In this, the “Information Age” it has become ridiculously easy to seek out and find any sort of information that you want.

What’s the capital of Ghana? I don’t know, but I could tell you in about 15 seconds. (It’s Accra, so leave Google alone and keep reading). What about the information that you don’t want, though?

New and exciting games come out all the time, and some people want to know all about the game, without knowing too much (especially big spoilers), lest they have the entire experience rolled out for them before they even have the cellophane rapping off of the box.

It all comes down to three major reasons. You guys, writers like us and the folks who actually promote the game.

Sometimes, when I am really excited for a game, I will go on a complete blackout from all of the media being released beforehand. Seriously, it is my job to post up news and information on upcoming games, but if it’s a release that I have a personal attachment to, I’ll try my best to steer clear. We have other other writers, they can do it, I am running for the hills.

With recent big releases like Mass Effect 2, you will do well to keep away from it as much as possible. I really wanted to play the game, so by the time the game was a month or two away, I stopped following it. Videos, information, whatever. This allowed me to experience the game with fresh eyes, having only seen a few character videos here and there and finally, the launch trailer itself.

Even with my precautions, a few things got into my eyeballs before I could realise. The publishers definitely baffle me sometimes. Why create an amazing story with twists, turns and big moments when you are going to show a lot of them off in the marketing? I saw characters in promo wallpapers that should have only been revealed in the story as a secret, videos have clips of important cutscenes that take place in the story. This just reinforces the idea that a lot of the times, publishers are on a completely different page to the developers.

The next group of people responsible are people like me, who write for sites like this.

You see, as writers for sites like Lazygamer.co.za it is our jobs to try and ensure that we provide information and content for upcoming games without spoiling the party for anyone, but our abilities only go so far. We do out best to slap spoiler tags on something that may contain just that, or if it’s a series that we are not familiar with that may contain spoilers, we do our best to make it known.

If we do our jobs accordingly, nothing should slip out, but this leads me onto the third group, and that’s all of you.

The biggest issue comes from things that we can’t control, like comment threads. I have had a handful of movie twists and endings spoiled for me, purely because I took an interest in something I saw on the internet. Excited for the film, I would follow a recent entry on Digg that had something to do with one of the lead actors, directors, trailers etc. only to have some knob-twakkie in the comments (who has read the book or something to that effect) decide that his mission that day was to shout the plot twist or ending out as much as humanly possible.

It sucks, it really does. Sometimes I would try so hard to avoid unwanted information only to have something really big spoiled mere days before its release.

Back in the day, you just told your friends to shut up. If you didn’t want to know something, then you either made it clear, or just left the room if anyone needed to talk about it.

Nowadays, it’s no longer that easy. We can promise you that we will do everything in our power to try and keep our posts fresh but spoiler-free. There is nothing worse than having something revealed to you that gives it all away, you can’t forget it and you can’t take it back.

It’s a done deal and it sucks. So be kind to other gamers and think about what you say. Keep in mind that some people haven’t finished all the games that you have. Always be weary of talking about spoilers in a place where people can hear/read them, even games that are a year old or more. We are gamers, we all enjoy this hobby immensely, so let’s try and keep it fun and fresh for everybody that wants to experience it first hand.

Had a bad experience? Tell us in the comments, and please, for the sake of all that is awesome in gaming, leave out any spoilers.