The New York Times website (registration required, I'm afraid) has just posted a decent mainstream introduction to the world of videogame strategy guides, meeting the authors who now make a good living writing them and going over the familiar issues - i.e. why buy an anachronistic paperback guide, when you can go online and get a FAQ for free? It seems plenty of people do - according to the New York Times piece these guides generated about $90 million in sales in 2004.
I've only ever bought a handful of game guides - all of them from Japan where strategy books are often stylish coffee table tomes boasting beautiful design, lovely use of illustration and masses of ephemeral detail. In the west, the key publishers are getting to grips with the importance of aesthetics and of providing background information, rather than just basic walkthrough data, but I'm rarely tempted.
What do you think? Are strategy guides merely a way for quitters to cheat their way through a game's shortest path or do they provide an enriching accompaniment to the experience?
