, though. In games that offer more “choice,” getting spoiled on something is probably gonna affect the decisions I make when I play. I’ll feel like I have to play to the plot I know is coming, rather than directing things in a vacuum, if that makes sense.
I tend not to worry about having things spoiled for myself, but I’ll generally try not to spoil things for other people.
I used to be really sensitive about story spoilers, but I’ve stopped being as bother by them. I guess it’s all about context. When I heard that Spec Ops: The Line is an adaptation of Heart of Darkness, that just made me intrigued. There was a lot that I could infer from that, but it really just made me excited to see what they did with it. On the other hand, if someone was to give me a beat by beat description of the ending of the game, I don’t know that I would be as into it.
I still do my best to avoid gameplay spoilers. Discovering the environmental puzzles in The Witness was one of the most satisfying of the entire game. It gave me such a feeling of accomplishment shifted my perspective on the entire game. Knowing about it ahead of time would have completely deprived me of that experience.
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