On The Life Of A Game Guide Writer

marcot writes "The Canadian National Post has a story on the life of a videogame guidebook writer. I can't work out if it's a dream job or torture." Michael Lummis, the writer in question, "has done about a dozen books for [BradyGames] in the last 18 months", but says that contact with the game's developers "...is finite. They're working 18-hour [days] just like we are." We've previously discussed the pluses and minuses of paper-based 'official' game guides.

Comments

Game Guides

[Carnildo]

We've previously discussed the pluses and minuses of paper-based 'official' game guides.

The problem with "official" game guides is that the game publisher usually uses them as an excuse not to include a manual with the game.

Re:Game Guides

[Ayaress]

True, but here's the quote from the guide:

"Carriers are the Protoss's ultimate offensive unit (edited for length) the fact that their attack is distributed from eight different sources, they are inneffective against heavily armored units like zerglings. Also, their poor armor makes them susceptible to many of the same units."

Maybe had they said Battlecruiser here, they'd be on the right track - a cruiser's armor and offensive power are death to a carrier. However, zerglings are neither well-armored nor prepared to take advantage of Carrier's weak defense. Scourge are the best way to take down a Carrier, due both to their poor defense and their slow retargeting.

I don't think writing a Guide would be much fun

[incubusnb]

you stop playing the game for fun, and start playing the game to find out how it ticks and where all the stuff is. you spend more time writing notes and drawing maps than you do playing the game. then you get to spend multiple hours putting a book together based on your notes, and then you run into the problem of one or two of your notes being wrong so you go back through the game again to make sure your notes are right.

that in itself isn't the biggest problem, its when the Boss says "your gonna write a Guide for Game X" but Game X sucks and is probably the worst game ever made... nonetheless, you still have to go though it and figure everything out even though you wouldn't have given it the time of day anywhere else.

this is why sites like GameFAQs are so great, because the people who write the Guides actually Like tha Game enough to put in their own time and Effort, it may not be the Best Quality Guides, but the people that write them are doing it because they enjoy it.