Boycotting games - an evaluation on my signature

[Rainbird]

As some of you out there have undoubtedly taken notice, I have in my signature a collection of games that I am boycotting. These are all games I am really looking forward to, and I am only trying to get as little of a game spoiled as I possibly can for when I get my hands on it. This might seem as a hard thing to do to some, and I assure you, in the beginning, it was very difficult. I did get better at it though, and now I don't have a great issue with it. The only negative sideeffect for me is that it's hard to get excited about a game. The only thing you can really do is know that you should be excited, which is hardly all that fun.

It's only been recently that I have seen the fruits of my labors though. I started boycotting games like Killzone 2 and inFamous not very long before their respective releases, so I hardly saw great benefits of the boycotting.

However, the first game that I boycotted at a reasonable point to be released recently in time was Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game which became a very pleasant surprise to me. I knew some details of how the gameplay was from before I decided to boycott it, but playing the demo blew me away. I hadn't seen anything related to game for a few months at that point, so it all felt new and surprising. I have rarely gone from little excitement about a game to very excited based on a demo alone.

Then along came Uncharted 2. I had boycotted this a little while after watching the two initial teasers (the last one being the one from the VGA show where God of War III was also 'revealed'). I knew nothing of what characters would be appearing, how the game would start out, nothing apart from knowing that at some point Drake would be sitting in a train car hanging over a mountainside.
And seeing as there was no SP demo (I didn't download the MP demo, as I refused to let it spoil potential surprises, like characters, locations etc.), I didn't really get excited about the game until I was driving home with it in my bag.

So while this may lead to a slightly more dull excitement over games in general, I think it is still very much worth it. I am quite happy that I have done this, and I will continue to do so.