DLC success, a consequence of a spoiler seeking culture?

I am a person whose console of preference generally gravitates to Nintendo. Aside from the nostalgia factor there was always an accelerating feeling of excitement combined with mystery from playing games in their various systems. Those lingering emotions of discovery mainly stemmed from the tight amount of secrecy Nintendo always projected when developing new games. You would only get a glimpse of the beta version of Ocarina of Time and suddenly, a couple of years later, you would see some pics and videos of the final product only showcasing gameplay and a very small amount of story elements. At the time, the delivery of direct and concise amounts of information would only leave space for one’s imagination to wonder as to what secrets the game would hold and, in part, fuel your desire to acquire that new game you’ve eagerly awaited so long.

one would only see a quick beta and then BAM almost finished game years later.

Gaming would eventually abandon being a niche leisure activity and become a common hobby, so new companies entered the battle for a space in your living room. Therefore, in order to justify a $150-$200 console entry fee companies really needed to drive home the point that their console is the one you need. Details about the games coming to their respective system became more lengthy and in depth. More story elements begun to be revealed before the game would come out, more characters that you would meet along the way and their abilities would be explained right at an E3 press conference rather than reading about them in a review from your favorite gaming magazine. But Nintendo, like the old timer it tends to be from time to time, stood still with keeping development a secret until the latter years of the Wii.

E3 fueled the imaginations of non-goers who eagerly waited for a gaming magazine E3 special

With the help of various internet outlets fully detailed game reveals would become the norm and the extra juicy secrets would be revealed by a YouTube or Twitch user within days of the game release. Therefore, by the time your average consumer had bought the game they would already have the option to see everything that the game had to offer from every angle, and generally the largest secret in a game would be accidentally read in some forum or thread. I generally go on full informative lockdown when the definitive version of the newest Zelda game gets revealed in some trailer, but other than that I try my hardest to just glance over any Zelda related news. Then, Nintendo started doing their in-depth showcases in the form of the Nintendo Direct.

youtube and twitch channels are examples of easy access spoiler galore one would could get

I eagerly wait for every single Nintendo Direct to the point that I would stop everything that I’m doing and just seek anything with a Wi-Fi connection and a screen and try not to get too excited in public settings. But the more frequent the Nintendo Directs come along the less excited I get about the games. More details are revealed by Nintendo and smaller channels in the various sites and, by the time I bought Mario Kart 8 I already knew who all the “locked” characters where without doing any mayor previous effort to find out who was going to be in the game, so there was no discovery or mystery to playing. So how do you cope with everything being revealed right from the gate? Well, in my opinion, with DLC.

DLC in Nintendo consoles (the WiiU mainly) are still secretive, is that feeling of finding content that you didn’t know what it’s going to be just yet. Mario Kart 8 DLC got announced but the karts are still a mystery, the 16 new tracks are only a small picture within a collage of other extra content offered, and you can only wonder how the F-Zero or Zelda themed track will look. The discovery feeling is still alive and well, only thing is that now you have to pay a small entry fee to the spoiler free zone.

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jorgeill