IS MARKETING KILLING THE WONDER OF GAMES?

There's a reason I barely if at all play triple A titles. I prefer niche-games for many reasons : they are not completely in the formula, perhaps not as polished, but they have soul.

I have odd tastes anyway, and while I can play many many things, truly enjoying is another thing.
But I don't think marketing alone is at fault. Marketing in itself is necessary, because we have too many games to choose from and need some method to decide on which we will spend our buckets on. But too much information spoils games.
In fact, any information does. But it also offers a different view on the game .. once you know that it has many hidden themes and details, you will look out for them a little more and notice more you would otherwise. That is usually what replaying would allow you to, so that's perhaps one of the reasons I rarely do that with newer games.

Of course, it's also how we deal with this flood of articles, screens and information.
I like watching teaser trailers, nothing specific. It says a lot about games (not so much for triple A titles, as they often have their own cinmatics, but for different ones) - it gives the style, the atmosphere, a little bit of the music, perhaps a battle-screen and you just get a dip, so you have to find out the rest yourself.
The only time I actively search for more information on a game is when I have not yet decided to buy it. And I wait for reviews to come in for that purpose, if it is an unknown developer or something I may not like. Short ones.

I've never understood how some people are obsessed with knowing EVERYTHING. Heck, story is the last thing I wanna know about beforehand. Nevermind that the beginning of stories is the worst part of it! If the best part is the introduction, then I'm out.
For games of series I know or games I know I wanna buy, I'll stop looking, I'll play it instead (even if that needs a couple more months)

Reminds me of an acquaintance when I used to play WoW (on a private server, mind you). He played on an official server, was and stayed a newbie, rather low leveled, but talked on and on about raids and bosses, and what to do to beat these bosses, and what they drop, and so on.
I had reached that state, but heck, I couldn't care less. (talking about MMOs workings is a waste of time anyhow, unless you're actually trying to apply something)

It's sad, but a certain kind of engagement has been lost. Sure, we can't be surprised anyhow, but even filling out a blank makes it better.
Presents are a good thing for that. When I'd gotten Okami, I hadn't looked up any games yet, so I didn't know a thing. Made it fresh. Sure, it was a great title by itself, but it had something special. Replaying wasn't bad, either.

My favorite titles were among those I knew little to nothing about as well. My first SMT game, Devil Survivor, too, actually.
After that my brother lend me his PS2, along with game recommendations, and I dug in (more SMT, woohoo). Best roster of games I've played for years to come. These games alone have raised my standard drastically.

There are many reasons to play games. There are all kinds of funs, even if it's sometimes braindead hack 'n' slash, brutal difficulty, or just atmospheric experiments. When you know what you can play, you'll play what suits you or your mood.
It's a place to be home, I guess.

If you want to revive that feeling of venturing into the unknown, you'll need to find someone who knows what you like and/or has similiar tastes .. and then have him pick games for you (and possible you for him). Console swaps or so work just as well.
Played Soul Sacrifice over christmas, a truly brilliant game. I didn't know a thing, either.
That way, you get selected games, but don't know a thing.

Heck, now that I read over what I've written here, I might just try that sometime and see what happens.

I definitely agree with the idea that wikis can kind of wreck game experiences. I'm not sure how you avoid that besides designing games that maintain mystery without being improved by a wiki.

For example, in Minecraft the crafting is incredibly difficult and not very fun without a wiki - it's just moving different resources around into a shape that sort of makes sense. There's not much in the sense of mystery; you could keep the wonder of discovering new items without forcing players to screw around with the workbench forever. In the end, I'll always just end up keeping the wiki open in another tab when I need to craft stuff, which is a poor workaround.

I always wondered what an MMO with evolving random elements would be like... a game like WoW, but with a focus on exploration instead of progression, where the fun was in finding new things, not min-maxing to hell.

A perfect balance also means that you can go for any build and don't have to follow an "ideal build" from a guide. So that's also a positive thing.

I do believe that the sense of wonder stems from discovering something new, understanding something you did not know about.

author=wiki
In Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction the term sense of wonder is defined as follows:

SENSE OF WONDER n. a feeling of awakening or awe triggered by an expansion of one’s awareness of what is possible or by confrontation with the vastness of space and time, as brought on by reading science fiction.:179

Reading about a game's strategy tips or looking at too much stream is detrimental to your own gaming experience. While I found it satisfying to summon Knights of the Round against Emerald Weapon, I had no sense of accomplishment or wonder in breeding a golden chocobo because I had to look at a FAQ to figure out how.

I last felt a great deal of wonderment a few years ago when I first played Odin Sphere, after I found out about it while browsing gamespot. I only had to look at 20 seconds of footage to know that I would love this game and immediately bought a copy on Ebay.
Many of my favorite games I had limited knowledge of when I started playing them.

I think that solo games make it easier to feel anything while you play. MMOs usually encourage competition, whether it is between players or as a self-imposed need to catch up. It's a different mindset.

Games became too expensive to develop commercially. Not only that, they are being sold for less. I remember buying Final Fantasy 6 (née 3) for $72. I can't think of a single modern game that demands that cost... up front.

As a result, game marketers are under a lot of pressure to expose enough information to entice people to even drop $40 on a game.

I wonder what the development costs are for each genre of game, across each different console (or computer)...

You don't really play Sin & Punishment 2 for the story. You WILL be surprised by the amazing gameplay anyway!

It's the consumer's choice to 'ruin' the amazement and wonder. Developer's these days show a lot of material before release these days. You can often see many of the games locales and characters if you decide to look them up, not to mention new trend seems to be "leaked" material.

The player can also follow strict guides and FAQs to platinum the game as quickly as possible, or you can just look Let'sPlay from youtube if you just want to cross the game from your checklist.

Personally I choose to play games for fun and stray away from the over-exposure of trailers and info, and couldn't care less about FAQs and the most optimal builds for characters.

in regards to mechanics, i really do enjoy it when i find one little thing in a game years later. not even secrets, just some move that's not entirely necessary and only mentioned in the instruction booklet. i remember finding out how to run while shooting in mgs1 in my 2nd playthrough. also I guess playing super mario 64 as an adult + watching speedruns made me appreciate it more on an exciting level. such as spamming dive to gain speed or kick jumping up a slope you don't want to go down.

i don't think i can be impressed by the scope of games anymore. like i know im in a skybox with cardboard cutout mountains in the distance. i do get impressed when a game does a lot of complicated "cinematic" set pieces all during gameplay though. for example fighting angels on a plane while it's about to crash in slow mo is just "cool"

I spend all day in an online game with a small community, which I run, and thus need to moderate the discussion channels in, so I can't really "turn off" the constant kotaku newsfeed. I am bombarded with information regarding, at the very least, Square Enix games and RPGs.

I really don't want to know anything about Dragon Age: Inquisition, but thanks to my faithful playerbase discussing things they learned from the dozens of videos and interviews and press releases, I now know the entire plot, a laundry list of mechanical changes, a precise list of every recurring character who will be present in the game, to what extent each of those characters will respond to various situations in the game that refer to things that the player had control over in the first two Dragon Age games, which allies will be romancable under which conditions, which voice actor will be used for certain characters, how the new crafting system works, and so forth. THANKS GUYS. I don't even have to play the game now!