Serious topic: Do you support game guides written by fellow community members?

[Sh1k1]

So here's a curious question I've been asking myself for a while.



All of us, at one point or another, have used guides from GameFAQs, right? Right. Given the kind of site it is, it's pretty logical to imagine that they have ways to track the amount of views each individual guide has, if only merely for statistical purposes that serve us, as mere users of the site, no real purpose.

But even if it is to tacitly show your appreciation for the work done, even if no one outside GameFAQs themselves notice, when you look up guides for a game that's part of your gaming community's focus, do you support guides written by your fellow community members?

Allow me to explain with a personal example.

Let's turn our clocks back four years, and settle ourselves in mid-2004, right when MegaMan Zero 3 took the MegaMan community and the portable gaming world by assault. I was the first in the MegaMan community to submit an every-nook-and-cranny guide for the game to GameFAQs (viewable here), and the first to publish an entire game guide covering every single aspect of the game, even if it's been superseded/overshadowed by newer, more recently-submitted guides. At the time, those of you who for one reason or another decided to look up a guide, did you use mine? And if you did, why?

I myself, for all the years I've been using GameFAQs, I've always been on the lookout for guides by people I know. When I first had access to the internet AND an SNES at the same time (hey, blame third-world countries' shitty economy), I know I spent hours perusing Reeve's FAQ for the first MegaMan X game, and also did so with all the other guides he wrote for both GFAQs and his own site, originally MegaMan X Online and later The MegaMan Network. Even when he stepped down and Tim took over, every time I need a guide on a MegaMan game, I usually look for names recognizable within the community, if only to show an unspoken appreciation to them for all the work it takes to write out a detailed guide.

So what about you? Do you simply take whatever guide looks meatier, or do you explicitly look out for people you know and try to support them in a tacit way in their work?

[Alfonse]

I don't know many established names in the GameFAQs community outside of a handful - the late Kao Megura, Split Infinity and even CJayC himself. I usually find their guides in games I play (usually RPGS).

Hence, what I do is when I need a walkthrough and guide for a game, I simply nab a couple of the larger ones and briefly glance through each of them for a quick grammar and formatting check. There are quite a handful of awful guides which had -somehow- made it through the filter and was accepted as a up-to-standard one. I don't know how this works but whatever. After an elimination or two, I know which guides I should follow and I'll take note of that person and keep an updated copy of his FAQ in my hard disk.

I do support guides written by fellow members of the community, certainly. I wonder if you know Master LL? He plays a crapload of RPGs but he does not appear to be an FAQ writer, sadly.

[mewofforcena]

Some time or other, I might recognize a name for guides in a previous game in a saga (Kao Megura, too, is an example), and I use them because of my past experience with them. However, unless I know a site dedicated to a game (like MMXZ), I usually look for the best rated guides. I don't know enough people to look for guides made from them.

[LoliSauce]

I have no FAQ author allegiance what-so-ever.  I generally browse through a few, find one that is the easiest to navigate and comments on what specifically I'm looking for, and that's that.

Usually though, I only look through them when there's some awfully obscure and usually fucking strange thing I'm looking for information on.  Oftentimes I'll end up finding out things I didn't know while looking up that shit, but I haven't actually looked in a guide to find out how to beat a game or something since...the last Musou game that I was trying to get all the final weapons for.  lol

I suppose the only exception to this is that I would often pimp out guides from a friend of mine that I knew put a stupid amount of time and effort writing the most comprehensive FAQs for a select few particular games.  But that was only for those few games that I knew he actually wrote guides for.  I don't generally get much into the gamefaqs community as a whole either.  There's only been one board that I've continuously kept in touch with the members of, and that's because I've actually met a good few of them irl.

Anyway, to sum up quickly, I don't give a shit about who writes any given FAQ.  I just appreciate any that I come across that happen to be well written.

[ಠ_ಠ Dizzynecro]

I use what is most useful.

[pc1x1]

I seldom use guides in general. I only use guides, after I beaten a game, just to get to 100% completion, etc. Because my gaming is diverse, and sometimes random  it's hard to find the same author. But if I did recognize you, I would say thanks, and note how much I appreciate your work. A couple of guides I read and used, I wrote a thank you letter for the author expressing my gratitude. If I were to find you in real life, I prob buy you a cookie or lunch. Heh!

[Entropy Judge]

I usually look through several of the larger posted guides, and the ones that - from a presentation viewpoint and in terms of actual content - seem to be well done are the ones that I use.  If I've seen a particular poster's guide in a different place (Utuseless and Split come to mind) I will usually check that guide as well.  As for which one I decide to actually *use* ... well, I'm looking for information about something, usually, not a "Go there, do that."  Whichever guide tells me the most and is most accurate is the one I use.  I try not to hold a bias.

[Escobar]

I think my allegiance goes only as far as clicking the first one on the list. Typically I go in, ctrl+f what I was looking for, and if I find the information in that FAQ suitable I stick with it, if there's ever anything I can't find I move on to the next one.

The only time I can recall actually seeking out a specific member's guide was when I played a few games of a particular series (phoenix wright, to be precise), I had grown accustomed to one guy's style of organization in the FAQs, so I sought his guide out for whatever game of the series I played that he had written a FAQ for.

[Benny1]

It depends heavily on what the guide is about.  If it's a fighting game guide, for example, I would rather see something written by say, Sp00ky or LK, who have lots of experience, and know what they are doing, rather than something like my Neco Arc guide, because I have no idea what I am doing.

As for an RPG or something, I go for whatever guide I tend to trust most, and don't really ever even look at who wrote it.

[zeech]

I read all the guides and then use the one that I like the most.