4/6/24

This might sound like a weird opinion but I don’t like it when people datamine video games to find secrets. I can understand datamining if you’re trying to figure out how a really specific thing was coded. As long as you aren’t just outright stealing the code you’re fine, but to datamine in order to try and find secrets is something different.

I understand this is definitely a pretty big case-by-case basis as some video games like OneShot or Deltarune actively encourage going into the files to find things. I feel like datamining ruined the sort of “playground rumor” culture of video games. With datamining, there is no mystery. Things either exist or don’t. How about a large-scale puzzle that has many different clues and would likely take more than one person to solve?
Well, someone can just datamine to find the answer, completely skipping the search for clues and connecting the dots. The interview with the creators of the Binding of Isaac comes to mind, I don’t blame them for being angry at all, honestly. It would be frustrating to spend who knows how long planning out a puzzle just to have somebody find the answer by cheating and then just spreading the answer to everyone.

I don’t have a problem with revealing in-game secrets as long as one person legitimately found the secret. If you discover something weird that nobody’s ever seen before in a video game, it only makes sense that you would want to share it. The problem comes when you datamine in order to find the secret. I believe doing that is a bit disrespectful to the creators of the game.