Topic: The Surprises Will Remain Spoiled

[Shaymin]

If you want to wait for Nintendo to speak, that's fine. But it'd make for a really boring website.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/editorial/41900/the-surprises-will-remain-spoiled

Last week's revelations that Mother 3 is pretty much ready to go set off some interesting reactions. Aside from a great Nintendo voice leaving the sphere prematurely (we miss you, Emily!), a surprising reaction came from a small minority: anger that we and others were “spoiling the surprise.”

Admittedly, a Nintendo Direct reveal for something like Mother 3 or even an appearance from the reclusive Shigesato Itoi that didn't involve dog pictures would have been amazing. But with the “reimagining” of Nintendo Directs that was announced last year, we have no clue when that would have been. And given the large majority of the reaction to Mother 3 coming – ranging from “YES!” to “It's finally happening!” - we're not going to contain our excitement for an event if we have solid confirmation of it. That'd be a disservice to our readers, and personally would drive me crazy as someone who enjoys talking about Nintendo.

Also, things are out there that you’ll want to, or need to, know that Nintendo won’t publicize. Surely, they would have wanted to never talk about the various localization changes in Fire Emblem: Fates, but a variety of different outlets, including us, made sure to track down a response. The Paper Mario and Mother 3 leaks – which were all confirmed with multiple sources – is actually going to help Nintendo by proving that the Wii U isn't (as much of) a content wasteland in 2016 as it seems. And even with the buzz that the motion controls were doubled down on in Star Fox Zero, if it turns out that the delay allowed them to make the motion controls universally loved, then that may turn Zero into a surprise hit. Is Nintendo going to mention any of this? Not likely. Someone has to shine a light on these things, and the fact that so many Nintendo-focused fan sites are out in the wild serves to bring these issues to the forefront.

If it wasn't for Nintendo news coming out before its time, we wouldn't have Nintendo World Report as you know it. Or Nintendo Force*, or NintendoLife, or GoNintendo, PerfectlyNintendo... the list goes on. And more importantly, the readers of this site and others want to know. As mentioned above, the complainers about leak reporting are a minority. By reporting things that we find, it enhances the conversation about Nintendo both here in our forums and elsewhere. We write for our readers, and they want to know.

The cats are going to come back – we love them too much. It is 2016, a new... something (handheld or console) is coming soon, and we have people excited to talk to us about what they're doing even if it isn't announced. If we can confirm it, we'll shout it from the rooftops.  We're not going to run every little thing that comes into the tip box, because that will kill our ability to be a reputable place for Nintendo discussion. But if we can corroborate something and we think our friends – which I consider each and every reader here – want to know, they'll get to see it.

[Compeau]

Wait, Mother 3 is coming to the US!?  Thanks for ruining the surprise, jerk!

[ghosthunter117]

You can't make everyone happy. I'll be skeptical until there's a purchase icon on the eShop but are people seriously complaining about the reporting of a possibility? I don't... ugh.

[Enner]

Rumor cats gonna rumor!


Carry on, cats.

[Triforce Hermit]

If you don't want to hear "spoilers" on announcements before they are announced, then don't open a editorial titled "rumor cats"

[nickmitch]

Kudos on addressing the complaints without calling the complainers whiny babies who are desperately reaching for something to be unhappy about.

[Khushrenada]

Personally, I view rumours (and, yes I'm going with the Fleetwood Mac spelling of the word. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you lot.) as just that; rumours. Until it is actually announced by Nintendo itself, it is just conjecture even if the rumour does have some basis in fact and turns out to be 100% correct. As such, I don't really have a problem with rumour reporting even if it might lessen the impact a bit from the actual announcement. It's still fist-pump worthy when you get the actual confirmation on things.

To me, this just strikes me as a slow news day article and a semi-humorous freedom of the press editorial.

[xaviorq8]

I'm in the camp that would prefer these things not be "spoiled", but that's because of Nintendo Directs. (At least when they happen on a regular basis...) Really, I'm just disappointed in the "Nintendo Ninjas" seemingly being unable to keep things under wraps anymore; it isn't the fault of those reporting these things.


Again, this is largely a sentiment born of having Directs. Big announcements are fun, and it'd be great if every Direct was able to deliver on big, surprising announcements. It's what makes them fun to look forward to! It doesn't help at times like this when Nintendo news is near nonexistent, so we fall back on the hope that there is cool stuff happening, that there are reasons to be excited, and any day Nintendo will announce the Direct to end all Directs, giving us our Mario Galaxy 3's and Metroid Primes and twenty new characters for Smash, all in just the intro video to the thing!


So yeah, it sucks when we [eventually] get just another nice direct with a couple of cool things announced, and double sucks when even the "cool things announced" turn out to be old, leaked news... Oh, and it triple sucks when the cool announcement is something the fans have been clamoring for years to have, so it'll probably be presented as something special well past the point it isn't. (For fans are fickle and only a fraction of those excited are so for genuine interest in the thing itself; the rest just want a reason to cheer.)


Modern Nintendo fans want every announcement to be an event! Compare that to a few years ago when the only real event people got this nuts for was E3 itself, and hell, go back a few years further to before all the press conferences were available for streaming/downloading/viewing, ALL THE NEWS we would get was in article, wall-of-text form! (With maybe a couple of screenshots and a link to download a terrible quality trailer from IGN.) And don't even get me started on what the rumor mill churned out back then!

[Soren]

Rumor reporting is more of a problem when other websites just run with it verbatim. Though hurts the credibility of the people reposting more often. It ends up being a really bad game of telephone (or a normal game of telephone, actually). It's not NWR or any other websites priority to run PR for the company.

[Shaymin]

Kudos on addressing the complaints without calling the complainers whiny babies who are desperately reaching for something to be unhappy about.

If I ever get really drunk one day, I'll post the first draft. (Note that I don't drink.)

[Ian Sane]

To me a spoiler would be if NWR had some article detailing every level of a new game before the game even came out.  But even then as long as it was clearly marked as such and I could avoid reading it, that would be fine.  Sometimes I avoid previews on games I'm interested in because I want the experience to be as fresh as possible.  A preview by it's nature has to provide some "spoilers" on what type of levels, power-ups, enemies, etc will be encountered.  So if it's like a Zelda game I know I will buy regardless and don't want to know much about it beforehand, I can skip reading it.

For news, if someone could tell me everything Nintendo is working on right this second I would be THRILLED to have some idea of what's going on.  When I'm disappointed in something like E3 for having a lack of surprises it usually correlates with a weak lineup of stuff.  Often I'm going to E3 thinking "gee, the schedule is pretty light so Nintendo better have something cooking" and then if they don't I'm upset because I already wasn't happy with the upcoming schedule.  I was looking for E3 or the Direct or whatever to fill a gap.  If I found out about the gap being filled months before, what does it matter to me?  What matters to me is what Nintendo is actually doing.  How I hear about it is not important.

If this Mother 3 thing is true, that's great news.  That in itself is what is exciting to me, not having a direct give me the update.  Though with the schedule as it is a direct where Mother 3 was the only thing being announced would be pretty lame.

[TOPHATANT123]

I wouldn't blame news sites for reporting news, once it's out there it's out, but in terms of originally releasing stories from inside sources like what Emily was famous for, where do you draw that line? If you and only you got word of Cloud being in smash would you make that information public knowing that you would lessen the surprise for everyone else? What about if someone leaked to you a list of every Nintendo game in development? How far is too far or is nothing sacred?

[Evan_B]

To me, the existence of this post is a culmination of the worst aspects of the gaming populace- they're generally a bunch that consumes content with such ferocity that it doesn't take long for them to move on to the next thing in order to satiate their hunger. This is true in video games themselves, which are now catered towards having a singular, memorable gameplay experience rather than one which stands the test of replay-ability, and especially true with news. Even if something is a potential surprise, many people have a desire to  read it anyway because of their thirst for knowledge.

This leads to the second and third problem- entitlement and sensitivity. Why do people honestly care about being spoiled when there are numerous signals that should tip you off before you even read these rumors? Even something as ambiguous as Emily's tweet should only serve to excite you. It seems to me that people are more becoming more and more accustomed to PR feed than they are actual journalism, and that's disappointing.

While I understand Nintenod has Directs and that the emotional high is diminished somewhat when something is spoiled, guess what? It's on Nintendo to keep us informed. They have had a battle going with the press for a long time, and things like the Nintendo Direct and Digital Events have been bold moves to make the press a little bit less relevant. That also means it's on Nintendo to keep their fans up-to-date with these things so that the surprise does come at the right time. So if something comes out before Nintendo has the time to speak up about it, guess what- that's on Nintendo, not the press.

We're at a period where Directs have been trickling out at a slower pace, likely because of the change in format and rough year in terms of restructuring. So in light of that, it's great that the press actually has the ability to keep us informed.

[Oedo]

I can get behind stuff like using spoiler tags, sites using titles like "Next Wave of Smash DLC Leaked" as opposed to "Rumour: Ryu Heading to Smash" two days before a Smash Direct, leaving leaked characters out of thumbnails on Youtube videos, etc. If a site has spoiler tags, I'll go out of my way to use them, even if I think something is even remotely spoiler-y. But the idea that the media or data miners should just sit on what they believe is credible information altogether is completely unrealistic. Attacking them when they don't is taking things way too far.

[Ian Sane]

Are you a fan of the Directs themselves or a fan of the games that the Directs reveal?  To me the game is the end goal.  I only give a **** about the Directs in that they reveal information about what new games are coming, so that in the future I can enjoy myself playing those games.  Are you following videogame news because you want to find out about new videogames that you can play or is the accumulation of the knowledge of these games the true interest?  If you're really upset about a rumour "spoiling" the Direct for you then it suggests that keeping up with videogames news is your actual interest, not playing videogames.

[michaelbaysuperfan616]

As a journalist myself I will defend any outlet that chooses to exercise their freedom of the press to report on things they deem newsworthy to their audience. If the audience disagrees then they stop reading that news outlet and move on, then it becomes the responsibility of the news outlet to find a new audience or grow their existing audience.

People hate that the media is ad driven but if we don't generate ads we don't pay the bills and nothing gets released. Oh you all know that which has nothing to do with this story. So here is something that does relate. If you have access to information that you as a reporter believe the public is better served by having access to that information, then by all means report on the news it is what we do. If, on the other hand, the releasing of that information is going to do more harm then good, consider why you wanted to share it in the first place.

I am writing a story right now I would rather not be writing, a family killed in a car accident. This is a fairly small town, everyone knows someone affected by this tragedy. We, the media, have access to information about parties involved the general public does not have access to, we have to decide what is in the best interest of the public, not the persons who are affected by the news. An example, we had a murder just before Christmas, we had the details of how the crime was committed, it was brutal it was disgusting, we didn't need to release that information to the public just who was killed, briefly mentioned it was a murder and police were investigating the cause of death. No body needs to know the gory details but the police and the reporter who was on scene to interview the police.

Nintendo World Report has an obligation to supply their readers with information to bring them back and get them talking, they do not have an obligation to make Nintendo look good, like someone else said they shouldn't just be PR for Nintendo that falls on Nintendo. So what if you have gotten used to a Direct and would prefer this news given to you in that manner, guess what Iwata is DEAD, he is dirt right now, so any Direct that comes from Nintendo now is not going to be the same as when Iwata did it so the dynamics have already changed irreversibly.

[Mop it up]

I don't really care about an announcement being a surprise or not, and I'm not sure why that's become such a big deal. What's exciting to me is if a good game is going to be released. I get my entertainment out of the games themselves.

[Oedo]

If you're really upset about a rumour "spoiling" the Direct for you then it suggests that keeping up with videogames news is your actual interest, not playing videogames.

Wanting to get excited about announcements and actually enjoying the games are not mutually exclusive things. I don't understand the intense need for pure, unspoiled spectacle some people have, but at the same time I don't think it's cool to crap on them for it or pull low blows like "do you even like playing games?" Everyone should be free to go about their fandom in their own way. It only becomes a problem when people start acting like their need to not have stuff spoiled supersedes other people's need to get news as soon as writers feel confident about sharing it. 

[broodwars]

Frankly, if you don't want to know anything about potentially upcoming games, why the **** are you on a video games news site? No, I don't sympathize in the least with the whining, entitled people who go around complaining about "spoilers" for video game marketing campaigns on a site dedicated to discussing said things. If you don't want to be "spoiled"  , stay off the internet.

[Soren]

This leads to the second and third problem- entitlement and sensitivity. Why do people honestly care about being spoiled when there are numerous signals that should tip you off before you even read these rumors? Even something as ambiguous as Emily's tweet should only serve to excite you. It seems to me that people are more becoming more and more accustomed to PR feed than they are actual journalism, and that's disappointing.

Emily's tweets were far from ambiguous. But I am more concerned with the reaction from people like Liam Robertson who seemed to spur the "OMG spoilers!" tidal wave.

[Ian Sane]

I just don't see how the knowledge that some game is being released is a spoiler.  It's a spoiler for the content in an official Nintendo presentation.  Not a spoiler for in-game content, it's revealing what Nintendo was going to reveal in their own presentation.  So if you're all upset about this then you're focused on your experience of watching the Nintendo presentation being affected.  What the hell?  That just seems so ridiculous.  I can understand being moderately disappointed in that but to do so to the point where you would complain about it?  Frankly I would be embarrassed to admit publicly that I was so hung up on something so trivial.  Or at worst it would "ah shucks, now that next Nintendo Direct won't be as surprising."

[broodwars]

In many ways, this "outrage" reminds me at all the people who railed on Kotaku for whining about being blacklisted by Bethesda/Ubisoft for "spoiling" the existence of Fallout 4, AC Unity, & AC Syndicate before the companies could roll out their official corporate messaging. Silly argument then. Silly argument now.

[nickmitch]

It's a known fact that weatherman often give intentionally bad forecasts so as to not spoiler the day's weather.

[TheXenocide]

Someone please explain to me why you would follow a news site if you don't want the news?

[UncleBob]

Did I miss something?  I don't know there was a hub-bub about the Mother Rumor....