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Strategy Guide Company Prima Games Is Shutting Down (kotaku.com)
Prima Games, the publishing company that has printed video game strategy guides since it was founded in 1990, is shutting down. "The label will no longer publish new guides starting now, and it will officially shutter in the spring," reports Kotaku. From the report: Thanks to the rise of sites like GameFAQs -- and major gaming publications like IGN commissioning their own online guides, which bring in monstrous amounts of traffic -- print strategy guides have struggled for years now. In 2015, Prima purchased and swallowed its biggest competitor, BradyGames, and has been consistently churning out guides for both print and the web, but it wasn't enough to survive what the company called "a significant decline" in the world of print video game guides.
Most of the time I can just type game name wiki into google.
And nothing of value was lost given how much completely wrong and/or outdated beta information was often thrown into Prima's "guides".
Any information of what is going to happen with its assets (Intellectual Property). ? My suggestion to them is to turn them public domain and preserve those guides on the Internet Archive (archive.org)
One of the best guides I ever read was the Prima one for Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. Since Uru was a meta, alternative reality game taking place in the real world -- in which the original Myst games were put out by Cyna to help spread the word about the "real" D'ni civilization discovered underground in New Mexico -- the Prima guide was written as a completely first person account, leading others through the journey that the writer (a "former games guide writer") had taken.
It was really rather imaginative and very well done... And remember, this was 2003, before some of these other meta-tricks became more common place. RIP Prima :/
https://www.amazon.com/URU-Beyond-Primas-Official-Strategy/dp/0761544704/
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Yes, I got stuck a lot. All the time, in fact. But if I had a glossy guidebook to consult each time, I'd beat the expensive game in no time. What's the point of that? Is a game purchased in order to beat it as quickly as possible? Anyone who does that has completely missed the point. Plus the guidebook cost *extra* money, so you were wasting even more money to get less challenge/enjoyment from the main product...
If you have never walked around helplessly in Hyrule for weeks, looking for that item to get you past an obstacle, you also won't know the pleasure of eventually finding it. That was the actual game -- the feeling of a vast virtual world where you are thrown in and have to attempt to figure it out. Not just looking it up in some book or digital text file.
There were even hugely popular "cheating devices" that went even further, by allowing you to get unlimited lives/continues/power/HP/ammo, etc. I cannot understand the mentality of people who bought and used those things.
I still have my Prima guide for Ocarina of Time, will be sad to see them go. I'm not in any way surprised however, the internet was always going to kill physical media of this kind.
What they were doing wasn't working, so what does that suggest? Oh, yes, of course, let's buy someone else who is doing the same thing we are but obviously worse than we are in the hopes that we'll now be able to, ummmm, what exactly?
I'm sorry, but I have zero sympathy for them. Ten years ago I might have had a smidge. Just a smidge then. But today... if they hadn't realized before now that print strategy guides wasn't a sustainable business, then their "strategy" guides aren't something I want to read anyway. In fact, I'd just go ahead and flush anything they've done in the last decade in the vein of "strategy" at all, because they obviously aren't very good at that.
Actually, I take back what I originally wrote. Brady had to have been doing something right, because at least they managed to find someone willing to pay real money for them. I want to find one of /their/ old strategy guides.
I bought a Sim City 2000 strategy guide book years ago. I'm talking, well, nigh on 20 years ago. It was, I think, the last one I bought. I don't regret it, in fact I might now try and find it just for the nostalgia. But ya, even then the writing was on the wall.
I-D-10-T error.
This is rather silly. Prima makes some of the best guides out there. I have always found their guides superior to resources online. They can still print things online. I guess they were, but it is odd that they felt like they could not bring the same high quality to their online presence. They really think people making less authoritative wikis for free is more attractive than a well-polished and comprehensive guide. Okay...
I have always wondered the same thing. But hell, these days people will play a game where another person can pay $1000 and get a super-kill-everything. At least they had to read a guide before.
Too stupid to figure out that the internet is a thing that maybe they should put their guides up on their own website?
I'm glad they're gone.
When you are trying to charge between $30 and $40 for information that can easily be obtained more accurately on any number of wikis, to say nothing of the $70-$80 "Special Editions" with cardboard sleeves to hold even more useless junk, it's long past time you went away. I thought game guides were passe when I used to see them at CompUSA in the 90s, it's almost shocking they are even a thing today. Good riddance.
Was on the cars really wasn't it? I have all the guides they printed for the Fallout and Morrowind games, they're great tomes but I don't use them I simply search forums or Wikis for help. Print media is not an easy game these days, not for huge sales, smaller companies will survive if they keep their ambitions at sensible scale and don't expect too much. It's just the march of progress and just like death and taxes, you ain't going to stop it.
Prima guides included a lot of information that should have been in the game to help with strategies. There's little to do to work out what attack monster X is weak to or resistant to if you don't know anything about how much HP monster X has nor what damage any of your attacks do.
Problem was the reveals of secrets etc. Sure, HOW MANY helps. If the game doesn't tell you your completion, how do you know there's a reason to replay to find something new?
YOU merely see the cheats and map reveals not the information that OUGHT to have been in a manual that explains what the game does. Damage values, what armour does, what defensive items do compared to armour, etc. Without that you just put on whatever shiny comes along latest and hope there's a difference.
at best it shows a lack of imagination when the only excuse you can think of for someone else's actions is "They had a dumb idea", at worst it shows that you want to hate on someone and will make up a "reason" by pretending that the "only reason" for something is their bad brain.
If you can't think up a sensible reason for someone else's actions, maybe the problem is on your end of the scenario, not theirs. At least see if you can find out from them rather than make the assumption you prefer to be the case.
The guys in the game-testing room were cool, though!
I suppose it would depend on the reason you are playing the game in the first place. If it's to prove to your peers that you can / or did get through the game then a guide would help with that. If it's to have fun and figure things out then I suppose a guide would be superfluous. The main thing here is that they were PRINTED guides, although I suppose they probably let people buy and download PDF versions, not sure, but seems obvious. There are certain business models that are dying, people need to move on, video stores, book shops (sadly) are all dying. I love reading, but 99% of my reading I do with ebooks. I rarely go into a book shop anymore, and if it is it's to browse for new reading matter, then I take a picture of it and download it. I always have my phone on me, I can read anywhere, I only lug books around when I know I am going to be out of internet range, or there might be power issues, but then there are ways around that as well.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
The guides were much more thorough than necessary. I did wander around for a few months as a bunny in a Link to the Past, after defeating Agahnim. Never did figure out where the Moon Pearl was hidden without the Prima guide.
all the modern games are:
For money cheat, send $20 to rockstar & theyll give you some virtual money.
For item cheat send $20 to EA and theyll give you some free items.
Nobody needs a guide for that.
The last guide I bought was for Mortal Kombat 3, which I suppose was around 1996. Having a guide that showed you all of the obscure button presses necessary for the moves, fatalities, and combos, allowed you to actually start playing the game and have fun, as opposed to sitting around for hours on end just grinding out random button presses trying to figure out how to do a move. Games were sometimes purposefully obtuse in those days, partly because they wanted people to share techniques by word of mouth or whatever, and thats what a guide often provided.
As for game cheating devices, it was often just FUN to experience the game in new ways that the creators never intended, or just speed through some things that were unnecessarily grindy or difficult. In those days I would often rent games, meaning I just had a single weekend to play it. Being able to cheat and actually experience the entire game would be much more enjoyable than being stuck in the first level the entire weekend. It was also fun to use cheats on games that you had already mastered in order to open up new ways to play.
I'm stuck in base Cochise and I can't find Secpass B.
It's "if the game designer could be arsed with manual". Not what you blerged out there. It "costs" to produce a manual. For a start the time to write it. And it has to update with the program if and when it changes. Fuck all to do with "if the programmer ante you to know that", it's whether they wanted to spend the "cost" of making it. And most don't.
Some because they can sell the guide.
If the programmed didn't want you to know the information, they would not have based the program ON that information
Yes, I got stuck a lot. All the time, in fact. But if I had a glossy guidebook to consult each time, I'd beat the expensive game in no time. What's the point of that?
There are many different ways to enjoy things in general. You can enjoy them all at once, or you can enjoy them as slowly as possible, or anywhere in between. You can appreciate them for the experience, or for the art, or the story.
If I've stopped enjoying some part of a game, I fire up the goog and find an answer. It comes in especially handy with these Bethesda games where you can't actually complete many [broken] quests without cheating, but I find it to be an enjoyable practice in general.
There were even hugely popular "cheating devices" that went even further, by allowing you to get unlimited lives/continues/power/HP/ammo, etc. I cannot understand the mentality of people who bought and used those things.
Some people just want to enjoy the experience of success. Others use them as "trainers". I don't much see the point either, though. As far as I'm concerned, the best use for such a device has been the Pro Action Replay for Sega Saturn, which also works as a memory expansion and region defeat. Sega was kind enough to put a well-featured connector on the top side of that console.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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* Simply because he tried to INSULT me & I made him a COMPLETELY FAIR CHALLENGE he couldn't meet or beat by showing me he's done better work in the past prior to his impersonating me there.
APK
P.S.=> You shouldn't throw stones when you live in a glass house boys - especially vs. me... apk
I usually saw these on places like eBay, where the seller would advertise them with the game name in big bold letters, and in the fine print mention that it was a guide, not the game or its manual.
Pre-Internet there was some market for these. Back then, if you got stuck in a game and your friends couldn't help, buying a guide was usually the only way to move on. It became a decision between flushing $50 down the drain because you were stuck in the game, or paying an extra $20 so you could continue to enjoy the $50 you'd spent on the game.
See my subject: Unlike YOU? I prove hosts serves others that LIKE/USE/PRAISE my work https://search.slashdot.org/co...
* PROVE you've done better (or that you even "served" @ all)...
APK
P.S.=> You'll "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" - hence your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts harassing me (you can't prove squat about yourself)... apk
the biggest problem is that games today change all the time, update every month/week/... and change the rules, remove unintended exploits etc.
by the time you buy your strategy guide, it's already outdated.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.