Tag: discovery

#oneaday Day 408: Don't spoil yourself

One thing that I've become quite frustrated with in the last 10 years or so is the prevalence of "guide content" on video game websites. Guides and walkthroughs have always been a thing, of course, and I completely understand why sites feel the need to get guides up day-one when a big new video game comes out: they are freshly-squeezed, ready-mixed SEO juice just waiting to be taken advantage of, and if you're a site that makes the majority of its money from ad impressions, you would probably be foolish not to take advantage of the immediate thirst for knowledge that comes with the release of a new game.

Now, I won't be hypocritical and say I've never looked at a guide for a game. Some games, one feels, were designed in such a way that looking at a guide — particularly the Official Strategy Guide, back when those were still a thing — is near-essential if you want to see everything that the game has to offer. Take something like Final Fantasy VII's chocobo breeding, for example; while you probably could work all that out yourself, it would take a very long time to do so, and it would be hard not to end up resenting the time you'd spent on failed experiments.

But I feel like the deliberate, immediate posting of Guide Content the second a new game releases is destroying the sense of wonderment and discovery we should have with a brand new game. Hell, game developers themselves are absolutely spoiling their own games — one can't help but feel that Pauline's reveal in Donkey Kong Bananza would be a thousand times more impactful if we hadn't had it completely spoiled weeks in advance by Nintendo's own trailers — but all Guide Content does, for me, is instil a sense of FOMO, and that one should be playing the game as "efficiently" as possible. Consume content until next product, then get excited for new product, or whatever the quote was.

I've been deliberately trying to avoid looking at guides for Donkey Kong Bananza while I'm playing it, and I'm having a good time doing so. Of course, the game featuring a "checklist" of all the things you have and haven't found also instils that same sense of FOMO, even though you absolutely do not need to "find everything" in order to 1) have a good time with or 2) beat Donkey Kong Bananza. As such, I've found it very hard to resist just sneaking a peek at a guide or two just to fill in the few frustrating spaces I have left in my list. But that stops here and now! I'm going to get through the rest of the game at my own pace, and then use the game's own built-in features — you can buy maps with the in-game gold to show you where the collectibles are, but you still have to determine how to get there yourself — to finish the game to my own satisfaction.

Games shouldn't feel like work, and the risk you run when having a guide by your side at all times is turning them into a chore. Games like Donkey Kong Bananza, Zelda and suchlike are made to be enjoyed, savoured, experienced at the player's own pace; you absolutely lose something if all you do is immediately look up where everything is.

I will add at this point that none of this is to take away from the sterling work good guide creators do. IGN's guides are particularly impressive, featuring interactive maps and checklists so those who do want to play the game in that way can not only read the guide, but also mark off their progress. I just wish there weren't so many of them, and that looking up information for a game around launch didn't immediately bombard you with the temptation to spoil the shit out of it for yourself.

I guess it's all about self-control. GameFAQs has been a thing almost as long as the Internet has, after all; all that's happened now is that commercial sites are using guides to juice their own SEO. Which makes commercial sense, but also, speaking as someone who was laid off from a publication and immediately plonked on "Guide Content" duty to keep him out of trouble during his notice period, is immensely demoralising and frustrating to see.

There are amazing writers out there crying out for opportunities to do good criticism and analysis. And yet it feels like nine opportunities out of every ten posted online in the games biz these days are to be a "guides editor" — a job that, in most cases, is underpaid, utterly thankless and easy to blame if the site's traffic figures aren't where they should be.

Anyway, back to Donkey Kong Bananza. Without a guide.

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#oneaday Day 739: I'm Flickin' Me Net

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I mentioned it briefly yesterday, but I feel some good, old-fashioned enthusing about Netflix is in order. I know, I know, you American types have been enjoying its streamtastic charms for a very long time now, and us Brits have been watching enviously for the whole time (and occasionally trying to do clever things to see if we can get signed up) — but now, we have it too.

And it's awesome.

As I've noted on some post back in the dim and distant history of this blog, I'm not huge on movies. It's not that I don't like them, it's that I'd rather spend two hours at a time doing something else. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps there's something in my brain that sets me up to enjoy interactive, rather than passive entertainment — I'll happily sit and play one game for hours at a time, after all. But that doesn't explain why I might take a new TV show discovery and devour large proportions of a season at once (see: Community). That's no more interactive than a film, and yet I have no qualms in doing that.

I think my main bugbear with movies has historically been their perceived "value" when buying them to put on your shelf. I have a bookcase in front of me at the time of writing — look, it's over there — that is almost filled with DVDs. (The bottom two shelves are console games.) Of those DVDs, the only ones that I think I have watched more than once or twice are the TV show box sets. The movies I've kept around… well, I'm not sure why, really, since I certainly haven't watched Human Traffic for a very long time, and my copy of Hot Fuzz actually remained shrink-wrapped for a considerable period, too (it was cheap in HMV, then it was on TV, so I didn't really need to watch the DVD). I guess there's some sort of curious feeling of "attachment" to many of these movies, like I remember the time I bought them and associate them with a particular period in my life. As such, it's never really occurred to me to get rid of them, even though I rarely watch them.

The age of Netflix, however, has me rethinking this. Now for a few quid a month I have instant access (assuming I have an Internet connection) to a pretty huge library of movies and TV shows. Some are complaining that the selection is a little limited at this time — and perhaps it is if you're a big film buff, but it's certainly more than satisfactory for me at the moment. And the reason I mention the "perceived value" vs "time constraints" thing above is that I've been more than happy to just sit and watch a movie on Netflix, because I know that I haven't spent £[x] on it, and have to feel obliged to enjoy it.

It's the same for the TV shows, as it happens. I've been meaning to check out Twin Peaks for a very long time, for example — even more so since I played Deadly Premonition — but never got around to picking up the DVD set. It always seemed a bit expensive for something that was — to me, anyway — an unknown quantity. Would I like it? (As it happens, I love it, 90s hairstyles and all) Would it be worth the money, or would I be stuck wishing I'd spent my £[x] on something better?

This consideration is now irrelevant. Like Spotify allows me to check out music that I might not have felt inclined to buy outright, Netflix allows me to broaden my tastes in film and TV shows without any risk of feeling like I've wasted my money. And through the "creepy" (no it's not) autoshare to Facebook facility, I have plenty of opportunity to check out what my friends are watching, start some discussions about it and become more "well read" in the media of TV and film.

So, then, fellow Brits; if you have a decent Internet connection and like watching people perform for you inside your TV, PC, iPad or iPhone, I suggest you get yourself signed up for a free trial. For me, it's been worth it purely for the iPad compatibility — Netflix on iPad in bed has revolutionised insomnia.