Remember the days when secrets in video games used to be rare to come across and sometimes only discussed among a group of friends?

The original Mortal Kombat, when released in arcades, was full of hidden Easter eggs and secrets. And when Mortal Kombat II was out, it was a hot topic of discussion among my friends. Rumors would start about secret fatalities and characters that weren’t actually in the game. The new Mortal Kombat is now out and people have dissected it thoroughly, making lists and compiling every last secret and unlockable that game has to offer. 

With the popularity of the Internet and the creation of many different gaming communities, it’s not hard to find yourself stumbling across people discussing these secrets just as you might have done with your friends back in the day. Back then it was about discovering them for yourself and trying to find something new to talk; it was more involved and allowed for more playtime of certain games. 

These days you can find everything a game has to offer in a day thanks to these gaming communities. Everything that you need to know about the new Mortal Kombat is just one Google search away, including the unlockables, secrets, and easter eggs. You can certainly avoid these things, but if you keep in contact with any gamers online, chances are you might find out more about a game than you might want to.

Were the days before the Internet better because it gave you a chance to discover these things on your own, or is it more enjoyable to find out things right away instead of discovering them yourselves? Is a game ruined for you if you find out about all of the unlockables and extras that the game has to offer before you can even play it? And I’m not talking about story spoilers either. 

The answer to these questions will vary depending on who you talk to, but it’s hard to deny that, no matter how hard you try, it might be pretty tough to avoid finding out about these things before you even discover them yourself. Perhaps knowing about a funny line in Portal 2 ruined that great moment for you, or maybe it gave you an idea of what to expect, allowing you to be more excited for it and potentially enjoy it more as a result. 

Gaming secrets are rarely even kept secret anymore. Achievements and trophy lists come out way before games do, allowing players to get a brief glimpse at everything they will come to expect from the game (with the exception being specific events in the story). I used to be obsessed with looking at achievements ahead of time to find out what lies ahead in a game I’m playing. These days I rarely glance at them, allowing myself to be surprised by these moments once again, at least the best I can.

Video games are still full of surprises, but those surprises may become fewer and fewer as time goes on. Is knowing everything about a game ahead of time a good thing, or does it prohibit that sense of discovery? It might depend on the game, the situation, or the people you interact with both online and off. However you look at it, there’s no denying that how we obtain information about games has become easier, for better or worse. 

The term “sense of community” is one commonly used by sociologists to focus on the experience of a community. And how does this relate to video games? Every time you play a game online, you are interacting with a community of some sort; the experience may be positive or negative, depending on both the game and the platform. 

Depending on the game, the community involved could either be seen as a positive or negative thing. Games like Call of Duty: Black Ops are known for their great online, but not their great online community. “Why does this matter?,” you may be asking. People still play Black Ops consistently, regardless of other idiots they may be playing with. But what makes people stick around? Clans. If they never found a group of people similar to them, chances are a lot of people would not be playing the game as much as they are, thus reinvigorating the sense of community involved. 

LittleBigPlanet 2 is an example of a game that has an amazing community. The original game stuck around as long as it did because of the creativity of both the developers and the everyday gamers involved. It created a strong sense that people are truly passionate about the game and the creativity it allows them to express. LittleBigPlanet 2 expanded upon it in the best ways possible, adding even more possibilities and creating an even larger community to continue to explore the potential the series has to offer.

LittleBigPlanet 2 isn’t known solely for having great multiplayer, but instead for having a great community of gamers who love to create and share their ideas as well as experience the ideas of others. With any community, you will get a few bad eggs, but they fail to ruin the experience of playing this game with a group of friends or even with random strangers. Exploring the levels, seeing the creativity at work, it’s an experience like no other.

The community involved in that game is what strings it all together. Like your clan in Black Ops, the LBP community as a whole is like one giant gaming family. There are people who help each other create objects and levels as they continue to improve upon their last work. If a level needs improvements or features some major flaws? The creator isn’t flamed, but criticized constructively by their peers. 

Comparing Call of Duty: Black Ops and LittleBigPlanet 2 may seem silly, but it goes to show there are two different worlds of gamers out there. And it has nothing to do with the genre, as I’ve seen many shooters that offer the same great community as a game like LBP2; Tribes 2 comes to mind immediately, as does a game like Team Fortress 2. You can find it in a lot of games, but it seems to be less common than it used to be. 

Why do people keep coming back to MMOs? Why is the original Everquest still being played despite the fact that there are many other more polished and less-dated MMOs on the market? I think you know where I’m going with this. Black Ops may win in popularity, but people won’t be talking about it for nearly as long as they will about LittleBigPlanet 2. 

inFamous 2, a game that we never thought would have any kind of potential for community building, offers players the ability to create their own missions and share them online. If you play the game while connected to PSN, you’ll be able to see missions created by other people all over the city. It’s hard to say how well it will work, but you can see just how developer Sucker Punch is taking the brilliant idea established by Media Molecule and expanding upon it to work with their game. It’s something that can carry it a long way. 

It’s not about the multiplayer, and it’s not about the amount of modes and levels you have available. It’s about creating a game that allows players to attach to it in some way or another. It’s about filtering out the idiots who go out of their way to annoy and flame from the people who just want to have fun. LittleBigPlanet shows us this, and it allows us to go back to why we play games online in the first place: a proper sense of community. 

With the announcement of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero, there was a huge uprising in the interest of downloadable prequels (or sequels) to upcoming games. Later on, THQ announced one for the upcoming Red Faction game, and EA was soon to follow with a game that pre-dated Dead Space 2. The promise of additional content for the full game was enticing enough, although some claimed that these were simple marketing ploys to get people to pay for what were essentially demos. 

The release of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was a huge success for Capcom, leading up to the announcement of Dead Rising 2: Case West that would be released soon after the full game. With the right price point of $5, it was hard not to be interested in Case Zero. It gave the player a taste of what to expect with Dead Rising 2, a little background on the two main characters, and a chance to find out if the Dead Rising experience was right for them.

I completely find the claims, at least in the defense of Case Zero, that these are glorified demos to be completely wrong. The basis of these products can be described as a demo, sure, but it more or less gives the player more of a background on the story of the full game more so than any demo might, and feels more like a full product. Plus, the ability to transfer your character’s level to Dead Rising 2 is a nice addition, offering something else you will never get from a demo.

These products, if priced correctly, show a new way to approach downloadable content. They offer a full product at a small price that can connect with an upcoming, high profile release. They allow the player to get the basic experience of a demo, but with situations that won’t be found in the main game. It’s not a product you will find yourself playing again, but it’s not one that needs to convince the player otherwise.

DLC is often used to expand upon a game after its initial release, either offering improvements or just giving the player more to do. Allowing the player to enter this world (in one way or another) before the game is out and giving them extra incentive to do so is one way developers can reach out to their communities and find problems before it is too late. 

With the right ideas in mind and the right initiative to deliver a quality product, these low price, easy to access game prequels can really expand upon a game in more ways than ever before. This is a good thing for the industry and, if not abused, can lead to many new and creative ways to deliver quality content for fans of particular series. Demos can often be misleading, but these products allow the developers to give us a different experience that satisfies our need to enjoy a particular game or series while also rewarding us just for being fans. 

It may seem like a minuscule idea, but it is one that can further expand the use of downloadable content in our industry for the better.