TOL - Do Game Guides Diminish The Experience

Hey it's Tarrmu and welcome to Thinking Out Loud and in today's video we'll be talking about Guides for video games and ask the question, do guides diminish the overall experience for a video game?

The Question

It's a difficult topic that spans beyond a simple yes or no answer that comes with a lot of qualifiers and situations here that I want to breakdown in this video.

The question we first have to answer is what underpins and makes the game you're playing enjoyable? Is the game centered around its puzzles, is the game more focused around combat, and do you just so happen to be lost and not know where to go?

Bug Caveat

Another variable that serves more as a caveat, is the question what if the game has a bug that is preventing my progress whether it is something that is blocked or a path that should be accessible that isn't, to which guides serve as a method of debugging that helps establish that there is a not responding within the game, more than something that is being missed by the player. But that bleeds into a whole other conversation about games performing as intended.

Case Studies

But the flipside of this and what really sparked the idea of this video for me is that there are games that are built around its unconventional traversal or its puzzle solving mechanics. I think of games like the Outer Wilds, where the puzzle solving and piecing things together from nothing, is what makes that experience and how everything comes together special. But even recently I played the first Resident Evil for the first time, and experiencing that game and piecing all the mysteries of the Spencer Mansion, was only extremely rewarding, but it provided a sense of space. There is a level of knowledge that unfolds and makes the routes you take and quickest ways to get there more of a second nature thing and one of the big reasons why that game has stuck with me since the way it had.

That isn't to say however, that anyone who does use a guide had any less of an experience per se. Sometimes if you are stuck on a game, and you need help than it is better to look up a tip or hint that could help you, rather than drop a game you were enjoying entirely. I have been stuck at times, and needed help to solve or figure out where to go sometimes in a game too.

Guides as a Tool vs Crutch

But now I get to the big question of the video, does this diminish the experience? Well I would argue on its face no, I think that sometimes a nudge can help you push forward, and prevent you from putting something down indefinitely, it can also help you understand the types of puzzles or a mechanic, to prevent future roadblocks. But when, a guide becomes your default reflex instead of engaging with the game’s intended challenge, that’s when the experience starts to erode, especially when the games main focal point is to problem solve, than I do believe that it does detract from the experience that essentially spoils an experience for you.

There are games like Resident Evil that I mentioned earlier, where looking up where an item is, or where to go wouldn't cave in on the game, but there are many other games that do exist where once you know the solution, the game can be solved in its entirety fairly quickly, and it robs the player of the more broader journey that naturally leads them to that conclusion. The sad part to me is that, unlike a skill oriented game, one that is based around acquiring knowledge, once you have it, then I feel like for games like Tunic or Outer Wilds, that the game's challenge has been diminished in a way that can't be changed like a difficulty slider.

Outliers

There are outliers to this conversation too, where there are games like souls-likes where the puzzle could be a boss and even where the strategy is something you may have looked up for inspiration, like different builds to approach a boss. Although this is taking influence and looking up an element of the game, the success of the challenge still comes from you the player in what you accomplish. There are obviously communities like the speed running community who will look to guides for route optimization to complete the game as quick as possible, but I feel that this is a different conversation that isn't typically the case for a first blind playthrough, but more a second playthrough and the numerous playthroughs that come after.

Conclusion

But that's overall how I feel about this, guides are useful and can help to improve your time with a game if they're used to help you get past a roadblock, but there are particular experiences that I think do suffer from its use and overuse I do feel it takes some of the satisfaction, sense of place and connection that one could feel with an experience. But these are just my thoughts, what do you feel about the game guides?

As always I am Tarrmu, and this has been Thinking out Loud, thanks for watching.