What constitutes a game spoiler?

[The3DollarBill]

My problem is this. My brother absolutely hates any form of spoilers. He does not watch trailers, previews, or reviews in order to avoid them. He complains a lot that I spoil games for him and I do not really think i actually spoil any particular plot points or anything important. It seems natural to hate having the surprise ruined but he seems to be getting more and more crazy about it. Recently he has been playing Dragon Age Origins and I have gotten ahead of him. At one point I walked in on him playing it and I was wondering what choices he was making in the game. I knew that if i mentioned anything specific i might actually spoil something for him in the future so my question was this: "So, what have you recently done in the game?" At which point he proceeded to yell at me for spoiling the game for him because now he knew that, and I quote, "Somethin' is gonna happen in this game!" Right now I am wondering this: did I spoil the game for him, since he now knows that something is going to end up happening in the game?


Anyways what do you think is the line that determines whether something is a terrible spoiler or simply someone overreacting?

 

[Thaius]

Okay, I detest spoilers. I absolutely hate having a big plot twist ruined for me: I think it completely destroys the intent of the work and the artists that made it. That said, he's being absolutely ridiculous. That's just insane.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

If it concerns the Big Twist or Reveal, I consider it a spoiler.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

When it reveals something about the late story and any twists and turns it takes.

That's about it really... though when Metro 2033 and Red Dead Redemption came out I did my best to avoid any and all spoilers I could.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

Something that gives away a key factor to a sotry's plot that isn't in the advertisements or the hype.

 

[Cherry Cola]

What the hell are you doing? You just made a fucking thread, didn't you?

Now you've spoiled the fact that I'm going to comment on it, you bastard!

Ahum...

Your brother is a bit of an idiot in this case. You spoiled about as much as a teenage girl spoils her aborted baby (I love me some colorful analogies!)

The way I see it, a spoiler is when you reveal something that is meant to come as a twist or is a vital part of a storyline.

 

[KEM10]

If it goes deeper than the plot in Halo, don't talk about it. Unless it happens in the first 15 minutes of the game/movie

 

[Woodsey]

He went overboard, but I share his resentment for spoilers.

To be fair, I get annoyed if I'm simply told something has a twist in it, because then I spend the entire time looking at things and wondering what the twist could be. It's my main issue with game reviews; unless a developer or publisher specifically tells them to not discuss the plot, they'll all discuss different stuff and you'll know most of what happens for the first half of a game.

Just tell me the story's really good (obviously not so simplistically); that's all I need to know.

 

[Nimzar]

Aerith dies.

If it happens within the first 15 minutes it can still be a spoiler but not one really worth protecting.

 

[Kuchinawa212]

The ending
A twist that doesn't appear in the first few chapters
That's normally a spoiler to me

 

[Infernostrider]

"something is going to happen in the game?"

are you serious? was he expecting the game to freeze so nothing was gonna happen anymore? by everything that is holy, give him a good smack on the back of the head or 2, and be done with it

 

[Eliam_Dar]

Darth Vader is Luke's father

Now, to the topic in question. Spoilers are when you somehow "spoil" the story for the viewer/gamer/reader, however, just discussing choices in a game shouldn't be considered spoilers

 

[Chancie]

Wait, he's upset that he now knows something's going to happen? Of course something was going to happen in it! It's called having a story.

In any case, anything that is a big plot twist or plot point (that you don't know from the beginning) is something I consider a spoiler.

And yes, he's being ridiculous.

 

[HeySeansOnline]

I feel the same way, most of Mass Effect 2 has been ruined for me. But back to spoilers, a game spoiler Is anything that reveals to you anything important. This can be storywise, as well as for gameplay. Now let's take a fictional game, like chainsaw massacare VII. If I tell you the game will have shuriken grenades, that's not a spoiler. But If I tell you for one level you get play as Awesome guy, who died in part four, that ruins something. So a spoiler really constitues, anything that is there for the gamer to discover solely through the game, like how Samus is a girl.

 

[Eldarion]

At which point he proceeded to yell at me for spoiling the game for him because now he knew that, and I quote, "Somethin' is gonna happen in this game!"

Tell him that "stuff happens" in almost all games, spoil them all for him. I bet he'll get real mad then.

 

[bojac6]

I know a guy who avoids all trailers and stuff because he considers them trailers. One day, after play Just Cause 2 for like a week, he was all excited because he just discovered that you can tether things together, not just use the grappling hook to fly around. I told him everybody knew that for months because of the trailers. Apparently he also considers reading the manual and looking at on screen instructions spoilers too, because I have no idea how he played for that long without knowing it.

He's an idiot in many ways.


OT: Depends on the game/spoiler. Telling me plot points for Arkham Asylum, for instance, wouldn't ruin anything because anybody who doesn't know that Batman is going to (Spoiler Alert) beat up the Joker probably has no interest in the game anyways. That game was about the mechanics anyways, not so much the story. Now, ruining the ending to Red Dead Redemption, that would be a terrible crime. It was powerful.

I feel the same way about movies and tv shows too. Many times, the end doesn't really matter, it's just the end. As Ebert likes to say, with really good movies, it's not what the movie is about, it's how the movie goes about being about what it's about.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

What the hell, man? Now I know that Dragon Age has choices in it? You've spoiled the whole thing...
Or not, since I've already played it.
Are you sure he wasn't being ironic with that last one? It seems fairly basic story telling to me that the oncoming blight means you're going to have to fight the horde at some point. Which would class as 'something happening'.

I figure if it's not a plot twist or events occurring in the last 25-50% of the story, it's probably not a spoiler.
Hence I wish Bioware hadn't mentioned the fact that Shepard could die at the end of ME2 until at least a couple of weeks after it came out, so people would have surprised to find that other people's characters were surviving the endgame.

I also don't want epic to reveal whether Clayton Carmine lives or dies. It'd just be more fun to discover the answer in-game.

 

[Greg Schmitt]

My brother constantly yells at me about revealing spoilers too, when it's not really a big spoiler. For example, I was watching him play Assassin's Creed 2 and something slipped out about "Altair's ladyfriend". He then proceeded to explain the word 'spoilers' several times, though I have beat the game and I am pretty sure that part has nothing to do with the rest of it.

Anyways, what warrants a spoiler really depends on the person you are talking to. I walked into school the week after Halo 3 came out and was instantly told a very important part of the story, though I can not recall what it was. Anyways, that's a spoiler. But "Gandalf is gay" is not.

But then there are people like your brother and like a few friends of mine who don't want to hear a THING about the game, story or not. Even if the "spoiler" has very little to do with the game, these types of people do NOT want to hear it.

In conclusion, it all depends on the target of the conversation. Some people will freak out, others will not. To test, you could ask them if they had gotten to the part where ____, but make it up. If they say "Nope." then tell them "Good, it never happens." If they say "Dont spoil it for me!" then tell them you made it up anyways. And if they say "Yes" well then, they probably haven't played the game at all.

 

[antidonkey]

How dare you let your brother know that the game has a story line and plot. What the hell were you thinking?

Spoilers give away details of the story. Some a are minor some are major.

Telling him he's about to meet a hot chick in leather armor would be a minor spoiler.

Telling him said hot chick has viscious anal sex with the game's main antagonist, turns gay, and signals the alien fleet to unleash wave upon wave of cheeseburger rain in an attempt to slowly kill humanity with artery clogging cholesteral would qualify as a major spoiler.


As it is, your brother is being a tard.

 

[TylerC]

Wow, he got mad at you for saying something happens? ...Alright, well I consider a spoiler to be revealing plot details, and stuff beginning with a, "Have you gotten to the part where..."

I don't see how watching a trailer would give away the plot, reviews on the other hand do tend to give away minor and sometimes, but rarely, major plot spoilers.

Tell him everyone thinks he's being ridiculous.