It’s a funny thing, this internet we’ve ended up with. It has made the once astounding compilations of knowledge and secrets found within the pages of strategy guides entirely redundant. If you want to know where to find the galaxy sword in Stardew Valley nowadays, you’re a single google away from gratification, a worthwhile departure from the many minutes it could take flipping through pages upon pages of mostly useless noise.
From the beginning, her demise was certain. As it goes with all technology, improvements snowball until you can’t remember why you ever bothered with the original. First, people would host guides on their own domains, whipping up a quick .txt guide to a niche moment of a game they found particularly difficult. Then came the forums, or more accurately, then came Game FAQs. People from everywhere and anywhere could post a guide – more often than not a simple list of instructions – to any game. This overtook the physical guide in terms of accessibility, but it only hinted at what was to come.
Next came the monopolisation of the industry. Companies such as IGN realised they, too, could publish gaming walkthroughs and have a sizeable audience in tow. And, of course, they pummelled Prima Books deeper into the grounds of niche fandom. Oh, and Fandom is suddenly here too, returning the people’s voice to them with an added air of authority similar to Wikipedia, an ever-expanding, bloated anomaly of knowledge roping everything together into one unified hive, even if only unified by association.
And where did that leave my beloved? In the dirt.
Websites can monetise with ads, meaning every click is a paycheck even if the original creator never sees a penny of that, but printed guides were abandoned by all but the undeterred, though even they may only buy a strategy guide in print for the novelty.
A novelty that was never lost. Owning a game’s guide, even the useless ones (looking at you, free “guide” I got with Breath of the Wild) is a wondrous thing that brings a game to life – brings a game into your life. As a child I would crack open the holy book to look for one cheat code and get lost for hours scanning pictures and natty titbits of information about the game’s creation and secrets. It was like reading a sacred tome, arming me with knowledge for an intrepid expedition into the unknown.
So, thank you, strategy guides, whatever form you may take. Even if my first love was a physical copy of Metal Gear Solid: UNAUTHORIZED, and my rebound was GameXplain’s video guides for New Super Mario Bros 2, I will love you with every atom of my soul.