Is googling a sin?

[bbchain]

So as my birthday is rolling around, my boyfriend recently told me he was getting me an N64 and It got me excited to go back to some Nintendo classics and experience them as I would in the nineties; blind and without assistance from the internet. I made a promise to myself to not use the internet to find any answers for these games, and making that promise reminded me of how much I actually use Google to get over road blocks in games these days, particularly games like Persona where not knowing off the top of your head that watermelons cannot be grown in the Himalayas can cost you points towards your stats.

It seems like a taboo to look up solutions and I understand that it's a big part of the experience to find the solution yourself, but with most situations I've never felt a lack of Fulfillment in googling how to do something I'm stuck on. So what do y'all think? Is it really a cardinal sin to use the internet to get through a game?

 

[PPB]

I used to take overcoming challenges by myself pretty seriously and often refrained from looking things up online. I also had the habit of playing on harder difficulty levels because I felt it was more fulfilling that way, even if it meant reloading many times and such. I sort of gave up both practices years ago. I still make an effort to do hard stuff myself, but as I get older I find that my most valuable commodity is time. I'd rather look up the solution to a puzzle and get to play more of the game than spending a long time picking my brains.

I don't think it's a sin or anything. The important thing is that you enjoy your time gaming.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Depends really on the game. In most cases you should take the time to find out the solution for yourself as it's often right in front of you and will only take a bit of thinking to figure it out. Then you get games like Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay where you get stuck in the mine for almost an hour. Then it's fair game.

So not really a Sin, no.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Not really per say. Using cheat book or a guide in a form of a magazine or book was the old fashion way before the birth of the internet, that is if you were the type who used those in the past.

 

[scorptatious]

I don't think it's a sin.

Yeah, there is quite a large amount of satisfaction from figuring stuff out on your own. At the same time however, there are moments where I get stumped and can't wrap my head around something no matter how hard I try, so I eventually cave in and look up the solution.

 

[Lieju]

It does diminish my enjoyement of the game somewhat.
And it's a sign that either the game is not for me or it is illogical or doesn't present it's challenges well, at least if I have to do it a lot.

I tend to use it more for games that I'm not crazy about in the first place. If I really love a game I'll have more patience for it. If it's a game I borrowed from a friend for a weekend and one that I'm playing to pass the time then I'm more likely to google it.

That all goes for main story and sidequests, the main content so to speak.

For difficult achievements or easter eggs I have no problem using a guide or google.

 

[Dominic Crossman]

Depends, is it because the gameplay is challenging? If so hang your head in shame *evil laugh*
Or is it because you can't find the red keycard for the red door despite looking for x amount of minutes. Cus that's bad level/map design and is the developer's fault.

I recently played a game with an early ff style map and had an objective that was something like find Bob. In literally the whole map with no clues as to where to look. Fuck that.

Also, another thing that game makers screw up is ability descriptions in RPGs, they explain them well enough sometimes but others it is just like improves battle ability. Yeah? In what way, increased attack/accuracy/speed etc. Be more specific or otherwise I'll ask the internet.
Some r worse than that though, by giving NO description. *Sigh*, rant over.

 

[MysticSlayer]

No, it is not a sin. The Internet has simply replaced Player's Guides, and anyone looking for the "good old days" when no one used help really needs to remember that.

As for myself, I generally try to solve all challenges on my own, but if it starts taking an insane amount of time and/or numerous tries without getting any progress or having any idea of how to progress, then I generally look it up online. I may also look up online if I don't care much about the gameplay and only care about the story or if I just want to finish the game but am no longer really invested in it.

Not to mention, some games are almost necessary, as they don't present their challenges properly or, in some really bad cases, even present them so poorly that they make you think the way to overcome them is wrong, preventing the player from actually trying it in the first place.

 

[krazykidd]

I used to take overcoming challenges by myself pretty seriously and often refrained from looking things up online. I also had the habit of playing on harder difficulty levels because I felt it was more fulfilling that way, even if it meant reloading many times and such. I sort of gave up both practices years ago. I still make an effort to do hard stuff myself, but as I get older I find that my most valuable commodity is time. I'd rather look up the solution to a puzzle and get to play more of the game than spending a long time picking my brains.

I don't think it's a sin or anything. The important thing is that you enjoy your time gaming.

Does that mean that you don't like solving problems? Because even if it takes up time, sloving the puzzle or what has you stuck can be fun. I'll give you an example, i was mad at ni no kuni ( ps3) because the basically told you the answer the the puzzle ( in this case people were missing emotions out of 7 i think), all you needed to do was go and get it ( which were marked on the map). There was zero difficulty, 0 thinking. I would have enjoyed talking to the person and figuring out which one i needed.

If someone is going to google it, or worst the game is going to tell you, then what's the point?

OT: is googling a sin? No . But i personally look down on people that do that. This goes tenfold of the person brags about how easy the game was afterwards.

Play how you want and all that jazz, but don't be proud that you had to look up the answers.

Capchat: sax and violins.

 

[Asita]

If you're trying to make a point about overreliance on Google, Persona's probably among the worst examples you could use to make that point. That's a very "Guide Dang It" franchise for reasons including its time limits, the waiting period between social links, the fusion requests requiring an intimate knowledge of the system and likely outcomes, and some comparatively high stat requirements (and expenses) that almost mandate save scumming to bypass on a first runthrough[footnote]"Damn it, the rainy day challenge didn't up my courage! I needed that stat for the next social link event!" *resets game* "Alright, 16th time's the charm..."[/footnote]...and then of course there's the whole 'true ending' thing...

Now if you feel the need to invoke Google for Bioshock, that's another story entirely...

 

[briankoontz]

It depends on the game. In games like Dark Souls there's a lot of value in discovery, while in games with great plots (not that there are many) you don't want to be held back on the next awesome plot point by some non-obvious puzzle or particularly difficult combat sequence, no more so than you want to be held up in a movie theater by technical problems from watching the movie.

I do feel that developers themselves assume the use of Google and intentionally don't put cool hidden stuff into the game anymore because of it - even the term "easter egg" which used to be common industry practice is rare these days.

Games used to be primarily about the joy of discovery, back when we couldn't know that much about the game prior to playing it. You HAD TO play a game to learn about it. Now in the age of information it's possible to learn seemingly everything about a game without playing even a minute of it.

Game reviewers and customers to an extent are to "blame" for this, since with justification they want to know at least enough about a game prior to buying it to judge whether buying it is a good decision. Back when games were about the joy of discovery it was common to "discover" that you'd been ripped off.

This is a lot of the reason for the popularity of cheap and free games. A free terrible game at least only wastes one's time, and when one discovers a great free game that noone is talking about it's just like the old days except cheaper.

I'm reminded of someone going on a date and instead of asking the other person about themself they tell the other person about themself, because of so much prior knowledge with respect to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

This "brave new world" of hyper information we may discover is not all those of us who were so excited by the emerging internet in the 1990s hoped it would be.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I wouldn't say it's at all a sin, but it definitely does ruin the experience. Now a days there are cases where you might be able to say that games are almost designed with an online community in mind (the Souls games, for instance). Back in the PSX/N64 era and earlier though? Not a chance.

 

[Lilikins]

If your using it to specifically hold your hand and take you through every step then yes in my opinion.

If its being used to find some things that are so well hidden or so dastardly hard to figure out without a guide atleast nudging you in the right direction, then not in my opinion. Through this Im specifically pointing at things like.. a wall you have to hit to show a path to get a secret item for an achievement (if your an achievement hunter) that is in the middle of the forest by the 30th tree on the left but it only reveals the path when theres a full moon and pigs sprout wings and do ballerina dances in the sky. No, when they do the salsa its for another secret in the desert by the 8th rock leading south that looks sorta like Elvis.

Yes, I know I 'overdid' it a tad bit with the secret but..there defo are some things like that in some games.

Edit: Heres an example of what I mean, anyone remember Reptile in Mortal Kombat? How do you spawn him?

First, you must be on the Pit stage ? the one with the moon (luna) in the background. You have to win two consecutive rounds without taking any damage. This includes blocking because you still take some damage when you block. You also had to win the second round with a fatality. Finally, if a shadow doesn?t float across the moon during the fight then nothing will happen, even if you meet the conditions exactly. The shadow appears every 8th time you fight on the stage.

Now please do tell me...how in all of creations name your supposed to find that out by yourself purposely. Im pretty sure someone 'accidently' made him spawn but..seriously haha.

 

[lord canti]

It depends on the situation. For example, in FF 12 in order to obtain the zodiac spear, you can't open 5 specific chest through out the game. However, there is no way of telling these chest apart. Some thing like that is free game.

 

[AntiChri5]

As so many others in this thread have stated, the overreliance on guides is a result in so many devs trying to drown us in bullshit.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I try to figure it out for as long as I can when I get stuck, but when it comes to the point where it's not fun anymore, I have no shame in looking it up.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

I tend to use guides for achievements as opposed to gameplay, but I'm not adverse to looking something up if it confuses me. I remember in my first play-through of Fallout: New Vegas, I found a person the Legion had crippled so they couldn't escape. I didn't have medicine, so I figured a mercy bullet to the back of the head would be better than leaving them. No sooner was the deed done then I got a message that I had failed a quest- a quest I didn't know existed, let alone had received. I looked up the quest, read about it, and decided it was worth going back to an older save to play that quest.

So no, it's not a sin. As some people point out, level design might necessitate googling to continue at a decent speed, and I'm fine with doing it to get to a part of the game you want to play (then again, if you're playing something like Legend of Zelda and you're googling about how to navigate the dungeons, I think you're missing a key part of the gameplay experience). I guess I let krazykidd down.

 

[Britpoint]

I rarely feel bad about it. Most of the time it's because something is frustrating me either because I'm an idiot or because it is poorly designed. If I stick with it I don't feel any gratification for completing it properly, just exhausted relief. The exception tends to be puzzle games - if I got stuck on Portal, for example, I'd never looked it up.

On the other hand, if you have a BLOCK PUSHING puzzle in an RPG, I'm straight on GameFAQs. Anyone remember that sewer level in Tales of Symphonia where you had to perform completely arbitrary tasks in order to cause a new spider web to grow that you could then walk on to access more platforms? Because that's what I was doing yesterday, and I'll be damned if I'm doing that without a guide.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I wouldn't call it a sin. Dark Souls definitely seems to expect you to either buy a strategy guide or look shit up online 'cause there are a few things that are never at any point explained in the game and that you'd only be able to guess your way to. (I'm mainly thinking of stats here)

Also: If i'm playing RE4 i always look up the solution to the sliding tile puzzle, and i do that with zero shame 'cause in that game the puzzle doesn't reset when you exit it so if you fuck it up to bad you either have to keep fiddling around with it or reload your last save. So i look up how to do it from the default position. If i can tell a puzzle is gonna be bull shit i look up the solution so i don't waste my time.

 

[Signa]

I will be contrary and say that depriving yourself of the satisfaction of completing a challenge yourself is a sin. However, what that means is entirely subjective to what you've done in the game, and what the puzzle's solution actually is. If you find the answer to be "doh! I should have known" then you probably should have tried a little harder. If your reaction to the answer is "how the fuck was I supposed to know that?!" then you've just saved yourself a lot of wasted time.