Reasonable Assessment: The Internet Hurt The Discovery
If you follow me on Twitter, you probably haven’t heard from me for a while. That’s because I’m on a media blackout right now. I am so scared of seeing Sonic Mania spoilers, that I’ve installed a Google Chrome extension that blocks Twitter and other websites until Mania’s release date this week. I’ve crawled out of my shell just long enough to bring you this opinion piece.
Picture this: The year is 1997. You are a 6th grader and it’s a Friday night after school. You are sitting alone in your room with a Nintendo 64 controller in your hand as the light from a 4:3 cathode ray tube television shines a reflection in your eyes. You are about to collect the final Power Star of the entire game. It’s Star #120 and it’s the only thing standing between you and 100% completion. “If I get this last star,” you think to yourself, “maybe it will unlock Luigi like Nick said on the playground.”
Much to your surprise, you are not greeted by Mario’s taller, greener brother upon collecting the final star. Rather, nothing seems to have happened at all, until you return to the very first area in the game to find a cannon outside Peach’s castle. You hop inside it and say, “Hey, I wonder if I could get on the castle’s roof. Maybe there’s something up there.” With an eager press of the A button, you launch Mario through the sky and watch as he clumsily lands at the top. What’s that? An exhilarating sense of discovery overtakes you. “Yoshi! Oh my gosh, Yoshi is on the roof!” you say aloud. You’re the only human being in your room, but you don’t care. You say it anyway. It’s a moment you will remember forever. It’s a moment where it’s just you and the game, and the world has no idea what you’ve discovered.
That, my friends, is an experience we do not get anymore. In this Let’s Play-saturated culture, it’s hard to imagine there was a time where the only one way to see a video game in action was to be in the same room as the game console. Maybe you saw a small, low-res screenshot in a magazine, if you were lucky. Even that wouldn’t come close to experiencing it in motion.
What is there to unlock today? What is there to surprise us with? For 100% completion, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (2002) gave you a cutscene teasing a new villain for the sequel. If you wanted to see the new villain, you had to put hours into that game. You had to earn it. If it were released today, that cutscene would have been slapped up on YouTube on release day. Some journalist would have screenshot’d it, and gave it all away in the headline. No working for it, no earning it, it’d just already be out there. Instant gratification without the journey. Just so someone can get a few more clicks, and few more views.
At high risk of sounding like a raving Luddite, the internet has greatly diminished an intimate sense of discovery that once existed in gaming. It’s discouraging developers from even trying to facilitate it. Renowned Smash Bros creator, Masahiro Sakurai, was disappointed when the cutscenes for Super Smash Bros Brawl were put up online and decided to exclude any cutscenes from its sequel. He said:
Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create were uploaded onto the internet. You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I’ve decided against having them.
I’m not saying the internet has ruined everything. Rather, I’m thankful for Lets Plays. There are tons of games that I’ve never had a chance to play that I’ve got to experience vicariously because of Twitch and YouTube. Heck, I’ve watched playthroughs of an entire game, and still bought the game anyway. It’s not the end of the world. But we’d all be fools if we said that the internet hasn’t changed the way games are made. The plethora of DLC packs alone is enough to make that argument (but that’s another rant for another day). There is a certain mystery that’s just not there anymore. Instead of hosting a meeting-of-the-minds between the slide and teeter totter during recess, any 6th grader can just pull up a gameplay video on his phone and learn all he needs to know about unlocking Ganondorf in Smash 4. When he sees that “Challenger Approaching” screen, it’s no big deal. He already knew it was coming.
That’s why I want to see nothing of Sonic Mania until its release this week . I want those special moments of discovery. I want those easter eggs to feel new to me. When the title card comes up at the start of a stage, I want to be reading it for the first time. I want to watch that opening cutscene in context (yes, I know it got leaked and then quickly released, but I still won’t watch it until day one). This game, this wonderful game they call Sonic Mania, is doing everything it can to feel like a game from a bygone era. For me to have seen the whole game in a 60fps video beforehand wouldn’t feel right to me. If you are much younger than me and don’t share these pre-YouTube memories, I won’t judge you if you feel differently. But for me, much like Sonic Mania itself, I want to recapture what has been lost.
So can that wonderful sense of discovery exist in an always-online world? I believe it can. It’s just harder. You may think I’m an old 90’s kid who’s off his rocker (and you’re probably right). But I believe that there is satisfaction in having to work for it.
I believe there is merit in discovery. And I think somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten that. Sometimes, we just need to be reminded…
And that…
…is a reasonable assessment.
Noah Copeland is a somewhat-interesting human. He makes music, makes films, and stands at exactly average height. He reads all your comments, but you can also throw things at him on Twitter @NoahCopeland (when he’s not on media blackout, anyway).
![[ID: dVJGsZKpAYs] Youtube Automatic](https://lastminutecontinue.com/wp-content/uploads/id-dvjgszkpays-youtube-automatic-60x60.jpg)
![Private: [ID: 8IE8FTdldRs] Youtube Automatic](https://lastminutecontinue.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/private-id-8ie8ftdldrs-youtube-a-360x203.jpg)
![[ID: xy2FAItv9D4] Youtube Automatic](https://lastminutecontinue.com/wp-content/uploads/id-xy2faitv9d4-youtube-automatic-360x203.jpg)
#TRUTH Yeah I accidentally reshared a (said video of a mania zone) cause I was like I’m going to have a very hard time not blasting this music on my surround sound in my room 😆 Not realizing this (said video of a certain mania zone) wasn’t official I pissed off a group of people. I’m like ~*$#!**~ oops now I’ve done it! ARGH :'( but it was just like 30 seconds of gameplay so it didn’t spoil it too big but :\ argh
Reasonable Assessment in a nutshell: Stay away from the internet when something you like is coming out, this happens with any video game, series, movies, books, comicbooks, etc., especially when is something popular 🙂
Also as a Sonic fan I consider is very healthy to stay away from opinion pieces and blogs about Sonic every too often, though of course that is something journalists can’t allow themselves to do.
Having barely used the internet aside from being desperate when I really couldn’t find anything for a certain game I’ve already put hours into, I totally agree on this.
Tbh tho, at least games like Maina go thru the effort these days of putting in extra stuff. Because then you have the alternatives like Street Fighter V which rushes out an incomplete game and then still forces you to buy the rest instead of putting out a finished product. And even Smash does some effort into it’s unlockables be it the few characters that are locked and all the extra trophies.
I mean, when all your older enteries have secret bosses, hidden characters, and all that extra stuff, yet these days you want to just make all that DLC with no surprise or reward, you kinda screwed up big-time.
Sorry, it’s just that Street Fighter V is basicly the antithesis of everything I hate with modern games, especially modern fighting games. E-Sports has tainted the genre.
Gotta say the opposite, being a modern fan, i had almost zero interest in this game in the months before release. It wasn’t until the game leaked and some of the spoiler showed up online that my interest increased.
@SJMASTER
That’s actually an interesting alternative perspective I hadn’t considered. I’ve been sold on Mania since the reveal, so there’s my bias.
Judging by how much everyone freaked out in spoiler threads whenever every little thing was discovered, I’d say the thrill is still there, just the context changed. For me, personally, I wouldn’t trade knowing about the game, knowing for sure it’ll be what I want it to be before I drop my money for that sense of discovery or thrill. I’d almost been burned a couple times in the last decade by that, and I think it killed any desire for it that was left. I don’t like wasting money.
I suppose it’s different with a “sure thing” like this, but I think I’m too far gone to ever care about that thrill, or even still get it, half the time, over knowing what I’m getting into ahead of time.
Very well written. I totally understand what you mean when you write that “a certain mystery is just not there anymore”.
When I played Super Mario 64 I truely believed that the game will end after collecting 8 Stars and defeating Bowser. I still remember how happy I was when I discovered that the game continues afterwards. Indeed, nowadays it’s really difficult to not get spoiled before starting a game.
Although I must say, for certain games I was already looking up, whether the reward for collecting all items is worth the time (especially when I didn’t like the game too much).
If sega with its vague reason of “optimization” didn’t delay the steam version of sonic mania then my blackout of forums and youtube would’ve worked but there’s no damn way I can wait another two weeks and I not made of money, I can’t afford a switch/xbone/ps4 now.
I expected to get the damn game same time as everyone else but no I get the finger while anyone who got their switch CE early got it early and now new zealand has it. I know 95% of the spoilers and now when it comes out on the 29th I’ll be using “other means” to get it unless sega releases the steam version on the 15th and patches it later.
“They didn’t release it day and date with everything else, so I’m just going to pirate”. I’ve heard of decent reasons for that, but this one is just petty as hell. If that’s all it took, you probably weren’t buying the damn thing to begin with, so don’t even start with the excuses. If you don’t want to monetarily support the first real, authentic old school 2D Sonic in twenty years just freaking admit that rather than act like you’re taking some dumb stand that no one but you would care about anyway.
@ACK…
I’ve actually considered writing a whole RA on the delay. I know it sucks that you have to wait two weeks 🙁 But I really can’t be mad at the decision. Sonic is franchise that has an image problem, with a reputation of rushed games that were released before they were ready. 06, Rise of Lyric…. I take it that they must have found some game breaking / crashing error type of stuff on certain PCs running Mania, because otherwise I figured they’d just patch it later. The fact that Sega is now committed to delaying things until they are ready is a wonderful turn of events. Sonic cannot afford to release anything that isn’t technically functional. After the Fire & Ice delay and the earlier Mania day from Spring to Summer, I’m quite relieved that Sega isn’t messing around anymore.
I’m sorry you don’t have any other way to play it 🙁
I agree with this 100%. I can’t stand that everything is spoiled these days. Not even just by the fans either, companies go out of their way to spoil everything with trailers and press releases too. (Nintendo would actually have sold me on Fire Emblem Warriors if they hadn’t shown us so much of the roster, don’t like the Awakening and Fates crew so much, lol.)
I want to return to an era where I can discover games on my own again.
Preach.
Try to imagine how PC players are feeling right now.
I’m pissed as f*ck!
trying to avoid the net as much as possible.
Sega Nerds made a lovely article to help PC players avoid spoilers for the next two weeks:
http://www.seganerds.com/2017/08/13/pc-players-how-to-avoid-spoilers-for-sonic-mania-until-the-29th/
Thanks, man, but it’s kinda late now.
Even the thumbnails show spoilers.
I miss the 90’s when we only had magazines to show these kind of things.
I loved this article.
Aw, that’s too bad. Glad you like the article!
Totally. I wish I could get the surprises I used to feel when I discovered unlockable characters in Melee, or when I was surprised to fight 3 bosses in a row at the end of Sonic 3. But while that has diminished, surprises have evolved with the internet and taken new form. They’re in Coro Coro leaks that tell of new Pokemon News, or in Nintendo Directs as we cross our fingers and hope our favorite franchise will make an appearance, or at Trade Shows and Game Expos. It may not be on our own terms, but we can still revel in the surprise with our friends, in person or over Discord.