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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And nothing of value was lost given how much completely wrong and/or outdated beta information was often thrown into Prima's "guides".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.
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.
I'm not sad to see them go. I'm excited to see if we can make it so there's never a "guide damn it" moment in games again where the programmers deliberately hide shit so that the only way to know about it is to buy the fucking guide. Shit that started with Nintendo Power and "Milon's Secret Castle". Fuck that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
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.
While I agree with you to a large degree, there are certain guides that I always insist on getting in print. Perhaps I am old fashioned, but car and motor bike workshop manuals I always try to get a printed copy. My one bike I could only find a PDF manual (it's a rare bike) and it's a bit of a pain when the tablet dies halfway through an overhaul. Not just that, it's generally a dirty job with abrasive materials involved, not exactly the environment I want my tablet to be in, whereas with a workshop manual... it's supposed to get a bit grimy, otherwise you haven't been using it properly.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
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.
I'm stuck in base Cochise and I can't find Secpass B.
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.'"
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.
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.