Strategy Guides, what the crap?

[hezeuschrist]

What the hell is the rhyme or reason to these things? I love game guides for RPG's... I don't know why, but guides are just as big of a part of my collection as games are. So I lent my FF Anthology guide out to a friend of mine years ago... he's since moved and lost it, so I think no big deal, I'll just grab another off eBay or order it off Amazon.

Hell, if they still print the Lunar 2 Sega CD version guide, they HAVE to print a high-demand FF Anthology guide. "Buy it new and used, from $34.95!" What the hell? I can't just order it? Check eBay... it can go for upwards of $50! Don't even get me started on the Lunar 2 Hardcover PSX Working Designs book... absurd.

So what's the deal? These publishers keep a random handful of guides to keep in print then just drop other ones? I would suppose it's based on sales, but it seems like the Anthology guide was never in print long enough to sell. Argh.

[maxlords]

Wow..>I didn't know my brand spanking new never opened Anthology guide was worth THAT much! Holy shit!

Suikoden 1 guide was hitting $80+ for a while, as was the FF Tactics, Lunar 2, and the Xenogears....

[hezeuschrist]

Xenogears, 2 for 10 bucks at amazon.com.

[zmeston]

What the hell is the rhyme or reason to these things? I love game guides for RPG's... I don't know why, but guides are just as big of a part of my collection as games are. So I lent my FF Anthology guide out to a friend of mine years ago... he's since moved and lost it, so I think no big deal, I'll just grab another off eBay or order it off Amazon.

Hell, if they still print the Lunar 2 Sega CD version guide, they HAVE to print a high-demand FF Anthology guide. "Buy it new and used, from $34.95!" What the hell? I can't just order it? Check eBay... it can go for upwards of $50! Don't even get me started on the Lunar 2 Hardcover PSX Working Designs book... absurd.

So what's the deal? These publishers keep a random handful of guides to keep in print then just drop other ones? I would suppose it's based on sales, but it seems like the Anthology guide was never in print long enough to sell. Argh.

In the vast majority of cases, strategy guides receive a single print run, because the vast majority of strategy guides don't sell out, and it behooves publishers to play it safe instead of being stuck with worthless inventory. (The sales lifespan of an average strategy guide is one to three months.) Because the Lunar 2 Sega CD guide never sold out its initial run, it's technically still "in print."

There has to be a very high demand to justify the expense of additional print runs on a strategy guide -- or on any book, really. The GTA3 strategy guide went through a ton of printings because BradyGAMES played it safe with their print runs and couldn't keep the thing on the shelves, whereas their VC guide had a much higher initial print run, since they'd learned their lesson. A larger print run up front means less expense for subsequent print runs (if any are necessary) later on, which is why the first printing of the next Harry Potter book will be multiple millions of copies.

I've told the sad story of the Lunar 2 PSX guide elsewhere in the forums, but the gist is that, because the book shipped several months after the game, most retailers chopped their orders down from several thousand copies to several hundred. Since the book was absurdly expensive to print and ship, being a 300-page full-color hardcover, WD cranked out just enough of a print run to fulfill the retail orders and washed their hands of it. No one expected it to sell out so quickly, not even me, and I wrote the damn thing.

For what it's worth, I just had to buy a copy of one of my own guides (Tomb Raider II) from amazon.com, since Dimension Publishing doesn't have any left. Strategy guides are a goofy bid-ness.

-- Z.

[hezeuschrist]

Ugh, I see. But I would still think that a game like Xenogears by now would have gone way through an initial print run. Shit, you can still get the Arc the Lad hardcover guide off amazon or ordered from borders or some crap.

Argh, I just want to kill X-Death and move on with life!

It's one of those "I used to have it, and now I NEED IT BACK" things. Which is why I just shelled out $30 for the Earthbound guide... have the box and game, both in perfect condition but I have no clue where the hell my guide went. Now I have my own copy again and will never lose it again!

[thekeepr]

Hey Zmeston.....how do you write a game/strategy guide?? Do you play the game all the way thru, keeping a record of everything, then edit it into a guide, do the makers of the game already have this info, you just get it from them....how is it done? Always wanted to know how these things become what they are. Are strategy guides the same as walkthru's? The Keeper :/

[zmeston]

Ugh, I see. But I would still think that a game like Xenogears by now would have gone way through an initial print run. Shit, you can still get the Arc the Lad hardcover guide off amazon or ordered from borders or some crap.

Argh, I just want to kill X-Death and move on with life!

It's one of those "I used to have it, and now I NEED IT BACK" things. Which is why I just shelled out $30 for the Earthbound guide... have the box and game, both in perfect condition but I have no clue where the hell my guide went. Now I have my own copy again and will never lose it again!

Well, the Arc the Lad 1/2 guide is another case of a guide where demand exceeded supply. In fact, that's why WD canned the Arc 3 guide altogether. I think the Arc 1/2 book shipped something like six months after the game, by which point anyone who might've needed it had already long since moved on. Also, Arc didn't sell half as many copies as Lunar 2, so the demand was much smaller. And, unlike my Lunar 2 guide, the Arc book didn't have as much content beyond the strategies. I tried to make the L2 guide a humor book/artbook/strategy guide/all-that-is-Lunar kind of thing. (Apologies if this graf makes me sound like Jeff "Lucky" Lundrigan!)

-- Z.

[hezeuschrist]

So... know anyone that's willing to sell a copy of the Lunar guide, cheap? =P

[Eternal Champion]

What the hell is the rhyme or reason to these things? I love game guides for RPG's... I don't know why, but guides are just as big of a part of my collection as games are. So I lent my FF Anthology guide out to a friend of mine years ago... he's since moved and lost it, so I think no big deal, I'll just grab another off eBay or order it off Amazon.

Thanks for the info Z! I've wondered that myself. Try looking for the Phantasy Star fuckin' IV guide. In a thread a while back Z talked about PSIV and guides in general--VERY low print run, now going for no less than $30 anywhere. Saw a "new" copy from an Amazon seller for $60 and someone bought it. Or try looking for Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy III is a little better, but not much. I think compounding the low-print run problem is that people beat the shit out of their guides. My FFIII looks like it was run over by a bulldozer repeatedly.

Someone here asked a good question--hey, Z, how do you go about writing a guide, or such a bible like Lunar 2? How do you get such clear screen shots? 'Course, I'm asking your secrets...

[zmeston]

Hey Zmeston.....how do you write a game/strategy guide?? Do you play the game all the way thru, keeping a record of everything, then edit it into a guide, do the makers of the game already have this info, you just get it from them....how is it done? Always wanted to know how these things become what they are. Are strategy guides the same as walkthru's? The Keeper :/

Well, I could easily give an hour-long lecture about this topic at CGE, but to briefly answer, every guide is different. With some, I receive gobs of assistance from the publisher/developer of the game: maps, access to testers, et cetera. With others, all I get is a flaky beta version of the game and a "good luck, chump!", as with The Getaway.

On average, I play through a game at LEAST twice for a guide, and often more than that. Depending on the game and the tools at my disposal, I can play through the game in chunks, skipping around with debug menus and saves. I write as I play, then rewrite on the second go-round. But, again, it's always different. Every guide requires a different approach, and introduces its own set of nightmares.

Lunar 2 PSX was a great experience in that I had unlimited resources at my disposal: artwork, program code, whatever I could think of. It was a horrible experience in that I laid it out by myself on a very slow PC. 300+ graphics-heavy pages + slow PC = an eternity to simply scroll the screen, much less to place graphics or print out pages. Adding up all the time, I easily spent a couple weeks of my life just waiting for printouts.

Strategy guides used to be walkthroughs, but with the Web, the best ones have evolved into much more. There has to be "added value" to convince the reader to buy the guide instead of cruising the Internet.

There's much, MUCH more to it, but I'll save it for the lecture. Heh.

-- Z.

[zmeston]

Someone here asked a good question--hey, Z, how do you go about writing a guide, or such a bible like Lunar 2? How do you get such clear screen shots? 'Course, I'm asking your secrets...

Ah, screenshots. Everyone wants the best possible grabs, and I pride myself on taking the best in the freelance biz. (As opposed to priding myself on my writing, but never mind.) I've been messing with screen-grab technology since I started this crazy gig in '89, so I know WAAAY too much about it.

With certain expensive or cleverly hacked setups, you can dump video RAM directly from a console into the PC, for pixel perfection. Everyone's doing this with the Xbox, since it's a network-ready PC in a box. I also had a RAM-dumping setup for the PS1 that used a Game Shark and a very cool little program that stuffed a new program into the GS hardware.

If you can't do RAM dumping, you need a high-end capture card for the best grabs -- not a $100 Snappy, but a $1000 RGB/component grabber with specialized cables and software. At one point, I used an old RasterOps card for the Macintosh, but now I use... something else. Heh.

-- Z.