Strategy guide writer defends his brethren

Every writer has the option to not take the assignment. The crap that Apekid mentioned is the reason why I don’t write strategy guides.[/quote]

And why I do not buy them.

Whew, and I thought they were a scam before…

So does this mean I should be taking my strategy guides off my resume?

I don’t know how it works for other companies, but I think guides are as good as the company they’re made for allows them to be. I wrote two directly for the developer and then they were published by Prima. For both guides I was given quite a few months to familiarize myself with the game, which I was doing anyway because I was in QA at the time also. In fact everyone I know who wrote a guide was in QA and usually working on the same project.

Of course things change after the guide is written, but that directly corresponds to the fact that things are changing in a game up until it goes gold, and the guide must be done long before then. For developers who aren’t so irresponsible (are there any of those any more?) and actually have their game stable in the latter half of the beta stages, there should be no problem.

Now I don’t read guides myself, but I think that the people who do for the majority of them are pretty content to get “where do I go next?” out of them and won’t so much as notice the minor details. Of course I’m applying that context to Matrix/Hulk type games and not to a game like Disgaea.

But in my opinion guides have been worthless since the inception of GameFAQs.

The problem with online guides is that they’re great for finding out how to solve Quest X or get through Level Y, but they aren’t much fun to read. In the old days a “guide” was like a supplement to the game experience, a way of immersing yourself in the game further. I guess it stemmed from my wargaming background; buy a wargame, read several books on that battle/campaign, and the whole becomes a more rounded experience. Guides now are really just walkthroughs with other stuff in varying quantities and of varying quality. That’s I suppose what the market wants, but I agree fully that if all you want is to get through the game, the online route is the way to go.

I’m gonna disagree somewhat with the ranters here and point out one unassailable fact: Prima and BradyGames are still in business. Obviously, a product of this, er, quality is satisfying SOMEONE’S needs: namely, the lazy kids for whom a walkthrough suffices so they can follow the story passively and uninterrupted.

Not a whole lot of voting with one’s wallet going on here.

Yeah, the Disgaea guide is inexcusably useless and lacks anything a strategy gamer might find relevant. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that most guides follow the basic template for a console RPG guide, regardless of genre: give 'em a walkthrough so they never have to actually PLAY anything and can enjoy the 40 hour anime puppet show they paid $50 for uninterrupted by stupid puzzles or tough fights. When they’re done, they can look at pictures of Tifa’s sweater cows.

Really, they’ve made writing console game guides such a narrow, defined, and templatized process that they do non-RPG genres (other than fighting games) a major disservice. Sadly, I know a few folks who bought the Disgaea guide JUST for the art, and in that capacity, the purchasers got their money’s worth - wank fodder starring pie-eyed cherubs.

In the end, we’ve got two answers to this problem. One, actual GAMERS aren’t the real audience for the guide; rather, they target lazy anime fanfolk to whom the game is a necessary evil impeding their access to the characters and world mythos. In this case, we shouldn’t buy the guides, period, because they weren’t written for us.

Two, vote with our fucking wallets. I mean, Christ, a quick scan of the guide on the rack will tell you if it’s useless or not. Sadly, in these days of subpar manuals, it’s all to easy to say “well, what the fuck, at least I won’t have to leave my console and dredge around on GameFAQS while I try to find out the class upgrades,” but in the end, it’s YOUR $15. I say don’t buy the guides until they start catering to us, the actual GAMERS who care about mechanics versus a pure walkthrough plus anime eye candy.

Anyway, having written a guide myself (Pocket Games guide to Donkey Kong Country GBC), I feel for the poor bastard. It’s a stupid, thankless task, by and large, although it bought me a sexy 32MB TNT2 at the time. Still, the ultimate dollars/hour ratio was NOT in my favor, especially since it wasn’t a good game.

I should add that Versus used to do GREAT strategy guides for fighting games - their Street Fighter Alpha 2 guide was incredible. They spent less time copying the moves from the menual and more time discussing mechanics, providing combinations and play tactics for each character in specific context. Awesome, rigorous work - too bad the company went out of business.

Well, I had to look it up. Mark wrote the Prima Guide for Evolution: The World of Sacred Device

My favorite quote from the Amazon page is the “Editorial Review” from School Library Journal:

Grade 6-9 - These two titles are clearly designed to meet trade-formatted informational needs at a time when “textbook” is twice a four-letter word. Up-to-date, organized by subject headings within logically pyramidal chapters, and adequately illustrated, they feature information boxes, glossaries for terms highlighted in the texts, and lists of Web sites. Though lacking the flair of, say, Linda Gamlin’s Evolution (DK, 1993) or Laurence Pringle’s considerably older Chains, Webs, and Pyramids (Crowell, 1975; o.p.), they will be welcomed by students and teachers who are looking for clearly written, dependable material. Utilitarian. Useful.
Patricia Manning, formerly at Eastchester Public Library, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.

WTF???

Another great quote from another review:

One of our in-laws is firmly convinced that evolution is just a modern fairy tale and never happened. Most scientists, however, believe that this is one of the most fruitful theories of science. Evolution provides insights into the earth’s past history and holds deep significance for present and future trends - like the emergence of new, drug-resistant disease germs.

As we were writing the books of this series, we were continually struck by how interrelated the basic science concepts are. Evolution, for example, is closely linked with plate tectonics, as well as photosynthesis, food chains, symbiosis, clocks and rhythms, weather and climate, and even energy. Writing the Science Concepts books expanded and deepened our view of the world, and we hope that they will also prove mind-expanding for our readers. --This text refers to the Library Binding edition

Ah, Amazon. Always a wealth of useful information.

Incidentally, I disagree with a lot of what’s been said here. I personally don’t like strategy guides. However, a lot of casual gamers do – including my fiance, who loves the Oddworld Game for the Xbox and bought the strategy guide along with the game as kind of a how-to (incidentally, the only on-topic review of Asher’s guide is 5 stars and titled “Real Great Help.” I don’t think we hardcore gamers are the target market for these things – the target market are people who’ve never heard of and will never visit GameFAQs.

As for the scathing criticism of the Game Guide writers, well, I’m not close to the industry at all, but they seem to serve a need/desire, and more power to them for that. Game reviewers are much the same. I think many members of the public would argue that writing game reviews is a waste of time and effort. Even many gamers would agree – esp. those familiar only with the formulaic style of reviews that are still omnipresent on so many websites. Many of us on this board subscribe to multiple mags, however, because we enjoy the humor, insight, and thought – not to mention some damn good writing and editing – that goes into reviewing and writing about games from some of the authors that hang on out on this board.

That said, ApeKid, it does sound like kind of a shitty gig – but you get paid to play games, which is something most of us can only dream about.

Every writer has the option to not take the assignment. The crap that Apekid mentioned is the reason why I don’t write strategy guides.[/quote]
Exactly. You can’t use “Well, I was just doing what the people that I decided to work for told me to do” as an excuse for doing something lame. I don’t want to close the thread, so I won’t mention which German political party became famous for this sort of justification after World War II. But you get my drift. Apekid is Hitler.

Whoops.

Asjunk, those are funny reader reviews of my book. Apparently people are pasting in boilerplate reviews for any subjects with “Evolution” in the title. That’s the only way those reviews make sense.

Every writer has the option to not take the assignment. The crap that Apekid mentioned is the reason why I don’t write strategy guides.[/quote]
Exactly. You can’t use “Well, I was just doing what the people that I decided to work for told me to do” as an excuse for doing something lame. I don’t want to close the thread, so I won’t mention which German political party became famous for this sort of justification after World War II. But you get my drift. Apekid is Hitler.

Whoops.[/quote]

Well, to defend Apekid, I think that sometimes things can go right and the strategy guides turn out ok. Not great, but ok. We don’t get strategy guides like Alan Emrich used to write anymore (and he’s got a rant about the hint book industry on his site somewhere), but Prima and Brady can put out guides that have decent walkthrus, tips, maps, etc. Even if that information is duplicated online, some people prefer to have the book in hand rather than a printout.

It’s just that you can never predict when you sign the contract to write one how exactly the process is going to go. Is the version of the game you get going to be playable and feature-complete? Are the developers just fixing bugs, or are they still making significant balance changes and working on scenarios?

I agree, and the reason is that most hardcore gamers remember that guides used ot be much better than they are today. It’s hardly a scintillating endorsement of strategy guides to say that they have a solid audience in people that don’t know any better, though.

The shirt says it all, really:

http://www.gameskins.com/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?&pg=prod&ref=gssh036

Best. Shirt. Evar.

~MJK

Damn! Too slow on the edit.

Whoo. Don’t get much closer den dat, as Gambit would say.

Time for Qt3 to start stamping posting times down to the SECOND.

~MJK

Ah, the old strategy guide discussion. Yep, it’s a pretty horrid part of game writing (excuse the term). Alan Emrich has a page where he talks a lot about the deterioration of strat guide quality. I remember Alan’s Master of Orion guide and still have it. Rusel DeMaria’s TIE Fighter guide wasn’t bad either. Both those Prima classics were written back in the day when it was acceptable for guides to come out months after the game did.

When the deadlines changed to weeks before the game’s release date, well, that sort of pooched everything. The guides now are still OK as walkthroughs, but why buy them when you can get better walkthroughs for free at gamefaqs? Because casual gamers probably don’t know better and are happy to have a book they can use.

Just a weird observation: Many of the hacks that write lots of the guides don’t seem to hang out here at Qt3. Heh, what a bunch of cranky curmugeons we have :)

…proving once again Blizzard Knows Best - at least in multiplayer.

Multiplayer Guide

Death Knight stats and strategies

I agree.

The best strategy guide I’ve ever seen was written “back in the day” before there was a strategy guide industry. That was “Sid Meier’s Civllization or Rome on 640K a Day”, which was written by Johnny Wilson and Allen Emrich. It hit the shelves some time after the game had shipped, and sold a lot of copies. It was probably the inspiration for the strategy guide business – but unfortunately, the process of guide writing wasn’t emulated.

I played the game for 12-16 hours a day and wrote for 4. I put a good 150 hours of play into it, and it’s a pretty linear game. I played through every level multiple times. I like the fact that you know the guide is so shitty despite the fact that you haven’t ever looked at it. Thanks for judging something you aren’t familiar with. Do your game reviews the same way?

I still work with the book publisher, and yes my name is still on that book. Like I had a choice? Like I knew they’d changed the locations of the items until after the book shipped? Like I could retroactively take my name off the book once it was printed? And no, I haven’t done another book with that game company because I won’t. There are several game companies I won’t work with because of situations like this.

Of course I’m a hack. It’s not like I did magazine journalism for 5 years and was the editorial director of the largest game site (6 years ago at least) for a year before I changed to this so I could raise my kids.

Hey, if guides suck so bad, why don’t you call Prima or Brady and do one? Show us all how much we really suck.

Nope. I stand by my work and take the hits even when something that goes wrong isn’t my fault. It’s my job to do it, and I do the best I can with whatever I’m given to work on.

But hey, why am I telling you this? I’m obviously a talentless hack who can’t get work any other way and who goes out of his way to scam people. As with TC, if they’re such a scam, call Prima or Brady, take a contract for a book, and show us how good they should be.

In any event, I’m done posting on this topic.

I agree.

The best strategy guide I’ve ever seen was written “back in the day” before there was a strategy guide industry. That was “Sid Meier’s Civllization or Rome on 640K a Day”, which was written by Johnny Wilson and Allen Emrich. It hit the shelves some time after the game had shipped, and sold a lot of copies. It was probably the inspiration for the strategy guide business – but unfortunately, the process of guide writing wasn’t emulated.[/quote]

That’s a somewhat unique situation. You have a deep strategy game that’s not only replayable but is also a bestseller. You can probably get away with releasing a strategy guide a month after the game hits retail if you have that kind of game. If it’s Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on the PS2, however, you’re killing yourself if you don’t have the guide on the shelves when the game is released. For some games, if you can’t get the guide out the same week the game is released, you might as well not bother.

I thought they were pretty damn good. Now you can point to the Amazon review and say “My literary feats were praised in school library journal! So there!”

Okay, yeah, that probably won’t get you too far. :)

Anyway, I agree that it’s not the most glowing review to say that “well, some people just don’t know better.” And I agree that hint books/strategy guides aren’t nearly what they used to be. However, I do think they may be appropriate for the audience they currently serve – casual gamers and younger children. And I think that’s why they’re probably part of why they’re popular for consoles but not so much for PC games.

But, well, whatever. I’d love to hear what Apekid has to say if we haven’t hounded him from the forum… EDIT: oops. looks like he posted while I was writing this. :)

Aleck

The strategy guide industry suffers from laziness of writers as much as anything else; even the insane deadlines only work if you have nothing else going on in your life. It’s hard, but not totally impossible, to write a halfway decent guide for a game in two weeks if you were involved in the process for 12-16 hours each day. No doubt, it’s a lot of work, and your ass hurts afterwards.

That heinous amount of work is why you get paid many thousands of dollars (it did used to be $5k or so for regular writers, it’s probably gone down since then) on work-for-hire contracts.

It also helps a lot if the game is fun, playable, likeable, the developers talk to you, and you have a nice and flexible editor.

— Alan

My point, though, was that it was also the first (with the possible exception of something for Microsoft Flight Simulator), and probably is what launched the industry.

As for a game that lives and dies within a few months – to me, that just means that the game should ship with an adequate manual, rather than having the user buy an inadequate, inaccurate, poorly written strategy guide.