The Spoilerphobe's Guide To Reading IGN Reviews

Spoiler alert! Some people have an extremely low tolerance for spoilers. Revealing any detail about a movie, TV show, or game they haven’t seen or played yet is like bringing peanut butter to an elementary school; someone is going to be allergic. That sets up an inevitable conflict with reviewers, because our whole job is to tell you something you don’t already know about a game, movie, or show – specifically, whether or not we like it – and then explain why. Of course, it’s possible to get your points across without major reveals, but when you’re writing for an audience that includes both extremes of the spoiler spectrum – those who hate them with a passion and those who crave them so much they’ll go frame-by-frame through a video review to extract any scrap of new information – it’s quite a tightrope to walk successfully. 

Personally, I’m a bit spoiler-phobic myself. When I’ve decided I want to play or watch something I tend to avoid any trailers, previews, or reviews until after I’ve experienced it for myself. I always turn off the TV when the “Next time, on XXXX” teaser comes up because I don’t need to be enticed to watch something I was already sold on. Sure, there are exceptions to that: I’ve obsessively gone over Star Wars trailers to pick up references and hints, because that’s fun for me – as someone who knows way too much about that lore, it’s part of the experience to make my own predictions about what’s coming and then compare that to what actually happens. (I am often wrong.) So I get it! 

I know that a lot of you are already tracking down examples of where we crossed your personal lines, and yes, there have certainly been many TMI incidents over the years. There’s no disputing that, especially when there isn’t even a one-size-fits-all approach to what is and is not a spoiler. Last year when I reviewed Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I managed to offend some folks by revealing the return of a villain from Fallen Order – they were the first boss battle and came and went in a flash without any real effect on the story, but since they hadn’t been shown off in trailers (which again, I had not watched because I’d already decided to play this game) it was considered a faux pas. It goes to show that what one person considers to be an egregious spoiler might not be a big deal for someone else. Probably most other people, in fact. 

There isn't even a one-size-fits-all approach to what is and is not a spoiler.

As an aside, it’s always struck me as bizarre to consider anything that’s not revealed in a trailer to be a spoiler, while things that aren’t revealed in a trailer are. Historically, trailers are often spoilery as hell. I’ll never forget seeing the trailer for Ben Affleck’s Daredevil movie that literally showed Colin Farrell’s Bullseye falling to his death! I’ve read plenty of accounts of trailers and advertisements being done without consultation with directors or writers or anybody else. Trailers are, after all, pure marketing: they exist to make you want to watch or play something by any means necessary, and if someone thinks the best way to do that is to tell you that (spoiler) Henry Cavill’s Superman shows up at the end of Black Adam, they’ll absolutely spoil it. 

When you think about it, though, if marketing material from a movie studio or game publisher told you everything you needed to know to figure out if you think you’ll probably like something or not, there’d be no such thing as a review at all. We’re here to give you the perspective and opinion of someone who isn’t going to make more money if you buy a game or a movie ticket, and that different set of priorities means we’re going to want to show and tell you different things than they do. That’s not to say you’ll always agree with our opinions – heck, I don’t agree with all of our reviewers’ opinions either, but I do respect them because I know for a fact that there is no single review of any work of any form of art that everybody will agree with. That’s why there are so many results when you type “[anything] review” into Google!

People are just as mad when they think they've been spoiled, even if they really haven't.

Anyway, in my experience, a lot of spoiler complaints stem from a reviewer talking about something that, from the perspective of someone who has already played a game or seen a movie, is insignificant and not worthy of being treated as a radioactive secret. The problem is that when they’re taken out of context, something that’s a throwaway can seem like a big reveal – and people are just as mad when they think they’ve been spoiled, even if they really haven’t. Another issue is internet sleuthing: there have been many times when close examination of the UI in a two-second gameplay clip has revealed something that only diehard fans could’ve picked up on, but they then proceed to give everybody else all of the context in the comments. But being sensitive to spoilers isn’t a crime – you’re in no way wrong to not want to be spoiled on even small details. 

The guidance I give to our reviewers is that – aside from cases in which we have a spoiler warning at the top of the page (usually reserved for extremely popular “watercooler discussion” shows that everyone and their mother has already watched) – we should only reveal as much of the plot as is absolutely necessary to back up our arguments. You don’t need to reveal that Darth Vader is really Anakin Skywalker in order to say that The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie in part due to its shocking revelations and deepening relationships between its characters. In fact, unless you’re going to say something positive or negative about it, there’s no need to discuss any element of the plot or a character at all. But if you do have something to say and need to point to specifics to make it clear what you’re talking about, it’s generally best to use examples that take place early on and don’t hint too heavily at what’s to come.

Naturally, even a cautious approach is still going to be TMI for some people, who want reviewers’ recommendations but very few details. That’s a big part of why we build our reviews the way we do: there are four different levels of information to most of them, each giving you an increasing level of detail and allowing you to decide how deep you want to go – and the secret to this tiered approach is to look at a review from the bottom up. 

The secret to this tiered approach is to look at a review from the bottom up. 

The first level is the score. While there certainly are a lot of legitimate criticisms of scores, one of the big benefits is that they’re completely spoiler-free. You can check the score on a movie or show or game you’re looking forward to to get a positive, negative, or middling opinion on it without so much as a hint as to why the reviewer felt that way. But if you’re intrigued to know just a bit more, scroll up a little.

The second level is the Verdict, just above the score. Here we try to distill all of our major points, good and bad, into a single moderate-length paragraph summary. This leaves little room for detail that most people would consider to be spoilery. If you’re looking for a rapid-fire list of pros and cons without too much context, this is as far as you need to go.

If, however, you’d like those claims to be backed up in detail, we have the review itself. These can be anywhere from 500 words on a 24-minute TV episode to the occasional 5,000-word opus that delves into fine detail on what makes something – almost always a game that spans dozens of hours and leaves us with much to discuss – tick. These are often packed full of anecdotes of interesting things that happened to us outside of the main story, examples of how mechanics like combat and leveling work, interface, controls, AI, map layout, companion characters, comparisons to other related games, music and sound, etc – all in service of illustrating our argument. But again, the goal is never to spill the beans unannounced – we’ll always dance around revealing the important aspects of the plot as much as we can.

Finally, there’s the video review. While these are generally shortened versions of the text, they come with visual examples of exactly what we’re discussing, and that can be revealing – sometimes more than a reviewer intends, if they miss some small detail in the background when looking for a clip that shows what they need. If you’re truly spoiler-averse, this is where you’ll most likely come across something you haven’t seen before even if you’ve watched all the trailers and previews, because again, that’s the whole point. 

In any case, while it’s not often you’ll hear a writer tell you not to read their work, this is one of those times. If you’re worried about being spoiled on minor things for something you’ve already decided to play or watch, I highly recommend that you avoid reviews – beyond checking out the score, at least – until you’ve seen it with your own eyes and extracted every ounce of enjoyment. After that, we hope you’ll come back and talk with us about it.

Dan Stapleton is IGN's Director of Reviews and resident dad joke enthusiast. Follow him on Bluesky (RIP Twitter).