Spoilers: because when life gives you lemons, people throw lemonade in your face and rob you of the experience of getting there. Yes, your most awaited game is finally out! You’ve wanted this for a long, long time but wait… Everyone else wants it as well. Everyone wants to talk about it, but now it’s finally out, it is the last thing you want to discuss.
People though, they are awful. You will not discuss it but others sure will. If the game is big enough, maybe mainstream non-gaming-related publications will even be discussing it.
Welcome to the modern age of trying to avoid video game spoilers. You’re not welcome.
The playbook for avoiding video game spoilers in 2024
In today’s hyperconnected world, you’re either extremely active on social media or you might as well be Amish, not that there’s anything wrong with the latter I admire their woodworking skills, but it pays to be online all of the time. This means you have an awful lot to be wary of.
If you’re passionate about games and the franchise, you likely follow a lot of people who discuss it a lot on various social media. So that is a lot of muting you’ve got to go through and likely in the month leading up to it. The mass muting of the social media people you generally like, ’tis the tradition, trust the process.
You also likely belong to other groups – in this writer’s case, subreddits – that you have to ensure are fully muted and immune to it being suggested and accidentally spoiling the experience. You have to ensure that even with gaming news websites, you’ll have to stay clear. This is all after you avoided that last trailer because you just knew they were going to say too much.
All of that, before stressing to your friends that you don’t want any spoilers and still risk the game being ruined by a careless comment anyway.
When this writer muted everything for Final Fantasy XVI, it was months after before I’d remembered exactly who I’d muted and restored everything.
Yes, this is a pain. Spoilers are everywhere and it’s every man for himself, so to speak.
If you’re maximising your own experience from a game, you’re likely going to avoid playing it when excessively tired or intoxicated. You will also want to have a life away from gaming to ensure you relish the moments that you get to sit down and switch off while playing (I’m a journalist; I realise that the last point about having a life is very hypothetical).
Trying to maintain an impossible pace
Having a good work/social/time-to-relax balance takes a lot of doing, so if you’re being smart, you likely will not have a great deal of time time to pour into it.
If you’re going that far to avoid spoilers then you’re likely going to be trying to engage in every bit of content the game has to offer. Yes, you’re the person who presses A in front of every single box like your life depends on it, I see you. This naturally means you’ll be going at a much slower pace than everyone else, especially the reviewers.
Speaking as someone who has done game reviews in the past, the pace of the work does take some of the fun away from gaming. It isn’t a speed to go at if you’re looking to savour every moment of something.
Also, games are pretty big nowadays. If you’re going for a completionist – oh wait, YouTube ruined that term, I mean doing-everything approach – it can take quite a lot of time to play through. It’s almost like when you divide up 100 hours into an adult life it kind of gets difficult to manage getting through that quickly. This means more time where you’re at risk of being slapped around the face with an unexpected spoiler.
You just hide away and pretend that you don’t remotely care about gaming to, ironically, protect the biggest high that you can get from the hobby.
Time to play devil’s advocate…
I don’t envy the journalists and content creators, either. The balance must be frustrating; you of course want to discuss and pour over every element of a big release. Yet if you get the timing wrong, you get known as a publication that might accidentally ruin the experience for someone. That isn’t something you want at all.
But when? There are huge incentives to be and not to be the first publication to discuss it. You kind of do want to talk about it, because you’ll have an influx of people having completed the game flocking to your article or video. You kind of don’t want to be the first though because you risk permanently losing everyone who hasn’t completed it yet.
The balance is fairly impossible – you’re either far too late or far too early.
Personally, it is rather maddening. I’ve not written much for this publication since Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out. I love writing and I love gaming, but I can’t engage that much with the industry or other publications for fear of spoiling a game I’ve spent four years waiting for.
Maybe video game spoilers really isn’t the biggest issue ever?
I realise that in the grand scheme of things, this problem isn’t exactly global, and I’d count it as somewhat less important than climate change. Seriously, though, unless you’re about to murder me, please no video game spoilers. Although, if I’m about to die by your hand, please let me know everything.
It has been far too much work to avoid it so far, I’ve truly earned my game not being completely ruined. There is no solution to this problem: I suppose care less about video games and more about other genuinely important things?
No – let’s be honest here – that’s never going to happen.