Current Events > Are the Guides and Walkthroughs part of this site dying?

(+) Yeah! (+)

A lot of new games continue to come out and they don't have guides here while you can just search Youtube and see dozens of guides and walkthroughs up in a day of the games release.

If they are dead what led to it?

The newer HTML guides on here are actually great - it's easier to find the info you need that scraping through youtube videos. I think people still use them a lot.

SBAllen had said before the guides generate the most traffic on the site. Having text guides is generally much better than YouTube videos, imo.

Holy_Cloud105 posted...

SBAllen had said before the guides generate the most traffic on the site. Having text guides is generally much better than YouTube videos, imo.

Maybe I need to be clearer. I am talking about a Game being released in 2023 and 2024 having no guides. I am not talking about older games having guides and the traffic to that.

Cyric is single handedly driving like 80% of the site's guide traffic

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


That of course assumes the game has a guide. Is this a situation where people don't come to this site for newer game guides where they aren't noticing this issue? Should I start linking to these 2023-2024 game boards without guides?

1) With the rise of Steam and mobile games, there are now waaaaay more games than in previous generations and the hobbyist FAQ writer population is about the same as it's always been.

2) Big, expansive games (Baldur's Gate 3, e.g.) are too much of an undertaking for any single writer to fiddle with (much less a lot of branching if/then aspects)

3) The presence of wikis or highly scoped articles fills roughly the same niche as FAQs, and can easily be done by a relatively large squad of people.

Yeah, FAQs are dying. A lot of it is technology driven. They're basically the equivalent of landline telephones imo.

Honestly I hate going anywhere else for guides. Every other site is bogged down with ads that make it hard to get around, or the important stuff is in a video

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Ehhhhh, I've seen how Fandom's AI answers questions on the Hollow Knight wiki and I don't think this is a good idea.

BlueTigerLion posted...

Maybe I need to be clearer. I am talking about a Game being released in 2023 and 2024 having no guides. I am not talking about older games having guides and the traffic to that.

I feel this changes the question as different than what the topic title suggests.

If your question is "are fewer guides being written for modern games on this site than in the past", then the answer is a pretty clear "yes".

But that fact has little to do with the site's survivability.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I would not trust it to be accurate.

The game guides could be auto-generated with an AI and have the power users (Cyric, etc.) review them and fill in the gaps.

Please God no. I would still have to play the games to confirm every bit of information is correct. At that point, the difference between me just doing the writing myself is academic.

Part of it is games are just designed differently these days making text guides less useful for most casual gamers.

philsov posted...

1) With the rise of Steam and mobile games, there are now waaaaay more games than in previous generations and the hobbyist FAQ writer population is about the same as it's always been.

2) Big, expansive games (Baldur's Gate 3, e.g.) are too much of an undertaking for any single writer to fiddle with (much less a lot of branching if/then aspects)

3) The presence of wikis or highly scoped articles fills roughly the same niche as FAQs, and can easily be done by a relatively large squad of people.

Yeah, FAQs are dying. A lot of it is technology driven. They're basically the equivalent of landline telephones imo.

Games that were just as big have guides for them.

boomgetchopped3 posted...

Part of it is games are just designed differently these days making text guides less useful for most casual gamers.

Text guides have long been of limited use in games that rely on a lot of visual output and requiring the player to react to that output in a timely manner. Or to put that more simply, it's hard to tell someone how to FPS good.

Any game can have a text guide written for it if the writer is good enough at writing and the questions the reader has are answered.

philsov posted...

1) With the rise of Steam and mobile games, there are now waaaaay more games than in previous generations and the hobbyist FAQ writer population is about the same as it's always been.

2) Big, expansive games (Baldur's Gate 3, e.g.) are too much of an undertaking for any single writer to fiddle with (much less a lot of branching if/then aspects)

3) The presence of wikis or highly scoped articles fills roughly the same niche as FAQs, and can easily be done by a relatively large squad of people.

Yeah, FAQs are dying. A lot of it is technology driven. They're basically the equivalent of landline telephones imo.

Yea. I could understand if it was smaller games but it major games out there without guides. I guess I have to name names since the side saying it not dead don't have to name a name. Mortal Kombat 1 is an example of a game that didn't have a guide. It was only a couple days ago a guide was made and even then the person links to YouTube in guide lol.

That is kinda what sparked thread. I was wondering if YouTube is where people go to make guides they don't come here.

BlueTigerLion posted...

Mortal Kombat 1 is an example of a game that didn't have a guide.

Fighting games are actually a great example of a more visual style of guide that lends itself better to video output, since not only do you have to know how to "do the moves" but also when to do them and what doing the moves ultimately looks like when they succeed.

We have plenty of guides on this site for older fighting games (pre-YT) and they're all extremely limited in that they can only give you so much information without knowing what the reader's specific problem might be. They can tell you the button inputs for moves, maybe give you some use cases or matchups, but that won't be examining the flow of the battle and the tendencies of your opponents. That can only be learned through experience or by watching other people play the game.

Fandom wikis are trash by the way. 30+ ads on the screen, sometimes incomplete information, no context or elaboration. And very few guided walkthroughs or recommended strategies etc.

It's literally just like the Appendix section of a FAQ without any direction. Not all that useful.

I remember some time in the late aughts when I got on a wiki for the Quest for Glory series. I wanted to include some tips in particular articles in addition to the lore of the character/location/etc. and the administrator came back to me that wasn't the point of the wiki.

Which is to say, wikis may have the advantage of communal attention, but there's no dang way to QC it and once you're dealing with other people, disagreements over the content can get heated.

SilvosForever posted...

Fandom wikis are trash by the way. 30+ ads on the screen, sometimes incomplete information, no context or elaboration. And very few guided walkthroughs or recommended strategies etc.

It's literally just like the Appendix section of a FAQ without any direction. Not all that useful.

Yea. One issue is this question is being asked on GameFAQs so the people left may have a bias toward text based guides. Compared to people on YouTube or Twitch who may have a different opinion of text based guides.

Hope not, I'm still using them. May not be great for recent games but usually those don't actually need guides as much because they keep making them friendly for newcomers. For old ass grandpa games released in 2010 tho, the guides here are irreplaceable. It's very difficult finding no nonsense guides these days, you gotta jump through all these hoops and ads.

Also writing guides takes time.

Most games dont need guides anymore.

It's faster and easier to follow youtube video of quests or whatever than a written guide. And literally everything I've tried to look up has been there.

SilvosForever posted...

Fandom wikis are trash by the way. 30+ ads on the screen, sometimes incomplete information, no context or elaboration. And very few guided walkthroughs or recommended strategies etc.

It's literally just like the Appendix section of a FAQ without any direction. Not all that useful.

Adblocker and being signed in eliminates all ads.

CyricZ posted...

I remember some time in the late aughts when I got on a wiki for the Quest for Glory series. I wanted to include some tips in particular articles in addition to the lore of the character/location/etc. and the administrator came back to me that wasn't the point of the wiki.

Which is to say, wikis may have the advantage of communal attention, but there's no dang way to QC it and once you're dealing with other people, disagreements over the content can get heated.

The tips wouldn't belong but the entire point of a wiki is to have the lore all in one place.

LeoRavus posted...

It's faster and easier to follow youtube video of quests or whatever than a written guide. And literally everything I've tried to look up has been there.

Except then you have some moron yelling through the entire video instead of just having it as a walkthrough. Plus making it 10 minutes just to get the money.

I'm still young and healthy, shut up.

LeoRavus posted...

It's faster and easier to follow youtube video of quests or whatever than a written guide. And literally everything I've tried to look up has been there.

Really? ctrl+f has always been so much faster than trying to find the part where the guy talks about what I'm looking for.

SomeLikeItHoth posted...

Most games dont need guides anymore.

"Need" is a matter of opinion. The fact that my LEGO guides still do numbers with those games being designed for children suggests that there will always be someone finding use.

Revelation34 posted...

The tips wouldn't belong but the entire point of a wiki is to have the lore all in one place.

Why would tips and gameplay information for a video game not belong in the wiki of a video game?

CyricZ posted...

"Need" is a matter of opinion. The fact that my LEGO guides still do numbers with those games being designed for children suggests that there will always be someone finding use.

Why would tips and gameplay information for a video game not belong in the wiki of a video game?

Because wikis are supposed to be encyclopedias, not walkthroughs.

Revelation34 posted...

Because wikis are supposed to be encyclopedias, not walkthroughs.

According to who?

When I can go to a Zelda wiki and find drop locations of a specific item, or go to fextralife and find stats on every dang Souls weapon under the sun, tell me again what wikis are for.

CyricZ posted...

According to who?

According to "wiki" being short for/derivative of wikipedia.

Semantically sure, but in practice, many wikis for games carry strategy, as I mentioned. There's no law against it.

CyricZ posted...

,tell me again what wikis are for.

Because wikis are supposed to be encyclopedias, not walkthroughs.

CyricZ posted...

Semantically sure, but in practice, many wikis for games carry strategy, as I mentioned. There's no law against it.

You asked, is all.

Wait, this argument is stupid.

I've noticed it too over the years.

Smaller guides, and much less of them.

CyricZ posted...

If your question is "are fewer guides being written for modern games on this site than in the past", then the answer is a pretty clear "yes".

But that fact has little to do with the site's survivability.

?

If Gamefaqs doesn't need game faqs to survive, then what does it need?

CaudalVeracity posted...

?

If Gamefaqs doesn't need game faqs to survive, then what does it need?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTspQjuW728

CaudalVeracity posted...

?

If Gamefaqs doesn't need game faqs to survive, then what does it need?

The guides it already has.