Strategy Guides in the World of Tomorrow
Do strategy guides have a future in gaming?
Derek Hidey
Issue date: 11/15/06 Section: The AT Wire
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Have you ever met someone who purchased music albums because they wanted to? They enjoy the artist so much that they would rather pay the $15 for the CD even though they could just as easily download it for free. I have a bunch of friends who are like this, and they say that they are happy to support the artist.
Now, think about this in terms of gamers and video games. Some gamers are fans of the games (Final Fantasy, Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls) and others are fans of the game developers (Blizzard Entertainment, Square Enix). Either way, a gamer is likely to purchase a strategy guide for a game just because they love the game a lot! Most strategy guide purchases today are less about the practical use and more about the aesthetics. Some gamers even collect the guides like comic books, putting them into clear plastic sleeves to preserve them.
The reality of the situation is that anything you can get from a strategy guide is probably somewhere on the Internet. Sometimes you may have to dig a little deeper to find it, but it's there. One advantage is that strategy guides are portable and websites aren't always. Of course, a printer could easily remedy that problem for those of us without PDAs and wireless Internet access.
It will be a sad day when strategy guides are no longer a part of our video-game experience, especially for the old school gamers with stacks of Nintendo Power in their closets.
Now, think about this in terms of gamers and video games. Some gamers are fans of the games (Final Fantasy, Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls) and others are fans of the game developers (Blizzard Entertainment, Square Enix). Either way, a gamer is likely to purchase a strategy guide for a game just because they love the game a lot! Most strategy guide purchases today are less about the practical use and more about the aesthetics. Some gamers even collect the guides like comic books, putting them into clear plastic sleeves to preserve them.
The reality of the situation is that anything you can get from a strategy guide is probably somewhere on the Internet. Sometimes you may have to dig a little deeper to find it, but it's there. One advantage is that strategy guides are portable and websites aren't always. Of course, a printer could easily remedy that problem for those of us without PDAs and wireless Internet access.
It will be a sad day when strategy guides are no longer a part of our video-game experience, especially for the old school gamers with stacks of Nintendo Power in their closets.
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