Strategy guide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Strategy guides (攻略本 in Japanese, literally "capture book") are instruction books that contain hints or complete solutions to specific video games. The line between strategy guide and walkthrough is somewhat blurry, with the former often containing or being written around the latter. They are often published in print, both in book form and articles within video game magazines. The strategy guide books or booklets are typically sold through game retailers. In cases of exceptionally popular game titles, they are sold through more mainstream publication channels, such as bookstores or even newsstands.
Strategy guides may be published by game distributors themselves, or licensed to a specialty publishing house. Prima Games, a division of Random House, is a well known example, known for their Prima "Official" Game Guides. BradyGames, a division of Pearson Education, is another publisher which is well known for their BradyGames Official Strategy Guides. These kind of guides are fully licensed from the game makers, and are thus marketed as the "official" strategy guides. There are also a number of publishers who make third-party, unlicensed, "unofficial" strategy guides, and many of today's mainstream publishers, such as BradyGames and Prima Games, began by making third-party guides.
Contents |
[edit] Typical contents
The contents of a strategy guide varies from game genre to another. Typically, the guides contain:
- Detailed gameplay information, for example, maneuvers that are not detailed in the manual.
- Complete maps of the game, which show the placement of all items (including hidden and hard-to-find ones).
- Detailed instructions for specific locations on how to proceed from there.
- Explanations of puzzles.
- Details of enemies, including techniques on defeating individual enemies (especially bosses), the segment for minor enemies is commonly referred to as a bestiary.
- Checklist of collectible items.
- Cheats and game editing, although this has been less common in official guides.
- Walkthroughs to help the player complete levels.
[edit] Publishing before game release
In order to be released at the same time as the game, commercial strategy guides are often based on a pre-release version of the game, rather than the final retail version (a good example was BradyGames strategy guide for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It included slightly off locations for collectable items, included adrenaline locations which were removed before release, and had a slightly different map, which made it impossible to find the black van in Los Venturas used for break-ins using their guide). Until recently they could not be updated after they are published, however, BradyGames has begun offering free updates to their official strategy guides via their website. An alternative are the free, fan-made FAQs or walkthroughs located online which satisfies a user's need to be accurate and up to date.
Strategy guides are sometimes published before the game itself is published. This can be risky because there is always the chance that a game will end up not being released. In January 2001, Prima published a guide (ISBN 0-7615-3125-4) for the Dreamcast version of Half-Life that was cancelled late in development when Sega discontinued the console.
[edit] Source Mistakes
Some companies will, at times, make mistakes in the book about the game itself, such as stating that "Character A" has a relationship with "Character B", despite there being no relationship. A notable incident that occurred relating to this was when Prima Guides made a strategy guide for Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, when they referred Super Shadow as Hyper Shadow. This particular incident has become an Internet meme in the Sonic community. Also in a strategy guide for Diddy Kong Racing they referred to Tricky, Smokey, Bubbler, Bluey as "The Dinosaur", "The Dragon", "The Walrus", and "The Octopus" instead of their names. Taj was called "The Genie." Wizpig was the only boss character to given his official name.
[edit] Guides and technology
The rise of the World Wide Web and the increasing availability of free online FAQs and walkthroughs has taken away some of the need for commercial strategy guides. However, there is still a large market for them. Print strategy guides often feature extensive picture-by-picture walkthroughs, maps, and game art, none of which is possible in the plain-text strategy guides published by prominent sites such as GameFAQs. Newer sites, such as pwnGuide, allow strategy guides to be published in various formats such as .pdf, .doc, and .ppt thus allowing for picture-by-picture walkthroughs, maps, etc.., which further undercuts the main advantage that print strategy guides have: rich content.
Some publishers have tried combining the printed books with the Internet. In 2000, one of the most dubious examples of this was the Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide published by BradyGames, but much of the information was contained on Square's PlayOnline website. This seemed like a good way to promote PlayOnline, while creating a guide that would have updatable content, but it was widely panned. Players saw no need of buying a book if a significant part of the content was online; and there was no point paying for online content from one site, if it was available for free on another site. As a result, Square abandoned the online strategy guide concept and released complete printed guides for future games. [1]
Furthermore, the rise of video sharing sites such as YouTube has given rise to new video based guides. Entire games can often have video captured walkthroughs using programs such as FRAPs; allowing for an unprecedented ability of user to mirror exactly the strategies recommended.
[edit] Revenue Models
There are various different revenue models for current game guide publishers. The most common way of generating revenue is with targeted advertisements and sponsors on the website. Other companies charge the user a fee to be able to download and read a guide. This type of ad revenue is mostly looked down upon in the gaming community, since most guides are written for the public's benefit and not for-profit. pwnGuide however, has introduced a revenue sharing model which splits the profit between the guide writers and the site itself. Currently, no single revenue model has proven more successful than the rest.
[edit] External links
- Strategy guide publishers
- BradyGames
- DoubleJump Books
- Future Press
- Game Guides Online
- GuideBazaar
- Nintendo Power
- Lunabean Guides
- Piggyback Interactive
- Prima Games
- Online strategy guides and FAQs
