Games, Walkthroughs, Spoilers

After spending almost 9 hours trying to get past the first “world” in Braid , I got frustrated and looked online for a Walkthrough – I found the Official Walkthrough and figured that would be the best way to go – until I got to the second page and saw this:

If you are having problems solving a puzzle, don’t give up!

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

Please do not use a walkthrough.

9 hours is more than I care to spend on just about ANYTHING, let alone a single level of a video game. Good thing I played the demo instead of buying the game – I would have been even more displeased than I am! I feel as though the developer has said “If you need a walkthrough, you’re too stupid to play my game, and I’d rather make fun of you than invite you in as a customer.” And when I finally did locate a walkthrough which explained how to get past the part that had me stuck, the only person that I felt had cheated me was Jonathan Blow – the solution to the first puzzle makes no sense at all! It must take some sort of idiot savant of video games to figure out something like that. I feel pretty confident that, had I spent thousands of hours playing this game, I would never been able to solve this first puzzle. Again, the only upside here is that they put this puzzle right into the first few minutes of the game so that I could determine just from the “free trial” that this was not a game I would enjoy playing.

Of course, this got me thinking about the culture of “anti-spoilerism” that “artists” seem to live in, and in my mind it seems connected to the socialist view of “spreading the wealth” that Obama is espousing. In both cases, you have two opposing camps: those who believe that their own strengths and weaknesses should determine their behaviour, and those who believe that all of us should be held to some arbitrary list of strengths and weaknesses. I don’t get that “very good” feeling from “figuring out a puzzle” – I get a good feeling from experiencing a new story, and your puzzles just get in my way. I’m tired of people trying to dictate to me how I should enjoy something, and even more horrifying is the concept of someone else defining what my hard-earned dollars are used for.

To this end, I’m thinking perhaps it’s time to get something like YouTube for people who want to watch a game from beginning to end – there’s clearly a market for spoilers and walkthroughs, and I’m betting a good segment of that market really just wants the story; so why not have someone like MG play through the game, recording his session, and then make it available for a small fee (say, $0.50 via some form of micropayments/credit bank)? I even have a killer idea for the domain name!

And what about you? Why do you think spoilers should, or should not, be allowed? Would you ever pay a small fee to see an entire game played through without having to do all the annoying playing yourself? I’d especially like to hear from those people who have a strong opinion against allowing spoilers for those who seek them. Why do you object to people choosing their own method of experience?