Strategy guide publisher Prima Games shutting down after 28 years

[JarlFrank]

The death knell was not Gamefaqs, it was YouTube. Why would you waste your time and be annoyed at finding one of a hundred pages in a faq, to find a description of what you need to do, and then figure out how it applies in the game... when you can SEE what you need to do to get unstuck in a video let's play?

Personally I hate how googling "walkthrough" for newer games when I get stuck usually leads to a fucking video rather than a list of written hints, like it used to in the past.

Let's say you get stuck in level 10 of an FPS because you don't know how to cross a certain gap. You could go into a text walkthrough, jump to level 10, quickly scan the text with your eyes until you find the hint you need (I'm a very quick reader so I can easily find the hint I'm looking for in a block of text), do what the hint says, and continue.

But with videos, it takes a lot more time to actually find the hint you're looking for. You gotta scroll through a video, and while you do that you might get some things spoiled you didn't want to get spoiled if all you were looking for was that one hint rather than a full level walkthrough.
And 5 lines of text are always quicker to read than watching 3 minutes of video. Text walkthroughs > video walkthroughs.

 

[Beastro]

The death knell was not Gamefaqs, it was YouTube. Why would you waste your time and be annoyed at finding one of a hundred pages in a faq, to find a description of what you need to do, and then figure out how it applies in the game... when you can SEE what you need to do to get unstuck in a video let's play?

This. Youtube strike at the heart of the problem: gamer's demands. If you have a problem that need checking in a guide, the visual answer from Youtube kill the competitor that is the text (even with pictures) in a paper Prima guides.

Gamefags is not the competitor. In fact, it's the supporter to paper guides. Which is why Prima guides can survive all those decades: their professional text and pictures is better competitive to the pure text of gamefaqs. And the more people use GF, the more they buy prima guide.

The buggy state of game is not the detriment to Prima guides. Face it, the normal gamer and buyer of it is not devoting that much of their time into playing a game AND reading that guide to care about the inconsistency between the two.

I think an issue here is what games are being watched on Youtube and why.

For a typical RPG a guide or a Youtube video are similar, often with the guide providing more room for detailed information . For games like, say, platformers, fighting games or ARPGs like Dark Souls I could see a guide failing to provide enough detail because so much of it is visual and it's simply easier to watch someone else fight a boss successfully than read a guide's descriptions of their patterns and how to counter them.

But with videos, it takes a lot more time to actually find the hint you're looking for. You gotta scroll through a video, and while you do that you might get some things spoiled you didn't want to get spoiled if all you were looking for was that one hint rather than a full level walkthrough.
And 5 lines of text are always quicker to read than watching 3 minutes of video. Text walkthroughs > video walkthroughs.

It's worse when gameplay is broken up into multiple videos and so your chances of spoilers are increased if you overshoot where you think they are to find the answer to what's stumped you.

 

[laclongquan]

It's not a matter of which is better and why. It's a matter of YOUR CUSTOMER like watching youtube video than reading a text (even with pictures).

Your average customer doesnt have our typical focus like laser, looking in a guide to find some specific items. They usually are like a wandering herbivore, munching something there, sniffing something here... After a session, if they are satisfied, then it's good.

And for them, the visual experience from watching a youtube video, generally, are better than reading a text.

IT's why video is king of content these days.