Do Strategy Guides Still Have a Place in Gaming?

[00slash00]

So I'm playing through Lightning Returns right now. Strategy guides have always been helpful for Final Fantasy games but since your stats and the amount you can extend the clock depend entirely on which quests you do, a guide is even more important this time around. However, I'm also noticing that a lot of websites and helpful gamers provide their own free guides online. Last night I considered buying a guide or at least downloading a torrent and then I asked myself...why? A guide may go in to more detail but I can use YouTube for a detailed walkthrough of every worthwhile quest and sites like Games Radar have a list of all quests in each area, where to find it, what you need to do, within what times you need to do it, and what your reward will be. I can see guides being nice for collectors but looking at it strictly from a gaming perspective, what reason is there to buy a guide when you can get all the information for free, legally, on the internet?

 

[tippy2k2]

Yes because there are still people that buy them. That's what it comes down to in the end really.

I see absolutely no reason why anyone would buy them (unless it was a collector's edition thing or something) but companies wouldn't make them if they weren't profitable. They are still being made and therefore SOMEONE is buying these things.

I don't know if they buy them because having a book in front of them is easier, because you risk spoiling things by using the internet, because they don't have internet (believe it or not, a good chunk of the population still doesn't have high speed internet) or maybe they just want something to read on the toilet but either way, if they are making money, they will continue to exist.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like strategy guides (printed editions, not downloads). But they're too expensive and frankly they don't contain anything I couldn't find out for free on the internet.

 

[StriderShinryu]

As Tippy says, I see them less as strategy guides these days and more of a collectors item. With Youtube, wikis, message boards, etc. there's very little reason to ever buy a strategy guide for the information contained therein. In fact, given the likelihood for games of today to be added to, patched, updated, etc. it often winds up with a good part of the information found in a strategy guide being, at best, out of date and, at worst, actually totally wrong.

As collectors pieces, however, strategy guides can be a very nice way for a developer to present artwork, back story, lore, etc. for the game without having to come up with an entire art book style presentation.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Yes because there are still people that buy them. That's what it comes down to in the end really.

That.

I haven't bought one recently (I think the last one I got was the Donkey Kong Country Returns one) but I do appreciate them for what they are. I used to see them as semi-official art books to be honest (by this I mean this is how I saw them once I discovered GameFAQs and Gamewinners). As of now I also kind of see them as a sort of manual since games stopped shipping with them anyway.

...

I almost bought the MGS-Revengence guidebook recently but that was only because it was on clearance for less than a Chik-Fil-A meal.

 

[redknightalex]

I think for the same reason why we still have, and people still buy (myself included), collector's editions. They are something extra to add to a collection and occasionally they do add extra value, namely with artwork and presentation. Sometimes I find myself going back to the old Assassin's Creed strategy books and look at their story analysis (ha!).

For me, part of it goes back to being a kid and only having the guide with me to read on long car rides instead of portable gaming (before I owned a Game Boy). I like to read them in bed instead of turning the game back on, looking at the art and stats, particularly for Final Fantasy games, even when I know the details. At least the ones they do make are usually of quality style and for the time I spend with them worth the price.

 

[Elfgore]

I miss a time when I had to purchase Strategy Guides for everything. I worshiped my Pokemon Firered guide like a god. Now I can just Google whatever I want online for zero money. The last guide I purchased was either The Godfather 2 guide or Pokemon Diamond. I don't even think I owned Diamond at the time, my friend did and I went over to his house everyday to play it.

But they still must be relevant like Tippy said. Otherwise we wouldn't see them anymore. Maybe people have been downloading them online or something. Most likely like everyone else has said with collectors. I have a friend who was a total Skyrim nut. He bought the original (the ultimate edition), all of the DLC, the GOTY edition, both strategy guides, and the anthology. So yeah, collectors for the win.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I've heard it said that they pull double duty as art/lore books.

Maybe the good ones, but this was said to me to someone trying to sell me one.

 

[Mikejames]

I miss a time when I had to purchase Strategy Guides for everything. I worshiped my Pokemon Firered guide like a god. Now I can just Google whatever I want online for zero money.

You know, I'm a bit nostalgic for that too. I don't miss when I'd have to give up on a game after getting indefinitely lost, but I miss part of the wonder that came with not being able to automatically figure out all of a game's secrets online.

Then you'd find that one kid who actually played the same game and he'd present some strange rumor about it that everyone would get hyped over.

 

[TheSYLOH]

I've heard it said that they pull double duty as art/lore books.

Maybe the good ones, but this was said to me to someone trying to sell me one.

Checking some game wikis, alot of the more obscure lore facts come from strategy guides.
Some are entertaining in their own right.

I have the strategy guides from both Borderlands games, both have large segments that are written from an in-universe perspective.
They also crack joke and poke fun at the source material.
I think they have as much right to exist as novelizations.

 

[Smooth Operator]

You mean the extra charge dev guides?
They have about the same value as printed porn these days, but hey if anyone still wants to buy that then there is the market, I however know where to find much better stuff on the interwebs.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think they're only really good as collectors pieces to look nice with a game you're particularly proud of. They've always been a bit money grubbing, and with Final Fantasy in particular there's always been a concern that they keep on throwing in impossible secrets and mechanics so that a guide is required (Zodiac Spear anyone?).

In terms of actually needing one, I find the internet is normally pretty reliable. Saying that, a lot of the internet guides get some of the information on console battle mechanics from a published guide. I don't know if we would have cracked the chain system in XII nearly as quickly without published guides

 

[FoolKiller]

I like strategy guides (printed editions, not downloads). But they're too expensive and frankly they don't contain anything I couldn't find out for free on the internet.

I like the ease of use (moreso than a tablet, laptop or any other computing device next to me). I also enjoy the visual layouts rather than wall of text from online.

The only two problems are the prohibitively expensive ones (anything over $15) and the fact that DLC makes the guide incomplete.

 

[Artina89]

I used to love getting strategy guides, not to necessarily help me complete the game, but I used to really like the in depth character bios, and sometimes you can get really cool maps or other collectors items that I like to acquire. For example, I recently found the special edition strategy guide for Resident Evil 6 for really cheap at a bargain bookshop that came with the sew on patches which I thought was really cool.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I buy the Final Fantasy ones more so out of tradition than needing them. I even have the Lightning returns guide but I dont own the game.

Otherwise I hardly ever get them, if I want to use a guide I find that people on the internet often have made superior guides themselves. I do have other guides from way back that I picked up more for the artwork and lore and ofc ones I have gotten free.

Guides still can have a place but I find if its for competitive games they are almost useless straight away as the metagame and even the game (mechanically) can change very quickly thats if they are right to start with anyway.

 

[Easton Dark]

Not from a gaming perspective, no. Everything has an internet browser now and there's hundreds of different video guides to everything, let alone screenshot or text ones.

It's also easier to google search your exact issue than it is to look in an index.

They're still nice for series fans though. I cherish my Oblivion strategy guide. It looks so pretty.

Although I just looked on Amazon at the New Vegas guide, and it said it was frequently bought with a 360 version of the game. Maybe it's a console gamer thing.