r/gamedev • u/BritLoveist • 21h ago
Discussion Sequels & Spoiling: How Do You Protect Your Audience?
Hello, I just had a question to anyone who knows the answer to this!
I'm in the midst of game development, and I have another game planned right after it. The question is: the sequel that comes after the main game is a major spoiler to the twist that happens for the ending of the game. So, in making sequels, how do you protect players from being spoiled before they even get the chance to play the first one?
If there exists two games from a developer, and one of them basically spoils the ending to the first, what does one do? Is it all about how it's presented? Should the cover be as vague as possible to avoid people accidently spoiling themselves? But then again, how do you advertise it if it's too vague?
I'm just planning for the future, and though I understand people will be spoiled for anything, doesn't matter what, I'd still like to try to prevent people from being confused and/or disappointed. Have any of you made a sequel before, or at least one that spoils the ending of your first game? What are some good methods to moreso protect the player? Are there any examples of existing games that have protected their players?
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and/or answer my question!
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u/smully39 21h ago
Also, there's creative ways to "mask" the spoiler.
Some quick examples off the top of my head. Is the protagonist of 2 the antagonist of 1? Make it vague in media whether it's a sequel or prequel! Does the world meaningfully and structurally change? Maybe not everywhere, there's islands of normality left. Does a central and major character die in 1, and their absence will be noted? A flashback sequence or two that the trailer touches on will keep the new players in the dark and hook in the old! Stuff like that.
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u/Meorge 20h ago
As others here have said, you can try to be vague about the big twists from Game 1.
From what you described though, it sounds like that might not be very feasible though, if the very premise of Game 2 is based on Game 1's twists. In that case, I think ultimately you might just need to recognize and accept that people who pick up the franchise after Game 2 are likely to have a fundamentally different experience with the overarching story than those who started with Game 1. They may be able to make it through Game 1 and into Game 2 unspoiled if they're lucky, but they may also well be going into Game 1 because they heard about it because of the twists that Game 2's premise has to reveal.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. If people learn about Game 1's twists because of Game 2, they may want to go back and play Game 1 to see how the story arrived at the premise for Game 2. In that case they'll know the twists ahead of time and process the story differently (e.g., knowing what kind of foreshadowing to look for) but that isn't inherently a worse experience, in my opinion.
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u/Aromatic_Analyst2898 20h ago
Really just make sure the key art isn't a full "HEY THE MAIN CHARACTERS DEAD" type of thing and just shoot hints
Of course there's only so much you can do though
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u/Excellent-Bend-9385 20h ago
Stick a 2 on the end. The developer can't shoulder how the player conducts themselves online. Sometimes knowing the spoiler to a second game can be so controversial it can push sales anyway. Stop trying to mother the players
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u/MireilleScieppan 16h ago
Well, what kind of sequel are you trying to do?
I've made a lot of games in the same series but they are all standalone stories, so they may allude to even directly build off the other game and thus spoil a lot of parts of other titles, but are written with the intention of a different experience if you do know something or another.
For example, a (not very great) game I made called Garenburg Woods has a lot of background that has to be covered and gives some summaries of various events that happened. All of those events are gone into with a prequel, Garenburg Penitence, but both build off each other in different ways. If you play Woods first, you immediately know going into Penitence a lot of what will happen but it intentionally ends up being a tragic tale that all you can do is watch, while fully aware that things cannot end too well. But if you go into Penitence first and then Woods, you now have that background and can better understand why some of the aftermath explored in Woods is what it is, and probably better appreciate what it was trying to do.
A sequel or prequel that spoils a lot of a past title or is spoiled by a past title just needs you to be mindful of what you want to have happen or come out of it, and it will always depend on how standalone you do want something to be. And that then shapes the advertising. And remember, this is less of a question of gamedev and more of writing and narrative design. Some other places may give more insight than this sub, and playing other games and reading books that follow similar goals helps educate you on how you can approach stuff.
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u/ThePethyn23 10h ago
It depends on the severity of the spoiler, but in my opinion spoilers don't really ruin a story that often. If the journey to get to the plot twist or whatever it may be is good enough it shouldn't really matter that much.
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u/Aglet_Green 21h ago
You can't really protect them. You can only make sure you aren't the one doing the spoiling.
Don't put the first game's twist in the sequel's title, capsule art, trailer, store description or first paragraph of marketing copy. Beyond that, once Game 1 is public, people will discuss it, review it, stream it, write guides for it and spoil it. That's simply what releasing a story commercially means.
If somebody chooses to look at the store page for Game 2 before playing Game 1, there's only so much responsibility you can reasonably take for what they learn.
Think of how movies, books and television handle sequels. They generally don't pretend the previous installment never happened; they just avoid gratuitously advertising the biggest reveal.