Are Game Guides Dying?

Thanks to GameSpot for their guest GameSpotting feature discussing whether the print-based game guide is a thing of the past. According to the piece: "As long as there have been games, there have been game guides to help players beat them. Over the years they have evolved into slick, glossy (and thin) books with tons of valuable information and high-quality screenshots and maps... Guides make tough games easier. But are they worth it?" The author references a videogame-store friend laughing: "Why buy a game guide when I can just download the FAQ for free?" Is there any new presentation of paper-based game guides that might make you tempted to pay for them, or are they truly dying out for good?

Comments

Not true at all.

[Inoshiro]

Maybe you haven't heard about how the strategy guide stuff works, but here's the gist of it.

The game goes gold. Then it is sent to a publisher who has rights to the game. They, in turn, have a group of hardcore gamers who are also litterate (things like capitalizing the start of sentences, proper comma and semi-colon usage, etc). They get to play through the game before anyone else, with the catch that they have to play through it completely and also write everything down. They take screenshots, and in some cases also make maps. All of it is vetted past the game developers.

That's how Versus Books, Brady, and Prima do it.

Re:Not true at all.

[Torgo's Pizza]

Actually, the process starts before the game goes gold. The negotiation for game guides starts fairly early in the development process. Once rights are secured, then the guide publisher will assign a writer to spend time at the developer. The developer will usually kick in nuggets of info from the design manual, artwork, stats, etc. The guide is usually finished before the game is. Once the game goes gold, any errata is taken care of and the guide is off to the publishers.

Why start so early? The key is that by having both guide and game available at the same time you are more apt to purchase the guide. Stores use it as a bundle or as a loss leader on one of the two.

Re:online faqs have major plusses..

[Sevidrac]

The only printed guide I ever bought was the one to Final Fantasy Tactics. Sure, I know I could get all the information on-line...but I liked the handy charts that were in the book. The organization and layout of the guide made it much quicker, not to mention easier, for me to look through.

It'd take another game like that, with another guide of that quality, for me to buy one. Otherwise, I'll just stick to gamefaqs.

Oh, and to the comments below about screenshots. I've seen some faq's that link to self-made screenshots. One of the FAQs about WC3: The Frozen Throne, had screenshots listed in it. Also, some people will create maps (i.e. the full game map for metriod fusion).

I also would like to point out, though, that I've seen incorrect information in the free FAQs as well. Some people write them based on other versions(imported) of the game, though.