why do they still make strategy guides?

i mean with sites like gamefaqs why would someone spend money on a guide for any other reason than collecting. i know my brother collects guides for nippon ichi games and thats the only reason i can think of for buying a game guide nowadays. that or being unwilling to wait a week for a game to get its guides posted

Collecting

I still like to buy strategy guides for some games myself for a variety of reasons such as:

• as a collectible
• can be much easier to reference then going online
• the artwork
• can be nice to just read
• sometimes they have lore and stories about characters or other things

A well done strategy guides is some much easier that the ascii base guides from sites like gamefaq. Also I find while playing a game it is just easier to use a book to look up the information.

This thread really makes me think about how much I miss instruction manuals. Not the same thing, but there's kind of an overalap. They both tended to offer a lot of the same things, like game lore, artwork, and the ability to take a break from the game by flipping through stuff about the game. I just never really got into the strategy guide thing, because that felt too much like cheating. And on top of that, like I was paying money to cheat. But I see the appeal. More than anything, I miss good intsruction manuals. While I never really bothered with strategy guides, I guess it's nice to know that they still exist. Now I just wish they'd bring back instruction manuals (that is to say, GOOD instruction manuals where someone acrtually put in a little effort).

A physical object will appeal to a kid more than a non existent digital one. Parents buy things for their children. Why do you think places like Best Buy and Gamestop ask things like "would you like to pick up X strategy guide today?"

I usually buy guide books only for Pokemon handheld games just for the Pokedex data but not the actual gameplay and that's pretty much it. Sure, there's Serebii.net but the having the actual book makes it easier for me but that's just me.

they ask everyone if they want to pick up a strategy guide because they think i want to give it to some kid they dont even know i have?

i dont think thats right

they ask because they want to sell you more shit. end of story.

i dont see the connection between parents buying stuff for there kids and places like gamestop asking everyone at the time of purchase "do you want to get the strategy guide as well"

Because people still buy them. If they didn't sell, they wouldn't continue to make them.

And at least back in the early 2000's, paper guides were far better than anything on Gamefaqs. From my experience, sifting through a paper guide with nicely visible section markers is far easier than reading through endless pages of text on a website.

Must still be a market for them. I've never really needed one. I did get one with Skyrim, however, since it was just a few dollars more to buy one with the game on eBay. I did use it some, referencing it at times for quests and stuff. It was kind of neat, even if I could have just as easily found what I was looking for by using a search engine.

X2

I perfectly know that if you do that my blog said to do in Evolve, you're invincible. So if I could, I could sell them instead of giving them like I do right now. I guess some could do that and some could have understand that some guider are great.

They make guides because there still is a market for them.

And why there is a market is because some people still like to have a book instead of some random idiots youtube video or some ACSII guides from some random site.

those "random idiots" have made it so i havent had to buy a strategy guide in over 15 years

Wow really .... Congrats ;)

some guides are nice to have but with the expansion over the internet in the last 15+ years, I barely see the need for them other then if your collecting them for a game you really like. I think final fantasy 8 is the last strategy guide i got, thats back around 1999.

Probably the most useful guide i got was for Super Mario World on snes because there was no internet at that time to look up stuff and it helped a lot of unlock things.

well i still enjoy reading the old guides with tips and tricks and ofcourse the fun facts! :)