How long until spoilers no longer apply to videogames?

Silvanus

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Not always. Because you have no context during a trailer, a lot of times you don't remember it because the details are meaningless. It just looks cool so you go see the movie. So even if someone get's shot or whatever, there is a high likelihood you would forget when actually watching the movie.

Hard to say. Because Aerith's death was spoiled in the trailer for FF7 in 1997. But again, it was just random shit jumbled in a trailer, so I never made the connection and certainly didn't remember seeing the trailer weeks into the game when I finally got to that scene.
Wow, what a poorly conceived ad campaign.

It kind of sounds like you're just relying on people having poor memories or not taking in the information. But... if that's what you're relying on, isn't that a tacit admission that if they did remember the information, their experience would be negatively impacted?

Now the argument does hold a little water in the age of the internet, being that you can stumble into spoilers of a game or film that you are about to play/watch. For example I learned about other companions in GoW well before I ever got there.

However I am a weird person. In middle school I had a friend who somehow got all the Dragonball Z episodes in Japanese whereas I only could watch Toonami in the U.S. So he knew everything that was going to happen way before me, and he would tell me about Gohan going SS2, or how Freeza get's fucked up. For me, it only made me more excited to see it for myself. I never ever considered spoilers a thing, and to this day I don't understand how spoilers mean shit to grown ass adults.
OK, lemme put it this way.

Authors, creators etc purposefully design their work to curate when and how people find things out. They put thought and effort into the lead-up, the framing, the atmospherics. All to elicit a specific reaction in that moment.

Why would they do that, if the experience of the work is exactly the same when someone hands you a play-by-play of the events in advance?

The truth is that creators know very clearly that there is value in the reveal.

Getting mad at a spoiler is like saying you can never play or watch the same game or movie, or read the same comic ever again because you know everything that's going to happen. And that's just a really dumb take imo. A spoiler that "ruins" a big moment is frankly hard to have happen because it's the context that makes the big moment have impact. The acting, the sound, the music, the build up to that moment is what causes the moment to be impactful, not some weird lack of knowledge.
But most people acknowledge that viewing something for the second or third time isn't as enjoyable. That's why it's common for people to wish they could experience something for the first time again.

Another example is horror movies. You know these fucking kids is gonna get got, but then tension of when and how is what makes those movies hit people.
This is just an appeal to the extent of the spoiler, not the principle.

So, you say yourself here that there's "tension" in wondering about the when and how. So it goes to reason that if someone tells you the when and how in advance... then that tension is gone. Yes?

So take that just one step further. When, how, and /whether/. There's tension in whether something will happen or not.
 

Mister Mumbler

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Forgot to write an actual response, woops.

I'm in camp 'spoilers remain spoilers forever'. While I'm less strict on this rule in regards to events in the narrative (such as 'x dies by y'), narratives that rely on the spoiler/twist for thematic weight should forever be off limits. Games like Spec Ops: The Line ("Stories of my survival were greatly exaggerated."), Bioshock ("Would you kindly"), the Silent Hill games (specifically 2), and such.
 
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Dreiko

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I apply a flexible standard. Surely if you're in a big group or a discord or something you can talk about 20 year old games, but if you see someone who is saying they are playing it for the first time and don't know what happens, you obviously wouldn't wanna spoil that person even if the game is ancient. I wouldn't complain for being spoiled but at the same time I think you shouldn't do it despite that.


Also with spoilers I find it is your personal responsibility kinda to avoid em. I managed to not see anything about persona 5 beyond the first trailer so I went in not knowing who the party memebers were even. So if that is possible anything is.