No, sorry, you only have to go on a CVG article for the Wii U (for instance) to see spoilers about, say, Uncharted. It's not good.

The timeframe thing is certainly up for debate though. One other thing is the amount of money being spent on 'story' and all that encompasses: some developers/publishers go way OTT and tell you who's a traitor etc through the media, where others are now going the other way. It is possible to get a happy medium!

I think knowing something about the game is important, but you don't need to know every detail in advance. I'd expect there to be spoiler warnings/alerts at least in the first month (maybe two) of a game whilst people are still picking it up/completing it. I hate major plot giveaways as it robs you of the opportunity to find out for yourself.

If I told you the story of every film (in detail), how much would you want to watch it?
How much would you enjoy it, compared to not knowing?

I see dead people

Are you a pathologist?


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It's down, as the quoted Hitchcock explanation suggests, to participation. The viewer/player loves to know something the characters in the film/game don't. It gives them a sense of empowerment and increases their engagement, in general. The exception (and the only real one that matters) is the 'monster in the closet' point, that sometimes you do want the visceral reaction of having something jump out at you.

In general though, I'm not sure knowing the plot is what makes or breaks a film or game. If that were the case, why would anyone watch a film twice or why would you play through a game once you'd finished it once? Yet I've watched some films a dozen times and would happily watch them again in future and there are several games I've played through more than once. Jokes I know by heart still make me laugh.

I think the argument I'd come to is - anything which could reasonably be assumed by a generally knowledgeable but specifically naive person viewing it cannot be spoiled. Only something which is genuinely surprising can be. Put it this way, in most movies, the good guys win in the end. Therefore, this can be safely assumed and therefore this by definition cannot be spoiled. What could be spoiled if this was one of those odd cases where the good guys didn't win because that's going against assumption. Say.. Star Wars. Saying the good guys win in the end, that's not in any realistic sense a spoiler. You'd have be wrong in the head to believe any other outcome was likely. Saying Vader is Luke's father? That'sa spoiler, because there's no way you could assume that going in.

To me, the point of the article is not that the latter kind of thing is being continually spoiled, or that it wouldn't be rude to do so, it's that some people have now decided anything at all, even the most trivial and obvious detail, is a spoiler and therefore must not be placed in the public domain at any point until they've seen or played whatever it was and they complain publicly and at length when it is. These people are tedious bores and should not be pandered to.

I've never understood people who watch films more than once.

I only do it if I feel I've missed something and the film was particularly good, but even then I wait a decade or so to erode the memory. I've got a couple of DVDs on the shelf unopened, waiting for my memory of the TV edits to fade a little further.

I particularly hate watching a film I've not seen with someone who has, or the other way around. It's a situation that could easily end in murder.

If I re-watch a film, it's usually because I enjoyed it. I have stacks of DVDs that I'll probably never watch again.

Let's take an example: Fight Club - this came out almost 14 years ago so no apologies for spoilers. The teasers and trailers made me think it was just a film about fighting. The way it changed from "Fight Club" to "Project Mayhem" was an unexpected turn of events. The Tyler/"Narrator" switch was a huge mind-f*ck IIRC. Had I been told about this point beforehand, it would have had less impact. But now I can re-watch it, analysing it a bit more so I can see "Ah yes, at the point he was talking to himself", and "At that point it was the Narrator who was shagging Marla" etc. You can pull it apart. I've watched it three times, the last being more than five years ago and I've no inclination to watch it again.

But others, eg Bruce Lee's films, I'll watch again and again because I enjoyed the combat over anything else.

I can totally watch films again and again. If it's a comedy I'll have a grin on my face, but I find it a bit scary when my parents are still busting out laughing at Beverly Hills Cop. And I love that film.