It’s not something I’ve done in a while. If anything, I’m the complete opposite and have been a long time. Thinking right back to the days I was on dial-up and downloading a new MMO or game could be a multi-night affair, it became a big part of my ‘process’ to dive deep into any game I was downloading. It was a source of great enjoyment actually, to have something like the Anarchy Online client on the way — ever so slowly, down those most narrow of internet tubes — while I dove deep in the class options, the best stats, optimal levelling paths, group compositions — anything and everything I could get my hands on.
As an aside — there is an impression out there that this type of information for a game only really became widely available around the time of WoW. Not true! I think just the sourcing of it changed. MMO Developers used to put a lot of this content together themselves and have it right on their website! Then of course there were the official forums, another treasure trove of stickied guides compiled by community experts.
I digress though, back on topic — this all became such an ingrained part of my process for a game, I’ve found it follow me through life to today even when the reasoning that kicked it all off, in the beginning, is no longer there. With Fibre, games download in a *snap*, so there really isn’t that same filling in a time void with the next best thing.
Occasionally though, I get an urge to attempt to recapture something of my lost innocence when it comes to MMOs or even gaming more generally.
I can’t help but remember my first steps in Asheron’s Call and just being utterly gobsmacked by the scope of the world and all the options I had for character creation put before me. I had no idea that the concept of min-maxing even existed, let alone how to do it. I just went with what sounded cool when put together as a character concept.
I went through several of Asheron’s Calls betas like that, in fact. Sure- I learnt things, and refined character choices here and there a little but there was always so much more. More to learn and see in the world, more to learn about how to interact with it, more… everything.
I didn’t learn about min-maxing until well after the retail launch as part of my foray into Darktide — the full PvP server — even here, the wonders of the world seemed immense and unknowable.
*sigh*
Short a case of amnesia, full well I know it isn’t possible to capture those early days of wonder. Not really.
But one of the ways I occasionally try is to just go into a game… without doing any of that preliminary research. In fact, going on a complete media blackout where the game is concerned with the aim of knowing as little about anything it has to offer.
Although perhaps when I say ‘occasionally’ I might still be presenting the idea that I do it more often than is the case. I think the last time I really went all-in blind on a game was… Guild Wars 2? The initial release?
Guild Wars 2 was a game I already knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted. There wasn’t going to be anything I could find out that was going to make me not get it — so I decided very early on I didn’t want to know which classes from Guild Wars 1 were coming over, what abilities there were, areas, nothing.
And you know what? It worked, to an extent. I picked a class based on my old guild D&D/RP play – Ranger – and just went with it, not knowing how over or underpowered people from the betas thought it was or anything else. I had no idea going in about the public play events, hearts setup, any of it! So there was definitely a period of discovery that wouldn’t have existed under my normal modus operandi.
You can’t unlearn everything you know about gaming, MMOs and RPGs in general though — so it was shorter lived than that first go around with Asheron’s Call.
Even so, I had the oddest desire come over me to give this another go for Elden Ring — funnily enough while in the process of watching a video about what we know so far from interviews, trailers and news releases so far. Hah.
I can’t really say I’m going in completely ‘blind’ in this case, I know a bit already — but I think I might instigate the media blackout policy on it from here-on until the February 2022 release, avoid learning anything else.
And! I’m pretty excited by the prospect of doing so. :)
This was posted during Blaugust 2021, the annual blogging event hosted by Belghast. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
I almost always go in blind. I generally like games the most in the first hours when I’m learning about their systems by using them. For me researching stuff ahead of time robs me of the most fun part of a game, and often leads to spoilers, which I don’t like.
What you DID remind me of is the days of reading a game manual. Like I’d run out at lunchtime to buy a game then I’d be secretly reading the manual at work, waiting for 5 PM to come so I could go home and play. OK go home and feed disks into the computer for a couple hours, and then play!
Ahh, manuals! Some of those bad boys were quite chunky, I remember some like the Age of Wonders manual being quite a tome. And yes, I enjoyed reading them after purchase before could get home again too. :)
You’re right re: Systems and self-discovery of them though. Some of my favourite games are those that continue to unlock new significant systems well into their run time that surprise me and offer more to do.
Still; between the fact there is a lot more out there than I can ever reasonably play, and as discussed here, how ingrained it has become as part of my ‘process’ for waiting for / making a purchase decision for a game, it’s often a difficult thing to step away from!
Pretty much always. Reading up beforehand would ruin the surprise and novelty factor that is a big motivator for people driven to discover.
I usually hit the wikis and third party sites -after-, when discovery has plateaued and now I’m interested to know what other people think about X and whether they’ve done any of the tedious research breaking down Y (so that lazy me doesn’t have to do it) and what completely non-obvious things crowdsourced wisdom has turned up and codified.
This view seems to be the majority in our community. I noted to UltrViolet in a tweet reply that this appears to be one of those things that became so normalised in my little corner of the internet that I’ve incorrectly expanded the belief out to encompass a wider group of people doing this than actually seems to be the case.
One part I didn’t talk about here directly, but certainly also formed a large part in creating this ‘process’ for me, was that when I was younger and much less cynical, I’d (along with my guild) spend years in anticipation of an MMO in development – Shadowbane and Darkfall being two key examples here – so every small scrap of information was a hit of joy for us. xD
Well, some of this may be semantics, really, re: what “going in blind” comprises.
Choosing a game to play does mean learning enough about the game to figure out if I might like it – so screenshots, videos, reviews, a summary of the genre, setting, main features, reading the official website (which presumably has class descriptions and such other general marketing materials) are fair game to me, Ditto manuals of old, which had the knack of providing general instructions and lore information as a side treat. Walkthroughs and game guides are a no-go zone beforehand though.
Where I draw the line at is game -secrets- essentially, the kind of esoteric information you find in GameFAQs and wikis and third-party walkthrough websites, the build calculators, the player-drawn maps, the step-by-step guides to such-and-such zone and dungeon, anything that has the hint of “best” or “optimal.”
Those tend to be useless to me before setting foot in a game. Too detailed, no frame of reference, completely spoils any sense of personal discovery. Starting out following a prescribed optimal route means the lack of freedom to learn for oneself through feel and intuition -why- certain things might be considered better than others.
After enough general hands-on experience just mucking around in a game and feeling out where things are confusing and might need clarification, then seeking out what other players have done and recommend is more welcome, because one has built enough of a conceptual framework to hang that kind of detailed knowledge on.
Aye, as with most things there is definitely a scale here. At one end — absolutely nothing about the game at all, no trailers, no official releases, no interviews, zip, nada.
Only really ‘safe’ to do with something you already know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you’re going to get anyway. And at least for me, those don’t come around too often… Although will also be honest and say even when they do, I typically will still dive into a lot of this type of information anyway.
Moving toward the other end of the spectrum, does depend a lot on what the game is. I’m far more likely to go looking for this ‘deep’ information about an MMO for example, than I am a single-player game.
I think largely because of how burned I felt once I did discover the whole concept of min/maxing or hell, even just building a ‘good’ character full-stop.
So it’s certainly a challenge sometimes to step back from that and just let things come.