Video Game Guides

[Gyokuran]

I've debated posting this for a couple hours for various reasons. First because this here forum dont take kindly to shameless plugs, which this post could be categorized under if not written properly. Secondly because I'm not 100% positive where to post it. The studio doesn't seem quite right, or the workshop since its not my own site, and its equally relevant to the DOW, HW, IC and eventually CoH and The Outfit forums too. Thirdly, finally and more humorously is because of the second to last news post on penny arcade.

That said, a couple days ago a topic on SA came up about things that annoyed you in game walkthroughs and a lot of different people ended up voicing the same handful of complaints. Some of the common ones were:

Too many FAQs to choose from. For a popular game there's often well over a dozen different FAQs and Walkthroughs and picking which one is best is mostly trial and error. For example on gamefaqs there are 90 different Final Fantasy VII and 98 Ocarina of Time guides. While these are split up into a couple of different categories, its not uncommon to find half a dozen or so with the exact same name.

Long Legal Disclaimers: Its not uncommon to have to wade through several lengthy paragraphs about how the guide cannot be reproduced for profit and blah blah blah blah.

Spoilers in the wrong places:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter YOUR BEST FRIEND IS THE FINAL BOSS
Credits

ASCII Titles: Its become pretty popular to create elaborate and needless ASCII drawings for the title. I don't really care my self but this seemed to be a pet peeve for a lot of people.

Bad Instructions: "Ok now turn and shoot the guy ok now shoot the guy behind him but WATCH OUT THERES ANOTHER GUY TO THE SIDE WITH A ROCKET ok now youve shot that dude so once youve shot the other 3 dudes continue on into the secret room once your in the secret room..."

Skipping Parts: "The next boss battle (which you're stuck on) is really easy once you're done with it then..."

No pictures: While .txt's are pretty dang cool it would be nice to use some of these newfangled .jpgs and .pngs and .gifs every so often.

Long Credits: I'd like to thank my cat muffins because without her moral support there's no way I'd have ever done this thank you! also a shout out to grammarnazi666@hotmail.com for emailing me about using the wrong "you're" on paragraph 153 sentence 5!

Using Japanese names: You should use the translated names, pure and simple. If you want to call the characters by their Japanese names then go write the FAQ in Japanese. I don't know, or need to know, the romanized version of their Japanese name, I know them by the name the game I'm playing gives me.

Long needless version histories: version 8.43 - I forgot to thank my other cat waffles! Credits updated!

Emoticons: the next boss is really hard so make sure you're level 40 before you fight him xD i dont know why they made the boss so hard but they did o.O but as long as youre level 40 youll be fine ^_^

I think you get the idea.

Well instead of complaining some one decided to register VGGuides.com and set up a MediaWiki. The goal of the site is to provide a source for a single, well written, factually accurate, easy to use guide for a game. Which it can't do without content, hence this post. If you're not familiar with the MediaWiki system, it allows anyone to create and edit the articles on the site. So far its worked great for Wikipedia, and hopefully it can work for video game guides.

The site was created only a day or two ago and as such has nearly no content, that's where the Relicnews community comes in. At worst, it would be nice if we could get some game descriptions up for Relic games. At best it would be awesome if we could get completed (as complete as they ever get on a wiki anyway), quality walkthroughs for relic's games. This is also a large community and our interests arent limited to just relic, getting good info up for other games is greatly appreciated. If you want to contribute, please please READ THE RULES and help. Remember this is a community project, one person doesn't (and wont) do it all alone. If you can add even part of a section to a walkthough, its a huge help. Try to respect established formatting systems set up by previous contributors, if you think it can be severely improved then go for it, but insure that the entire thing is consistent and professional. Please run everything through a spellchecker first, and if possible get it checked by other real people as spellcheckers are a poor substitute.

Given our numbers I'm sure at least several people here have already written FAQ's for a game, if you could contribute it that would be great. HOWEVER, please don't just copy and paste it as is. Reread it, insure it complies with all the rules, edit it to make it even better then before, and take advantage of the more powerful formatting tools available.

Spreading the word about this site does help, however PLEASE DO NOT GO SPAMING IT AROUND. Mentioning it to a friend = ok. Registering an account on a forum and posting a topic with just a link or a single paragraph = not ok. Such things just hurt the site.

Finally try to keep this on topic, I have a feeling I'm going to regret posting that PA link.


Personally I've started up, and hope to significantly contribute to, a Freespace 2 Section and Walkthrough. Additonally I started up a Skies of Arcadia section though I have no illusions about having the time and effort to write a guide about that. I also contributed the site logo.

[Trizzdog]

My god, this is an awesome idea. If I ever have the time, I shall write up an article for some of my favorite games, and use this first when I get stuck in a game

[Deathx]

so WA will be summarised as:

Return to game shop, ask for refund and buy DOW.

[General Blaze]

Here's the thing though, you need DOW to run WA in the first place, so why on earth would you trade it with a second copy of the same game?

Anyways, this is actually a good idea you've got there, Gyokuran. I really hate reading those txt based faqs.

[Qwaar-Jet]

Sounds good, i'm having problem's with Darth Malak in KOTOR and the FAQS on GameFAQS are pretty shite and don't really say how to defeat him.

[Russian Ninja]

You forget one thing in that rant: Guides are either way too long or far too short. You look at GameFAQs and you get some guides that are over a bloody megabyte in size and cover each and every single little minsicule thing...except what you want. Or perhaps they cover it...each and every single detail about it. Some of those boss guides for those RPG's are just scary: the writers devoting about ten thousand words to describe each and every single attack and counter attack in encyclopediatic detail.

Given that, and all those other points, I think the site's a great idea. Whilst GameFAQs does possess some great guides, it's pretty hit or miss because, like Wikipedia, it's totally decentralised. The site has no control over what gets posted on it, and as of concequence you've got well over a hundred FAQs for Final Fantasy X, but 4 for Age of Empires 3 (which are all crummy and incomplete). Standardisation is needed I think.

[Druidika]

I'm pretty sure that I've seen a Wiki for game guides a few weeks ago. Will edit this post once I find the link.

http://strategywiki.net/

[Elukka]

Spoilers in the wrong places.. argh.

Jedi Outcast

Dunno if it needs the spoiler tags, really, but.. Here's a prime example of spoilers in the wrong places: I was playing Jedi Outcast, where Kyle went to the Valley of the Jedi. I was stuck, so i figured i'd try a walktrough. What the walktrough said, however, was something along these lines: "Kyle went into the Valley of the Jedi, and Desann followed him."

The player would usually know that only after a couple of levels.

[Beelzebuddy]

You forgot the guides which pad their lengths with needless and painfully incomplete (but prettily constructed) lists.

a hideous list from an Animal Crossing FAQ

+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| FRIEND #: 001 | DESCRIPTION: |
+--------------------+ |
| NAME: Agent S | |
| | |
+--------------------+ |
| SPECIES: Male | |
| Squirrel | |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| FRIEND #: 002 | DESCRIPTION: |
+--------------------+ |
| NAME: Alfonso | |
| | |
+--------------------+ |
| SPECIES: Male | |
| Crocidile | |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| FRIEND #: 003 | DESCRIPTION: |
+--------------------+ |
| NAME: Alice | |
| | |
+--------------------+ |
| SPECIES: Female | |
| Koala | |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| FRIEND #: 004 | DESCRIPTION: |
+--------------------+ |
| NAME: Alli | |
| | |
+--------------------+ |
| SPECIES: Female | |
| Crocidile | |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| FRIEND #: 005 | DESCRIPTION: |
+--------------------+ |
| NAME: Amelia | |
| | |
+--------------------+ |
| SPECIES: Female | |
| Eagle | |
+--------------------+--------------------------------------------------+

The list continues in this vein for 177 entries. While this kind of filler is to be expected in dedicated list FAQs, too often people make list faqs under the guise of "general guide," as this one was taken from.

[Tails]

www.visualwalkthroughs.com

I believe that we already have a strategy guide for Homeworld II on these forums that would fit neatly into that MediaWiki.

[Beelzebuddy]

Mmmm... popups (on Firefox) and clickthrough epileptic seizure inducing ads. It's like three years ago all over again.

[ChienAboyeur]

Harsh.

The world is heading for standardization and norms everywhere. And a complete erasure of personality, personal expression.

Game guide writers do this on their free time and often, they are under age. Licence is their reward. They try to create a tie with the reader and share their feelings.

Demanding professional norms is good but where is the money?
It will be time soon enough for them to consider what left, right margin, columns or not, police size and stuff like that once they have to produce professional articles.
I used game faqs guides and I always found one guide to suit my tastes. Quite often, they are the product of a more than one author and are more likely to be complete.

Not paid job= room for self expression.
Norms are good, and those who set them out generally do not feel them because it suits their tastes. For the others...

Game magazines publish professional game faqs, walkthroughs... With pictures, extensive tips etc...

[Beelzebuddy]

Hit a little close to home, Chien?

I completely understand your point, though. Look how impossible it is to convey complex meanings such as sarcasm while adhering to standards and norms like grammar and spelling. Fihgt the man!

[Slashco]

The only thing that's needed, IMO, is to have some kind of rating/voting system to point people toward the worthwhile guides and point out the ones that need improvement.

[Verrin]

Don't worry Chien, I doubt this will be replacing GameFaqs anytime soon.

[ChienAboyeur]

Which standards rules of grammar/spelling?
The english ones? The us ones? The jamaicain ones?

I'm looking forward to seeing who is going to write this kind of game faqs. So far, there were peoples from the whole world. I bet the majority will now be composed with people whose cultural norms are already pretty close to the "quality" norms of the game guide reference sheet.

Sarcasm, irony and self derision are not only conveyed by sentence structures, tune etc...
They are also conveyed by the feeling that the one telling it is fully part of the group.
It is a thin line between receiving a sentence as an insult or a trait of humour.
It all takes up to knowing whether the speaker is felt as an insider or an outsider.

The mecanism behind the reaction is a simple one:
if the speaker is felt as belonging to the communauty, his sentence is meant as self derision because he would insult himself in the other case.
For the outsider, since his comment does not target him, it might be an insult as well.

So far, game guides always did it for me. Either I wanted to know more about a game, the type of game you can finish 70 per cent and then an encyclopedic game guide absolutely did it.
Either I was stuck in a game and then the search function always worked, getting a quick answer to my problem without knowing about the rest of the story, leaving me the pleasure of discovering the rest by myself.

And usually, game guide writers gives their email address and welcome constructive feedback and further investigation.

Last word: instead of hiding being a so called "quality" norms, it would be better to tell something like "I set out norms fitting my cultural tastes. If others share them, please join" instead of getting in an unfounded criticism of good quality work game guides done by players in a passion with the game.

[DatonKallandor]

As listed in the first post, some of the criticism is far from unfounded. There are a ton of guides which are simply badly made and/or at fault.


Daton

[Beelzebuddy]

Which standards rules of grammar/spelling?
The english ones? The us ones? The jamaicain ones?

Any of them. I really don't care. Pick one.

Last word: instead of hiding being a so called "quality" norms, it would be better to tell something like "I set out norms fitting my cultural tastes. If others share them, please join" instead of getting in an unfounded criticism of good quality work game guides done by players in a passion with the game.

ah im sore ur uber rant has cut me 2 teh quik n i wuz just njoying teh game 2 much 2 spel rite. this shud b better. Mny huggles plzkthxbai ^.^

[One step away]

Hey, I could write a guide for Postal2..

[Bonnet]

Chein, english does very when spoken. But not very much when written. Beileve it or not most people get that 'color' and 'colour' are percisely the same and (in general) most colloquialisms translate fairly well. Infact the only things that do vary in written english are spellings, the grammar does not.

[timotheus]

Gamefaqs dot com

[LoCo]

timotheus: You post was as informative and contributing as it was witty and intelligent.

I think this is a good idea, however I see myself rather going to the fan sites and looking for a guide there. I've only ever had to look at a walkthrough twice, and both times it ended up being something so obvious I nearly slapped myself.

As for making a standard ... ChienAboyeur, do you know why people want standards? It's to make things easier for everyone. It doesn't matter which standard you choose, but it helps if it's understood/used by the majority. Since most people (And yes, I am speaking as a non-American whose first language is NOT English) speak a little English, English is the easiest choice. And British English would be best because everyone knows the American version sucks.

[One step away]

And British English would be best because everyone knows the American version sucks.

Well, I rather read british but american is tastier to speak for some reason.

[SquidDNA]

A discussion of language is highly tangential to the topic at hand. Back to it.