Heh... incoming Mona Lisa rant :) (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Saturday, June 25, 2016, 18:29 (3073 days ago) @ RaichuKFM

And that's how I feel about any great piece of art or entertainment. Finding out that character x kills character y, or that this person is that person's father is ultimately meaningless to the experience, IMO. What matters is the look on person y's face when person x kills them, or the build of emotions that leads someone to tell someone else "I am your father". If those moments are powerfully told, they hit me exactly as strong after 100 viewings as they do on the very first viewing, because I'm not feeling my own reactions, I'm feeling things through the characters :)

I disagree.

I mean, putting aside the obvious subjectivity of the matter, I think learning it for the first time divorced of character y's face, and all the drama of the moment, can dampen the scene in future viewings; and things that had shock value originally and worked well for it can later not have as much of the effect, because the shock is gone; and that doesn't mean they necessarily were done poorly?

It varies, in short. This is less of a reason why leaks/spoilers are bad, of course, and more of a reason why some people just shouldn't look at them.

Yeah I'm sure a lot of this comes down to personality, as well as how our brains work when we're watching/reading stuff for the first time.

Personally, shock value doesn't really carry any value for me at all. I posted a link to an article a while back (can't remember if I posted it here or on twitter) about how some university conducted a study on a group of "viewers". They split the viewers into 2 groups and showed both groups the same movie. 1 group went into the movie totally "blind" (none of them had seen or heard anything about it before watching) while the other group were given a basic synopsis of the entire plot before watching. After each group watched the movie, they got everyone to rate it based on their personal enjoyment. The group that had the movie "spoiled" for them found it significantly more enjoyable.

The theory they came up with was basically that when we watch a movie "blind", a large portion of our mental capacity is tied up trying to remember names, faces, plot details... all this new information that the movie is throwing at us. Theoretically, the emotional side of our brain is less engaged, because we're too busy absorbing the "facts" of the story. But when we watch a story that we are already familiar with, our mental capacity is no longer working to absorb all that "surface level" info which gives us the mental space to connect with the characters in a more emotional, personal level. It allows us to "feel" things more.

Now I'm sure there are plenty of people who will say "that's not how it works for me", but it certainly describes my experiences. I'm also the guy who will meet someone for the first time, learn their name, and instantly forget it. It's not that I'm that forgetful (usually, lol), it's because my brain is too busy studying their face, listening to the tone of their voice, getting a read of their body language and expressions; all details I tend to miss if I'm instead focusing on remembering their name.