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Games Entertainment

Are Game Guides Dying? 93

Posted by simoniker from the alas-poor-official-hints-guide dept.
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?
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Are Game Guides Dying? More

Are Game Guides Dying?

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  • online faqs have major plusses.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:12PM (#6609621) Homepage Journal
    first of all of course, they're free.

    they're also available when you need it (just one googling away).

    most importantly they're updated with various bits of little tidbits usually. the official kind of booklets can fail you miserably if there were some last minute changes to the game, or bugs. paper versions also aren't usually made by some mad gamer, which can be a plus as well as a minus.

    also forums provide nowadays most of the information that such booklets would be useful for.
    • And I like it that the online ones are usually just text and are therefore one of the few places you still see ASCII art regularly. You think the publishers of the hint books are going to band together with the RIAA? ;o) -Paul

    • Not true at all. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      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
      • 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

        • Once the game goes gold, any errata is taken care of

          So they hope at least. There are times that the offical guides are just plain wrong about stuff.

          • Try playing EVE Online - The game has changed so much since the guide was released that it isn't even worth the paper it's printed on.

            There is NOTHING in that guide that is accurate anymore. Ore locations have changed drastically, system security ratings have changed drastically, EVERYTHING is different.

            Even if things hadn't changed, the guide had nothing but a brief summary of all systems in a single region of the game. Considering that the game has 5-6 different starting regions, the guide sucked to b
      • Heh...

        Spoken like someone who never saw the guides for games like Master of Orion 3 or Outpost.

        cya,
        john
        • I was laughing with my friend who works at the video game store, because the guide came in around December. MOO 3 didn't come out until February or March. Normally the guides arrive at the store half a week before the game.. although there are some times when it gets in much earlier. My friend still has a strategy guide for Dreamcast Half-Life in mint condition :)
    • 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

  • Why I hate the Game Guides (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chriso11 ( 254041 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:12PM (#6609628) Journal
    It used to be you would get a useful manual with a game. Now, all that you get is a "how to install" and a "how to play the tutorial" section in the manual. The rest of the useful information is printed into the game guide for extra profit.

    • Re:Why I hate the Game Guides (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Goldberg's Pants ( 139800 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:45PM (#6609909) Journal
      It's just another way to fleece the customers. And the fact is, FAQ's evolve, the printed guides you have to pay $20 for are obsolete by the time you leave the store in many cases.

      When I bought Warcraft 3, I bought the strategy guide as well. Mainly because it was on special, and I've always condemned them, but figured it was about time to see if I was correct in my disgust.

      And I was. The guide is mostly useless. There's guides to the single player games, stats for all the units etc... The ONLY part of the guide that is any use if the 6 pages devoted to multiplayer strategy. The stats are kind of interesting, but as soon as Blizzard released a patch, it's game over for the stats being useful. Now, with Frozen Throne out, the build times and costs have changed, which means most of the guide is now useless.

      On GameFAQ's you can find a wealth of information, and it's fluid. When Blizzard change costs etc... The author can update it.

      Game Guides are a horrible idea whose time is coming to an end thankfully. The question remains though as to whether the game companies will do the decent thing and start providing a decent manual, or if they'll just give up and essentially let the fans write the manuals.

      If you bought any game in the last few years, think back to how many came with a decent manual. Very few I bet.
      • If you bought any game in the last few years, think back to how many came with a decent manual. Very few I bet.

        At least with console games, I almost never read the manual. Any game that doesn't teach you how to play at the start is poorly designed. Fortunately, there seem to be very few games like that.
        • I agree, I love it when I start a new game for whatever reason and get to do the tutorial bullshit again. Never Mind, I know how to read.

          • I agree, I love it when I start a new game for whatever reason and get to do the tutorial bullshit again.

            That's also bad design. Most games either have the tutorial as a seperate section of the game, have some method of skipping it, or have it as fun as the rest of the game.

            Never Mind, I know how to read.

            Reading a manual is almost never fun. A good game will reduce the amount of time spent doing things that aren't fun. Reading numerous help screens, like in some Final Fantasies or Dark Cloud 2, is
            • A problem with manuals is they overdo EVERYTHING. You can have the simplest game in the world, but by the time you've read the manual you're going to feel you need a PHD to play it. They go overboard.

              Of course, some games have cool sundry manuals. Gran Turismo 2 has a handy little guide on proper racing technique. It's a good little read, but you don't have to read it.

              I think any game should be easy enough to pick up without any tutorial so you can learn as you go. Of course, there are exceptions to this.
      • The stats are kind of interesting, but as soon as Blizzard released a patch, it's game over for the stats being useful. Now, with Frozen Throne out, the build times and costs have changed, which means most of the guide is now useless.

        One thing I've noticed with Blizzard, lately, is that (especially with the new games, notably WC3 and Diablo 2) they have tons of information on their site. Most of the statistics you could ever need are on there, and are updated with each patch.

        From that point, it's just a

    • 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.

      This cracks me up. Game guides these days are rubbish - they use large fonts, thick borders and reprint the manual mostly, and provide very little extra information. They should be released a few months after the game comes out, after a patch or two so the game stabilises, and all the strategies have come out.

    • Especially before PDF format, before CDROM's, before the internet really took off this was really true. I miss the good old days of buying some really cool CRPG like an Ultima game, getting a highly detailed manual with subtle hints withing, a cool cloth map, a reference sheet with all the key commands and other cool goodies within.

  • No, they're not (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:12PM (#6609631) Homepage
    They may be almost completely pointless for somebody who knows about gamefaqs.com [gamefaqs.com], but some are great as art books / reference for game programmers (especially RPGs). And they have nice maps and stuff.

    What I want to know is who's watching those 'cheat code' segments of video game shows and G4's 'cheat' full half-hour. I mean, watching it hoping one of the games you own ends up there and then going to the web site and printing the codes? Why watch in the first place?

    On another note: are "are X dying" articles dying? I haven't seen one in a few days.

  • Finally dead (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Nukenbar2 ( 591848 )
    One of the last reasons that a guide would be useful has lost its edge, portability. It used to be that using a computer based faq was a pain because my computer was not right in front of me when I played the game. This is not a problem anymore because of wi-fi and cheap(er) laptops. Now with that combo, I can have it sitting right next to me in the den just like the old paper version.

    The slight benefit of even greater mobility than the laptop is lost once you factor in the $9.95 (or more) price tag.

  • They may be dropping in popularity, but they are not going to die soon. They typically have more information than FAQs found on the Internet, and for less-popular games, they are often available sooner.
    • Guides have more information than FAQs??

      I wish! That'd make them worth buying!

      Seriously, though, guides have been worth buying ever since the game publishers/authors themselves got involved with the production of the guides.

      Back in the day, you'd get a bunch of basic information in the guide, regarding things like stats for the units and things like that. Nowadays, you *have* to buy the guide, which is really just a glorified version of what the manual was supposed to be in the first place.

      Guides shou
      • Then there's the practice of publishing the guide weeks, or months, before the game goes gold. Yeah, I'm sure I'm getting accurate information from a guide that was based off of beta version #4..

        It gets worse. The guide for the Dreamcast version of half-life is probably a collector's item - it was published, then the game was scrapped just before completion (beta copies can be found floating around the net). I always wondered what exactly happened between the game publisher and the guide publisher after t

  • not with frequent balance changes.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:21PM (#6609689)
    buying a guide for RTS games is probably an absolute waste. Blizzard games, for example, go through major revisions before release, so that the artwork on the box is usually out of date by the time the game goes gold (as boxes are done months in advance) (siege tanks shooting battle cruisers on the SC box, for example). i imagine books are on a similar schedule, so the information in such a guide would be useless.

    then you get into the whole realm of strategies which are very much an evolutionary thing, changing dramatically over time, particularly with each balance change introduced.
  • I remember the small package that Sierra use to make for the Kings Quest, etc series.. You had to use that "magic" marker to view the clues in order to finish the game.. Those rock'd! Too bad Sierra doesn't still rock.
    • Anyone remember StarTropics for NES with the water-disolving password thing in the box that you actually needed to beat the game? Everyone who rented it was SOL on that one.

  • Multiple Perspectives (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CaptainStormfield ( 444795 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:26PM (#6609741)
    Another great advantage of Gamefaqs [gamefaqs.com] is that there are typically many different faqs/walkthroughs for the same game. I often find it useful to read a couple of different authors' explanations of a difficult part of a game. If one author offers a confusing or difficult solution, I can simply jump to another faq to look for a better explanation or a more elegant tip. With a print guide, if you don't get what the author is trying to have you accomplish (or if the proposed solution is difficult or klugy), you're screwed.

  • Invisiclues (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JasonMaggini ( 190142 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:29PM (#6609759)
    The old Infocom games had the best hint books...
    They used special pens to reveal hidden answers so you couldn't accidentally read something you didn't want to.

    There were some great red herring questions to keep people honest, too.

    Of course, they are all Online [csd.uwo.ca] now, too...

  • I still buy them... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wolf- ( 54587 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:35PM (#6609808) Homepage
    I buy game guides for most of the console games I purchase. Not so much for myself, but for my daughter. Guides for Gran Turismo 3, and the FIFA games have helped her get up to speed in a game quickly. Hard to read a FAQ on the PC from across the house she says. Since I wait for them to go on sale, the cost is negligible for me.

    • Re:I still buy them... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by macrom ( 537566 )
      So why not run to Wal-Mart (assuming you're in the US) and purchase a super cheap inkjet printer. I'm sure your daughter could use it for school, you could use it for work, and you can just print the FAQs at low quality to conserve ink. I would imagine after several guide prints you will begin recouping your investment.
  • Problem with a lot of game guides now-a-days (I'm looking at you Prima), they are rushed and full of errors and ommissions (not unlike the games they cover). They offer lots of colourful pictures and pull out maps, but the underlying content isn't always worth $20.

    Sometimes this has to do with the type of game being covered. Game guides are very handy for most RPGs, but for Racers and Shooters, they don't have much to add. But even when the game offers a gold mine of potential content, the publisher get

  • Price will kill the Guide industry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Whatchamacallit ( 21721 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:36PM (#6609827) Homepage
    It's not so much that the content is available for free as it is that the guides cost on the order of $20+ USD and that's quite expensive! I really don't care about the glossy print nor artwork on a guide. It means nothing to me. The ASCII format is wonderful because I can format it if need be and I can search it easily too.

    I have console gaming friends and I would always be printing out GameFAQ guides and cheat codes for them. Once they found out they could just ask me for the content, they stopped buying the crazy guides. Half the time they are so gaudy you have trouble reading the damn things due to lack of contrast!. i.e. Dark page with dark print or very tiny print.

    I use GameFAQ constantly! I generally try not to use it until I've beaten the game on my own but sometimes you get stuck on something really stupid and can't figure out how to get past it. I look up what I need and I go back to the game. This mostly happens with poorly designed levels that are darn near impossible to understand without a guide.

  • The future of game guides (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:36PM (#6609829)
    It's possible, perhaps even likely, that games companies will become the dominant producers of guides. Why should they let third-parties profit off the back of their hard work? Plus of course there are two revenue streams available to them, not just the one available to third-parties...

    1. Selling the guide on its own.

    2. At a later date, when sales of the game and guide have dried up, bundling them together (perhaps with a DVD or soundtrack CD) and selling them as special editions, gift packs, etc. Third-party guide publishers generally don't have this option available to them, so the shelf life of a guide is relatively short.

    George Broussard of 3D Realms has already talked about preventing third-parties from publishing guides to Duke Nukem Forever, by not allowing them to use screenshots. (Sure they can still publish the guide, freedom of speech 'n' all that, but who's going to buy a guide without screenshots?) That would suggest 3DR intends to produce their own guide at some point, and if a big developer like 3DR starts the bandwagon rolling then we can expect to see a lot of other developers piling up on the back of it. And quite right too.
    • I thought many guides were already written by the game's developers or staff?

      The guides most definitely are being produced with cooperation of the game companies, since they tend to hit the shelves weeks, if not months, before the game itself is available. Personally, I think this is a horrible practice. The guides should be based on the product that's on the shelf, not some late beta version... I'm sure many remember the infamous "Outpost" whose guide described features that didn't even exist in the ga

    • Re:The future of game guides (Score:4, Funny)

      by breon.halling ( 235909 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @06:45PM (#6610372)

      That would suggest 3DR intends to produce their own guide at some point...

      This also suggests that 3D Realms intends to produce a game at some point, too! =)

    • George Broussard of 3D Realms has already talked about preventing third-parties from publishing guides to Duke Nukem Forever, by not allowing them to use screenshots.

      I don't think we have to worry about printed guides for DNF. By the time that that vapor-ware comes out everything shall be delivered in the "plug in the back of head" matrix-style.

  • Guidebooks vs. FAQS (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Guidebooks have a few advantages; they fit on your coffee table, next to your pizza and your beverage of choice. They open nicely to the page corresponding to the level where you're stuck, and they stay there until you turn the page. They go into the living room, bathroom, outside to the porch etc. without much fuss. They tend to have the benefit of being 'official', implying to me at least contact with the game designers. They tend to be easier for children to use and understand, especially for games a
    • Seems to me that if you simply print the online FAQ, and staple it together, you've got a document that provides you with the portability you describe, while still costing less than the fluff-filled $20 guides you see in stores.

      Considering the cost of paper/ink, and the average length of a FAQ you're still below the $2 range - especially if you print duplex, and only those areas/chapters you need.

      Granted, it won't be in color, and the maps (if any) won't look as nice, but does that really matter? If the
      • Do you have the copyright holder's permission to do that?

        I think I may submit a FAQ to Gamefaqs just so I could sue your pants off.
      • I usually print them out and 3-hole punch them, then stick them in a binder. If I can find any decent pictures of the cover art or the title I'll print that out as well for the binder's cover and edge.

        I like having the books for most of my console RPGs, but when it comes down to it, many of them never had guides or the guides are hard to find (hell, I paid almost as much for one of the FF guides as I did for the game).

  • Why buy? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:49PM (#6609934)
    I am not a big fan of guides in most cases since to me, getting a solution without finding it yourself defeats the entire purpose of playing the game in the first place. I do however purchase guides under certain circumstances. Some RPGs for example have just absurd amounts of complexity and having some charts to organize information can be welcome indeed.

    Dark Cloud 2 springs to mind. If you have never played it, the game boasts a number of very deep side games and a robust item crafting system that could take you years to completely chronicle yourself. Having a reference for fish breeding, and inventing can save me from a lot of boring repetitive experimentation. While I think the fishing is neat, I have no desire to spend 40 hours doing it. Am I cheating? I guess but I prefer to think of it as speeding through something I don't find as entertaining in favor of spending more time beating monsters with my wrench.

    Most games however are not this complex, A typical FPS has you wandering through a fairly straight-forward maze shooting and killing things and looking for some way to open a door at the end of it. Do I really need a guide to tell me that in order to finish the Last stage of Halo I need to drive really fast and not hit obstructions? Is it any mystery that I am supposed to shoot everybody I see when playing Red Faction 2?

    Are guides dying? Not anytime soon. While the store charges you $15-$20 a piece for them, keep in mind that they only pay about a dollar a piece from the publisher so the huge markup balances any losses incurred from unsold stock. Besides, every on-line FAQ that appears in the first week of a game's release is plagiarized straight out of a guide anyway. If guides were gone, the FAQs would shrink up as well.
    • Another good reason for the guide is to aid those of use who love to game but just are short on time. Example : I purchased the guides to the 2 Zelda games on the N64. Both games have 100+ hours of gameplay potentially, time that I just don't have to invest. By sitting down with the guide, I was able to enjoy running around the worlds completing all of the quests and finding all of the items without taking months to do it (playing a few hours a week, here).

      For long, complex games a guide can be invaluabl

  • Screenshots (Score:3, Insightful)

    by erasmus_ ( 119185 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @05:59PM (#6610023)
    Not I have bought a guide in a while, as I use GameFaqs just like everyone else, but the one advantage that I think people haven't mentioned yet of the printed guides are the screenshots. There are definitely some games and situations where words just can't adequately express what you're supposed to do or go. Usually in the FAQ that will be accompanied by "just keep trying - you'll get it eventually!"

    Like I said, I haven't bought a guide in a while, but if I'm already at the store, and I happen to remember that I'm stuck somewhere in one of many games I play and then put on hold, I definitely might check out the screenshot. Screenshots of items and enemies might be useful as well, as in the text FAQ all you're getting is the general description and then it's up to you to match that mentally when you actually encounter it in the game.

    • Re:Screenshots (Score:3, Interesting)

      by angle_slam ( 623817 )
      but the one advantage that I think people haven't mentioned yet of the printed guides are the screenshots.

      But sometimes the ASCII is better. For example, in GTA: Vice City there are hidden packages to be found. I had the print guide version, but all it shows is a screen shot and a general description of where it is (e.g., on top of building X). But the GameFaqs guide actually made it easier to find things. Instead of just saying it's on top of building X, it told you how to get there, which is sometimes no

  • I came pretty close to buying an Advance Wars 2 guide the other day when I saw it at Wal-Mart. As has been mentioned a few times already, the big advantage is the large screenshots included. You can't really get those in a text FAQ. Unfortunately guides still cost an upwards of 15 dollars, which completely turned me off of purchasing one. For that price I could almost afford a new game.

  • Now it's clear to me! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been trying to get to the next page of my game FAQ for the last 1/2 hr. Boredom drove me here finally only to find you guys are at fault. Thanks a million :(

  • My first clue that they were dying.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lancew ( 178722 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @06:21PM (#6610185)
    .. was when I bought my son the guide book for one of the later Final Fantasy games ( I believe it was FF9). The book was full of the typical hints, tips and tricks, but all of the key information was missing. For all of the really important stuff you needed to take a code number listed in the guide and input it into Square's playonline.com [square-enix-usa.com] website (which required registration, of course).

    If I have to go to the computer to get the information anyway, why not just use one of the free faqs available? Why pay my money for a slick, colorful guide with little valuable information? I am pretty sure that was the last guide book I ever purchased.

    In the future they will probably just skip the printed material altogether and charge you $5.95 to access the same information on their website.
    • Something to add to this:
      Most of the information in the FF9 book that you bought is also on PlayOnline, with the information you went to the site to find inserted in the proper places. Basically, the entire book is free on the site plus additional content, all you have to do is register.

      I printed the thing out and it came out at about 2-3x as many pages as the book I spent $2 on (yes, two dollars, so not too much complaining, but then again, I was hoping to get all of the information, since I get guides ar
  • GameSpot buys GameFAQs, GameSpot runs article asking if published game guides are dying... including the obligatory link to their own, somewhat newly acquired, fairly well know, GameFAQs.com (then again, maybe some of GameSpot's normal audience doesn't know GameFAQs.com too well).

    Yeah, well, right now I'm in a bit of a monetary crunch so I've been downloading FAQs and printing them out, because I can get paper for about $10 for 2500 pages, vs. a guide for $10-20, but, for the most part, when the guide is e
    • When I played through FF9 earlier this year, I went to gamefaqs constantly. Perhaps because of the lack of a good strategy guide, the gamefaqs for FF9 are remarkably deep and informative. They go into stats and theoretical formulas for some of the advanced moves, and have very detailed info on getting all the secret weapons and stuff that only obsessive-compulsives really need to find. When I began another game for FF7, I was surprised to find that the guides were relatively primative despite the fact that
  • The only real advantage with a store-bought game guide is that they are typically available as soon as the game is released. Usually you have a company that puts out the "official" game guide for a game, and the author of this guide has had plenty of time and access to the beta version of the game. So its great if you are one of those release-day buyers that lack patience.

    One might argue that they look prettier and more professional than a FAQ but often the content itself is very lacking. A good example

  • guides (Score:2)

    by syle ( 638903 ) *
    I argued the exact same line with my girlfriend when she wanted to pick up the FFX guide -- "Why? We have the internet."

    She said it's just a better experience to have a book there beside her when she plays, where she can flip the pages. I can't argue, but I can definitely see that the days of A Link To The Past (where you needed the guide if you wanted to find every heart) are long past. Now, the guides are no longer necessary, they're just for convenience.

  • Game Guides aren't THAT old. See, the game use to COME with essentially the same thing in the form of a manual.

    However, the devs figured they could make the extra cash by selling a $15 game guide that was seemingly necessary to suceed at a game.

    Oh, and btw - most game guides are crap. Essentially reprinting information from the manual or ingame help with LOTS of oversized image and white space. Needless. Most of the useful information in these game guides (espececially those from Prima) can be distilled

  • Or more importantly: Is it confirmed by netcraft?

    Seriously, I never understood what game guides are good for, it's like watching someone else playing that game.
    Besides, todays games are made for mainstream audience - and the mainstream does not want to read it wants to play. NOW.
  • Print Game Guides are dieing, nobody cares. What I'm surprised no one remembers is gameguides.com which was owned by Gamespot, they had the idea that they could sell PDF guides with screen shots and everything only online, their problem was that they wanted to charge back in the 90's when everything was supposed to be free. Anyway IGN launched IGN Guides which was supposed to be the exact same thing except it was free! (Everyone can see where this is going? Microsoft vs. Netscape anyone?) Anyway Gameguides.
  • I doubt the FAQs would be as complete and quickly completed if there weren't game guides to derive from. Game Guides sometimes contain information you wouldn't find by just playing the game (cheat codes, really hidden rooms etc.) and they occasionally double check facts with the developer (if they can get through the publisher's producer).

  • Of course they aren't. (Score:3)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @08:08PM (#6611013) Homepage
    No forum comes with glossy, pretty pages. No forum has answers for the end of the game if you are stuck near the end, and it just came out. No forum gives you something that's super easy to read on the couch (unless you purchase a tablet PC; however, you could also buy about 200 guides for the same price).

    I can't count the number of illiterate gamefaqs exist on the net. There are so many people who failed grade 8 english who like games, and they all seem to like to try and write guides.

    For PC games the guide can be outdated, but for most console games, it's the most complete guide you'll ever find.

    How many people out there are willing to spend 60+ hours on a game, and then write it up all for free? There are lots of people who'll write complete FAQs for SW: KOTOR, but how many complete guides exist for Hey, you, Pikachu?

    There are 2 uses to a guide. The first is the most obvious: when I get stuck, I will look it up in the guide. I do this sparingly, so as not so spoil anything. Cool guides that work to not spoil it (like Brady's Wind Waker guide), are even better. Once I've beaten the game once, and the game offers replay value (again, Wind Waker does this, as does KOTOR), I will play through the game with guide in hand. I will find everything, I well check all the side quests, I will do everything I humanly can. If I really consider it done and I really won't want to play it years later, I even get extra from my local video game store when I trade in the guide with the game.

  • Fun with EB Employees! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BigJimSlade ( 139096 ) on Monday August 04, 2003 @08:14PM (#6611038) Homepage
    Wanna have some fun at EB?
    1. Buy a game, preferably a newish game that will have a strategy guide available
    2. When asked if you would like to purchase the strategy guide for the game, exclaim to everyone in the store "Why in the world would I want to spend $15 on this strategy guide when I get a better strategy guide on GameFaqs.com for FREE? That's w-w-w-dot-g-a-....

    They've learned not to ask me anymore...
  • There will always be a need for the fancy printed game guides, so long as there are RPGs. Sure you could download a ASCII FAQ and Walkthrough, but the quantity and quality of the information will never compare.
  • It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Game Guides are dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Game Guide community when ... [etc.]
  • I'd have to say that for certain games, especially those on console platforms, it is hard to find illustrative screen shots of areas (such as those for role playing games or adventure games) with markings denoting where things really are. On the other hand, games like Baldur's Gate 2 have a wealth of information online including some guides with fully annotated maps, cheats (item codes, spawn codes, etc for the Lua-based console system) that are mostly derived from screen shots.

    Console game guides are wort
  • I bought the Final Fantasy X game guide for the nice artwork that was fused into the guide. Sure, I could have ordered an artbook from an import web site...but I liked the fact that I could preview the whole guide and see if the art was truly good... I would have prefered a separate art book though, such as "The Art of Final Fantasy IX"...
  • I am sure we will see them as freebies since no one wants to purchase them. It will be a good way to get the game name out by giving them away, or at least short versions with select tips.
  • I think I will always prefer the Strategy Guides, because you can always trust them. I also like the fact that most of them comes with posters and guided pictures.
  • click here [gamefaqs.com] and tell me if their is a slight chance that will be able to find all this information in the brady guide...

    FAQS are made by people who love the game they are writing about and are doing it for free. I think that is reason enough not to ever buy another game guide again. Besides that: they suck. What i like best about FAQS is the fact the you are sometimes able to find reference for little tidbits that you would never have noticed if you did'nt read about it.

    I also think that gamefaqs has

  • DVDs/CDs with gameplay footage. Complete run-through of the game by an expert player for the shorter action titles like Shinobi, Gungrave, Ikaruga, etc. Or for longer things, give me stuff like DVD menus of footage of boss battles and important, tough parts of the game. 90% of the time, i don't believe for an instant that the people writing game guides have actually used the strategy they were espousing. Show me proof other than a dinky screenshot. Give me a feeling for the speed of a boss, or what spe
  • Game guides are a waste of money. However, if they sold sets of nice glossy color maps for (say) $5, I'd probably buy those. F'rinstance, I could have used a good map of Vice City, and I'm currently addicted to Ratchet and Clank and could use some maps for that.

    The problem is, they don't sell the maps without the useless book...
  • The guide would tell you almost everything you needed to know about a particular situition in the game. To get the complete scoop, however, you would write down a code printed in the guide, walk down the hall to your PC, enter the code into a form on PlayOnline.com, and get the rest of the info. The guide became nothing more than a book full of dumb codes, and I'd spend all my time walking back and forth from my PC to my PS2. Man, that was frustrating! If I'd wanted to to online for game info, I would have

  • I think most everything has been covered. Online FAQs have the limitation of (a) being text-only, and (b) not being able to start the FAQ until they get the game in stores. However, they have the advantage of being EXTREMELY easy to update. As a corollary, if it's a good writer, mistakes will be corrected fairly quickly.

    I think some of the posters here have forgotten the REAL reason game guides won't die out any time soon: tech savvy. When I was 6 years old, I wouldn't know enough about the Internet t

  • If you don't consider FAQ/Walkthroughs game guides then I guess you could say that they are dying out. Why would I want to pay for something when the same, if not better, information is on the internet? I try to figure out stuff on my own, but I'm not going to waste on day on a certain part on the game.
  • Since I don't have a dedicated line nor is the computer necessarily located near the console... I prefer to have a book to thumb through while playing, especially if its a pc game so i don't have to quit or alt-tab to a browser. Also, in playing Legend of Mana I found the Brady book helpful just for the maps and not the game walkthrough. FAQs are nice cause you get more insight into the non-linear aspects of the game. Ie. in Legend of Mana the guide barely touches on the forging, gardening, pets and gol

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