How Getting Help In Video Games Has Changed Over The Decades
Gaming is a tough life, don’t we all know it! But the struggle need not be taken alone, we have always had the benefit of gaming being a community and an awesome one at that. We have always helped each other out one way or another, but what has changed is how we seek and offer that help. So let’s look at how this has changed over the years.
In The Beginning
In the beginning, God said, ‘let there be gaming, and there was gaming, and it was good’ (Book of Sega Genesis, Chapter One, Verse three), well not quite, computer gaming was actually credited as being invented by William Higinbotham in 1958 with “Tennis For Two”. But a little later in the 70s and 80s games became commercially popular and gamers would help each other the old-fashioned way, playing together and talking, offering tips, or even when visiting the gaming store talking with staff and other customers, a feature of the community sadly becoming a relic due to the prevalence of download as the primary delivery service for games.
Walkthrough & Tutorial Books
The natural progression from helping your friends and acquaintances with helpful gaming advice was for some of us to publish whole guide books on how to play, and complete, the games, these ‘strategy guides’ started appearing in the early 90s and Prima Games were the largest publisher of these. At its height there was barely a game that didn’t have a guide and these guides were often released before the game itself showing how close links these publishers had with eh developers. Sadly the trusty strategy guide is a thing of the past and Prima announced it’s closure in 2018. Although the name has since been bought up.
Website Guides
Naturally, it was the online guides that spelled the end for physical strategy guides, why pay $10 for the info when you can get it for free on the internet? You can get all kinds of guides from traditional walkthroughs to ongoing news and development sites such as this one that provides regular and latest LoL news.
YouTube Channels
As we know YouTube is big business, and it has every type of content you can think of, pretty much, and it is now one of the main ways content producers make money online, we’ve even seen channel owners paying for views. So it’s no surprise that such a visual medium is the best place for gaming guides to be found, as you can physically show game progress as the author describes what to do.
Podcasts
Podcasts are the new radio channels and you can even get video podcasts now as well which makes podcasting the new television stations in a sense as well. There are a great number of these podcasts dedicated to video gaming and this includes news, reviews and also a whole load of hints, tips and guides for the modern gamer. Here is a good list of some of the best gaming podcasts right now.