(This blog post contains zero spoilers of the game Undertale, so even if you are one of the extremely few people who haven't yet played the game but plan to, and don't want spoilers, it's safe to read this.)
I'm one of the small minority of people who absolutely and categorically hate, detest, abhor and despise spoilers of any kind, of any work of fiction I'm planning on seeing, reading or playing. The more I anticipate such a work, the less spoilers I want to see. No trailers, no promotional material, no reviews, no synopses. Nothing. (At most I might want to read 100% spoiler-free reviews, but that's it. Even those are quite hard to find given that the standard form of reviewing a work of art is to say something about what it contains.) I'm only ok with minor content spoilers with works of fiction I'm indifferent about (but which might pick my interest if reviews are positive.)
I'm, in a manner of speaking, the exact opposite of the other extreme, which is the people who will watch every single trailer, read every single review, and with video games sometimes even go so far as to actually look for extensive game footage (such as let's play videos), before deciding on a purchase. These completely strange people seem to want to spoil themselves as much as possible about the content of the work of fiction before getting it. I have sometimes heard the argument "I want to know if I will like it before I buy it" which, if you think enough about it, becomes more and more asinine the more you think about it.
Thanks to this attitude of mine, I got to play the video game Undertale pretty much 99.99% unspoiled. I had seen like a couple of screenshots in the Steam page, and that's it. (These screenshot were so non-spoiling that one might just as well say I was 100% unspoiled about the game.)
And man I'm glad I did! If there has ever been a video game that suffers greatly from spoilers, it's this one. This is a game that you just have to play with no advance knowledge of any sort. This especially so if you have played old-school JRPG games in the past. If you have, then you are the absolutely perfect target audience for this game.
And the thing is, for some reason this is the sort of game that just makes people want to spoil it. Not as in making them mean and wanting to ruin the fun for other people, but most people who have played the game simply cannot let others discover it on their own and play it naturally. They feel the irresistible urge to tell others how they should play it. And that's exactly what people should not do with this game, because it just ruins it. (It might not completely destroy all the fun, but it significantly diminishes what the game is supposed to be like.)
And, of course, there are also those who just want or like to spoil the content, and the surprises, and everything, either out of eagerness and enthusiasm, or because they are jerkasses.
The saddest example I have seen was a YouTube content creator and let's-player who wanted to make a let's play series about this game. She ended the series after just two videos, at the beginning parts of the game, because of all the spoilers in the comment section, and people fighting over how she should play the game, and why she's doing it "wrong" (even though there is no such thing). Her own audience destroyed the experience via spoilers, both well-meant, and mean-spirited, and she just stopped playing after just a couple of hours or so. (Or, at the very least, she stopped making the videos about it.)
I'm one of the small minority of people who absolutely and categorically hate, detest, abhor and despise spoilers of any kind, of any work of fiction I'm planning on seeing, reading or playing. The more I anticipate such a work, the less spoilers I want to see. No trailers, no promotional material, no reviews, no synopses. Nothing. (At most I might want to read 100% spoiler-free reviews, but that's it. Even those are quite hard to find given that the standard form of reviewing a work of art is to say something about what it contains.) I'm only ok with minor content spoilers with works of fiction I'm indifferent about (but which might pick my interest if reviews are positive.)
I'm, in a manner of speaking, the exact opposite of the other extreme, which is the people who will watch every single trailer, read every single review, and with video games sometimes even go so far as to actually look for extensive game footage (such as let's play videos), before deciding on a purchase. These completely strange people seem to want to spoil themselves as much as possible about the content of the work of fiction before getting it. I have sometimes heard the argument "I want to know if I will like it before I buy it" which, if you think enough about it, becomes more and more asinine the more you think about it.
Thanks to this attitude of mine, I got to play the video game Undertale pretty much 99.99% unspoiled. I had seen like a couple of screenshots in the Steam page, and that's it. (These screenshot were so non-spoiling that one might just as well say I was 100% unspoiled about the game.)
And man I'm glad I did! If there has ever been a video game that suffers greatly from spoilers, it's this one. This is a game that you just have to play with no advance knowledge of any sort. This especially so if you have played old-school JRPG games in the past. If you have, then you are the absolutely perfect target audience for this game.
And the thing is, for some reason this is the sort of game that just makes people want to spoil it. Not as in making them mean and wanting to ruin the fun for other people, but most people who have played the game simply cannot let others discover it on their own and play it naturally. They feel the irresistible urge to tell others how they should play it. And that's exactly what people should not do with this game, because it just ruins it. (It might not completely destroy all the fun, but it significantly diminishes what the game is supposed to be like.)
And, of course, there are also those who just want or like to spoil the content, and the surprises, and everything, either out of eagerness and enthusiasm, or because they are jerkasses.
The saddest example I have seen was a YouTube content creator and let's-player who wanted to make a let's play series about this game. She ended the series after just two videos, at the beginning parts of the game, because of all the spoilers in the comment section, and people fighting over how she should play the game, and why she's doing it "wrong" (even though there is no such thing). Her own audience destroyed the experience via spoilers, both well-meant, and mean-spirited, and she just stopped playing after just a couple of hours or so. (Or, at the very least, she stopped making the videos about it.)
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