Spoilers - A request for discussion

Every so often you encounter some serendipity where some topic pops up repeatedly in numerous different media; enough to make you wonder if the Universe is sending you some kind of message

Just recently, I've seen the topic of plot spoilers pop up here in the forums, on Twitter, on mailing lists and even in the popular press.

It got me thinking that with Freedom close to launch and the presumed influx of a lot of newbies into Paragon City, that it would be a good time to start a discussion about how to handle talking about the game without outright spoiling things for the hopeful influx of new VIP's.

Do We Even Need To Worry About Spoilers?
If the answer to this question is "No" then the rest don't really matter. I'm going to suggest that an informal policy on spoilers would benefit the community, but clearly some sort of consensus on this is necessary amongst the community.

A great deal of what makes the game special is that your first realization of something like the Clockwork King's origin or Mender Silos' background or Virgil Tarikoss' true motives comes from experiencing their content first-hand and having a "sovereign experience" - that is, an experience where it's brand new and unspoiled. I think that encouraging an atmosphere where the experience of new VIP's is respected is going to result in stronger ties binding those new VIP's into the community at large.

This isn't even just a Freedom thing - Just recently I found myself unintentionally spoiling some things for a current player who was relatively new because I assumed "everyone knows that" when it wasn't actually true. Another example just yesterday occurred on the Freedom beta forums, where someone supported their views on a discussion thread by talking about the dialog of a NPC there, prompting a "Thanks for the spoiler, Captain Spoiler" response from someone else.

Some people feel that spoilers are inconsequential. One example on Twitter recently from a film critic I follow - "Spoilers are overrated. Does anyone ever attend their first performance of Hamlet thinking, 'Oooo, I hope this all ends happily?'" This is appropriate, given that a MMO is not too different from a popular play in that you have a constant stream of people who have experienced it and people who have not experienced it. Is it really the responsibility of those "in the know" to become caretakers of the experience of the newbies or is it their own lookout?

Likewise, I saw a newspaper article recently that showed some evidence (which I am now unable to find in order to reference) that for most people, spoilers had only a small effect on their enjoyment of a film. Do spoilers actually ruin the experience for players enough to get concerned about them?

What things are worthy of spoiler treatment?

When is something a spoiler and when is it common knowledge? Should we refrain from talking about the Organ Grinders story arc when the Dark Watcher himself spoils the whole thing for anyone who walks up and clicks on him? Is Mender Silos' "true identity" an open secret and therefore not worthy of being a spoiler? Is the Clockwork King's "true" origin a secret when every newbie discovers it pretty early and the loading screens hint at it? Where should the line be drawn?

The Steven Brust mailing list that I subscribe to has an informal policy that any new novel is automatically spoiler material for six months. After that, it's presumed that most people who are going to read it will already have done so. After that, it's up to individuals to decide whether they want to mark something as a potential spoiler for people who have not read the work in question. Is something like that even a viable option in a video game with a constant stream of new users?

How Do We Protect Spoilers?

This is a tough question to answer. Vets obviously want to be able to talk about their game freely. Newbies (presumably) want to experience the game the first time for themselves and then join in the discussion with the vets and give their own fresh viewpoints on whatever it is.

Paragon Wiki (and probably wikis in general) has a pretty neat mechanism where you can tag a piece of information as a spoiler and it's hidden until the reader clicks on it. The readers decide for themselves if they want the topic spoiled.

Alternatively, it may simply be enough to put the word *SPOILER* in the thread topic as someone did just recently for a discussion of the Underground trial. Is it worth asking Zwilllinger / Avatea to ask about having the forum software modified to create a [spoiler][/spoiler] tag or something similar? Are there some conventions that we as a community could adopt that would help people who want a spoiler-free discussion to read a thread and still have warning to skip a post or series of posts to avoid spoilers?

So, what do you think? Should we worry about it? What steps should we take if we do worry about it? What's your opinion when you run across spoilers for content you haven't yet experienced? What steps, if any, would you suggest for avoiding spoiling content for any new VIP's who come to the forum as a result of joining Freedom and becoming new forum community members?

Personally, I have a somewhat restrictive principle - I don't discuss any story element with someone whom I suspect may not have experienced it. Granted, I can't always know who's listening in on my chat over Global channels or over Help, but when speaking with people directly, I simply don't mention things they haven't done.

What we should treat as a universal spoiler is anything the game makes a point to present as a reveal. The true nature of the Rikti is a reveal. The history of the Circle of Thonrs is a reveal. The actual facts behind the Clockwork King are a reveal. By its very nature, this is revealed at some point, but also by its very nature, until that people people are not supposed to know about it, hence it is a spoiler. It doesn't matter whether that's new content like Praetoria, old content like Kadao Kestrel, high-level content like Crimson or low-level content like Pia Marino. If it's a reveal, it's a spoiler.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I have to say, if I had found out about the twist to the Rikti storyline before I encountered it in game, I would've been mad. I mean, that was as cool a reveal to me as Soylent Green.

I hate spoilers and think there's way too much info out there on any given subject, so you have to actively avoid reading forums and news so that the work is fresh to you the first time you see it, whether it be film, book or game. I don't know why people these days take such a cavalier attitude towards spoilers, since the journey of discovery is one the greatest things about experiencing art.

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a b---h about spoilers...

I'm perfectly willing to avoid discussing plot elements and "big secrets" for a few months after the material is released. That's reasonable and fair to the people who may go through content more slowly than I do... But damned if I'm going to keep quiet for much longer than that.

If something as been around for six months or longer, I feel like it's fair game. If you're late to the party and prone to getting bent out of shape over others discussing no-longer-new content thet you're unfamiliar with? Either avoid reading those conversations or just learn to deal with it. It's unreasonable to expect people avoid entire lines of discussion in perpetuity just because YOU haven't see something yet.

This game of ours is seven years old... Most of the content is far from being fresh, no matter when any particular player happened to join. When I started four-and-change years ago, I would never have even dreamed of telling older players they couldn't talk about this stuff. Pardon me for being blunt here, but Newbies who expect everyone else to avoid discussing the details of ancient content, or to spoiler-tag everything they might not have encountered yet, are being silly.

As someone else said, you don't include spoiler warnings when you're talking about Hamlet. I don't feel like we should have to include them for older game content, either.

I do not feel spoilers belong on the open boards at all. Some will know I feel the reverse during the closed beta process, where I feel the story needs to be openly discussed for the purpose of testing.

Yes, any spoiler on the boards needs to be tagged as such, and in a manner that it does not ruin the story for anyone.

In the community boards we use for HUB, we have spoiler tags that create little buttons that must be clicked on to show the text as written. I think that would be a good addition to these boards.

The spoiler tag buttons are a much more versatile tool then the TV tropes version of spoiler control.

Since this is a video game so many spoilers can be presented in jpg format. A screen grab of a new mob bio could be considered a spoiler and the TV tropes system of spoiler control offers no way to easily hide that information.

Goverment Redacted has several advantages over the spoiler button system, if you have a large paragraph but only a few words here and there need to be redacted, it's more visually appealing to have a few blacked out spots then several spoiler buttons breaking that paragraph into 2 or 3 separate parts.

I don't know. Does it really matter when these things will likely be spoiled in game just as easy if not easier than on the forums?

From an RP standpoint, I no longer RP Frostfire as a villain anymore for instance, so if it came up in RP, I'd treat it as him being a hero/vigilante now (I don't know what alignment he is actually, he may be a rogue, but I get the feeling he's a reformed villain turned hero so that's how I play it).

And when chatting it's not like I give spoilers tags about anything in game.

If you see a discussion on the forums, if the title of the thread was labeled better than "Hey!" then one might beable to realize it has spoilers, like, "Hey! Lore question." thusly one might realize the thread will have some possible spoilers.

Then again, a recent study showed that generally people like stories better when they're told the spoilers in advance.

I no longer consider the original or older content of CoH to be a spoiler. Way back when, the reveal that the Rikti were alternate humans was a huge deal to me. Now, yes, they're humans- the reveal is that the Rikti are not evil, and the war was caused by Nemesis. However, I wouldn't go out of my way to set that up. In telling someone about CoH for the first time, I'm not going to say "well these aliens called the Rikti attacked seven years ago- only they're alternate dimension humans for real." I'll let them find out, but if it comes up, it isn't a huge deal.

That said, I'm actually a huge stickler for spoilers in general. I have a really bad knee-jerk reaction to any sort of spoilers being told to anyone who hasn't seen/read/heard what is being discussed. But there are exceptions to that when a spoiler becomes a part of pop culture to where everyone should at least know of it- like Rosebud is the sled, for example.

I don't care about spoilers. I don't care if I'm spoiled on some plot points. I will often seek out spoilers. For example: I'm in the process of reading A Game of Thrones for the first time (I'm halfway through book 4), and I have repeatedly asked my boyfriend for clarifications on certain points in the story so I don't have to go to bed pissed of because of X, Y, or Z happening (or NOT happening).

I try not to be spoilery around new players. But I will answer any question that is asked, even if they're asking for spoilers. I'll make sure they actually do want the spoilers before answering, but if they want spoilers, they get spoilers. If they don't want spoilers, I may take the time to obfuscate the issue or I may just tell them to play the game themselves to find out.

I don't post spoilers on forums, because I'm typically the last person to know

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.