Hey All,
With so many story orientated games both on the horizon and on our shelves, we thought it necessary to remind you all about the hazards of posting spoilers and how to protect yourself against unnecessarily revealing the plot to the slower gamer amongst us.
What is a Spoiler?
A spoiler is absolutely anything which reveals a plot twist, suprise or resolution in a game. Think of spoilers as the guy who's seen a film 500 times and never shuts up about what's going to happen next as you're watching it and you're on the right lines.
Why are spoilers bad?
In a story based game, the twists and suprises within the plot line keep the gamer excited and involved. Remember the tooth fairy? That was exciting until your mum ran out of money and told you that a beautiful winged lady was not, in fact, stashing cash under your pillow every time you yanked a tooth from yer gob.
But... but... there's this REALLY hard bit and I want everyone to know how much I SMACKED IT!!
We know you'll want to discuss the plotline/gloat about your epic wins with your community chums, so we don't mind you posting spoilers as long as let everyone else know that your post contains elements of the plot line.
How do I mark a post as containing a spoiler?
There's a few ways:
1. If you're starting a new thread which will contain spoilers, just place the phrase *SPOILERS* at the end of the thread title, like this:
Final Fantasy XIII - The Chocobo Revelation! *SPOILERS*
2. If you're making a post which contains a spoiler, in a thread which has not been marked as containing spoilers, you can conceal the text so that users must highlight it with their mouse in order to read it.
To do this - you need to change the colour of the font to a specific HTML colour. First, highlight the spoiler text and hit the 
The 'colour picker' box will appear. In the text entry field in the bottom right corner of this box, type "#FFFFFF" and click apply, like this:
This will change the colour of the text to match the background colour of the forums. Which results in this:
SPOILER BELOW! Highlight text to read:
Holy Moly! Apparently you'll need to use the X button in God of War III!
Once you've done, be sure to set the font color back to black 
Just remember - hyperlinks will not be concealed in this way.
Please be considerate to the slower gamer amongst us and ensure you mark your plot related posts as spoilers!
Got more tips on spoiler safety? Post them here!
Cheers
FurySevenSix
Yeah, good guide Fury, I really do think games in the last two years spoiler sensitivity has become even more important than in the past, with the big push for story narrative in games.
With the forums now in a white colour, it's even more easy to 'white' out your text because it literally is white... unlike the last theme the forum used where unless you knew HTML and the correct code for the shade of grey it used, it was a little tricky... What's more, if you are writing in Rich Text you can even white it out as you go, because the Rich Text box is usually a green colour.
Also I'd add IMO that 'false spoilers' are almost as bad as actual spoilers, because they change your perception of what might or will happen in the game, and 'spoiler trolling', if that is the correct terminology is not cool.
By trolling, I mean creating a thread with a misleading title and deliberately putting in an important spoiler in that post, for the purpose of spoiling it for others.... eg: A thread titled "God of War (1&2) Collection Demo question", with the content being along the lines of "Who would have thought after playing the demo that Medusa was Krato's mother?... no wonder he took off her head"
Edit: I agree with GunslingerNZ.. good practice to get into for games like Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2 which are short, story focused games with their own section that can be avoided.... gonna be hard for FFXIII the next few weeks though, lol.
Level 4
well said one and all......and good thread Fury 
although I find the best way to avoid spoilers is being married and having kids....hence, no time to post or even play games
still am only half way through HR ....lol....and waiting for the prime moment to play with the cleaner...as I am determined to finish the game together ....trust me this is very very hard!!! (never enough time or the right moment)....although the game does have the habit of raising your blood pressure in short sharp sessions...
That said, the idiot that posted the Heavy Rain spoiler probably meant it, the title was misleading and he told the spoiler in the first sentence. People all over the net were spamming it, I'm cautious about ruining God of War III for myself also.
smelck wrote:
although I find the best way to avoid spoilers is being married and having kids....hence, no time to post or even play games
still am only half way through HR ....lol....and waiting for the prime moment to play with the cleaner...as I am determined to finish the game together ....trust me this is very very hard!!! (never enough time or the right moment)....although the game does have the habit of raising your blood pressure in short sharp sessions...
Wow. Your suffering from exactly the same handicap as I smelck. And I only have 1 little one...
1hr blocks are not very useful for story driven games.
Yeah that Heavy Rain was well.... it sucked the big one....
I did report the post as soon as I saw it - but that was on the weekend and before the big 'crash' of 1999 so unfortunately my report was lost in all the mayhem...
@ Smelck - missus and kids isn't something I have to worry about... part of the benefits of being ugly as sin! 
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