The Ugly of Game Guides

As a gamer, I enjoy playing video games. Shocking, I know. But being a gamer isn’t my full time job. As much as I would like to, I often don’t have time to sink my teeth into a game as much as I want to. There are plenty of games to be enjoyed, but I don’t have the time to dig through them and spend time exploring and discovering every little bit of each game to maximize my fun and enjoyment. Thats where the video game guide comes in. A companion piece of media that you reference while playing a game, whether it be a book, a video, a website, or even a simple text file. These guides have been helping people through games while maximizing content seen in an individual play though. But they also act as sources of information. Giving details on item and enemy stats, providing more detailed and large scale maps, divulging the locations of resources, giving strategy on how to play the game. Guides provide a ton of value, and with the popularization on the internet they’ve become a critical part of the modern gaming experience, no matter how small the role is. But the issue is a lot of modern guides are simply horrible.

One of the worst offenders has to be those SEO optimized garbage websites. The ones that rank highly when you search up “[game title] + guide”. The ones that are filled with fluff and ads. The ones that you need to scroll down to find anything useful. The ones that spread relevant information across several pages. These are probably the worst for the reasons I explained. Every time I mistakenly click on one I can feel my time wasting away. It seems as if they exist to show you ads instead of the information you want. At least they have the information promised, but often the accuracy is of dubious quality. There are often much more reputable sources for information than some website named something like “progamer4.co.uk”. But if these just existed normally it could be more excusable. However, they don’t. The biggest issue is how they aggressively optimize themselves in search engines. You often see multiple pages for the same site whenever you search something specific for a game. They out compete so many other more legitimate guides that its all you see when you search for a game guide. These websites block out the good and legitimate websites and just pollute search results.

A similar offender are video guides. Thats not to say all video guides are bad. There are tons of fantastic video guides out there. The visual aspect allows for better demonstrations of things that text and images cannot provide. The real issue is with the ones that are more so YouTube video than resource. You know the ones. The ones that have drawn out intros, long enough to run mid roll ads, reminders to “Like and Subscribe!”, clickbait thumbnail, and the key information at the very end. These just exist to waste your time. They truly do. These types of video guides are the same as the websites I previously complained about, just in a different form. Don’t waste your time with these videos.

Sometimes you don’t need a guide, you just need to look up some piece of information. Thats where you go to a wiki, and they’re great resources. Usually community made and run, they can provide all the information you could want. But my issue with with wikis as a concept, rather, its more so about the service most wikis are hosted on and thats Fandom. If you’ve searched for a wiki for anything online, you’ve probably seen a Fandom wiki. These are horrible cesspits that fail at their one job. They’re full of intrusive ads and videos that auto play. They preform horribly, barely work on mobile, and waste your time as much as the other offenders. But I think the worst part about Fandom wikis is what happens after a community moves away. Yes, some communities are reasonable and move away from this terrible service, but the issue is Fandom will continue to operate these old abandoned wikis. Now, that might not seem like the end of the world, but this is a scummy move. Not only does the old Fandom wiki still keep their high ranking search results, but they continue to serve their ad infested pages with potentially outdated and incorrect information.

But good guides still exist. Not everything is some horrible slop that exists to waste your time. I think one of the best sources is GameFAQs. It provides guides, trivia, forums, reviews, and much more. But the key part is its all made by fans. Its passionate fans creating amazing resources for other fans to use. There are often multiple detailed guides for a game, providing anything from details on one aspect of the game to a complete 100% walk through. And when you see a guide start with some ASCII art? Thats how you know its going to be quality. But an underrated part of GameFAQs is the forums section (or Board as they call it). Being able to easily find and read both past and present discussion and advice relating to the game is an amazing boon. I often add “gamefaqs” to the end of my searches to make sure I’m going to get some legit gaming tips whenever I look for them.

The biggest loss in guides has to be that of physical guide books. Sure, the internet provides quicker access to more in-depth material about a game, but there was something special about guide books. It wasn’t just the fact of having something physical, but guide books often celebrated the game. They would contain high quality art and bits of information and trivia. Guide books were full of personality and information. I remember I would spend too much time pouring over a few of the guide books I owned for Pokemon. I loved getting to see and learn about everything about the games I loved. And sure, a lot of that charm and appeal is gone with all the information you could ever want is a click away with the internet.

As long as games exist, we’ll need guides. We just need to make sure we keep providing and promoting good guides. Or if you like discovering things out for yourself and not use guides, why did you read this entire thing?