Official Guide Writer Income Revealed!

For decades, we all wondered about the wages of the official writers and thought that GameFAQs was shorting us so much by "only" offering a few hundred dollars for a guide. Here is an official guide writer for Prima, Alan Emrich, who made only $4000 off his Civ 2 guide which generated $1.6 million:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160610044816/https://alanemrich.com/Writing_Archive_pages/decline.htm

This community conflated the video game industry (can be high income with scientific background) with the writing community (dirt poor pay, penny a word).

Anyway I just bring it up because in 2017 Absolute Steve was able to b**** again about not being paid like a prince, this time in academia, in this journal:

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7925

But tbh GameFAQs is much more legit anyway (:

This is all to say that GameFAQs definitely does not underpay and never did. It is GRUELING to write official guides for things that aren't complete. One of my most popular guides, Final Fantasy IX, is only popular because of Dan Birlew's disaster.

Really the only ones who made money off this were extremely intelligent and experts at other things. CJayC, an innovative creator. Bacon, an iron admin who has captained the Titantic for decades. Devin, a degree in CS. Colin was a clown.

I do still strongly think that anyone who wants to make a salary off this should apply for technical writing positions.

TestaALT posted...

Colin was a clown

Who was Colin?
And why was GFAQs hosting a circus?

everything over 50$ is already too much for that they write in those trash guides...

Definitelyhuman posted...

Who was Colin?
And why was GFAQs hosting a circus?

I believe he is referring to Colin, I forgot his last name (started with an M). He was around when I first came on to this site 19 years ago, but went away after several years. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe he was one of the bigger names in regards to this site, though I dunno what role he played.

StarFighters76 posted...

I believe he is referring to Colin, I forgot his last name (started with an M). He was around when I first came on to this site 19 years ago, but went away after several years. Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe he was one of the bigger names in regards to this site, though I dunno what role he played.

I know who you are talking about, he was a prolific guide writer here but stopping writing guides after he got a job as an editor for IGN. He has since become a professional writer and even wrote for a short lived tv series if I remember right.

BCD851 posted...

I know who you are talking about, he was a prolific guide writer here but stopping writing guides after he got a job as an editor for IGN.

That's right. Dunno why I forgot about Colin going to IGN.

Thanks y'all

By comparison, I received a very generous $1,250 bounty from GameFAQs for 2018 God of War, which was at least 100 hours of work for me, more like 150. I had fun writing the whole thing although I always labor with non-walkthrough stuff. I just played the game and wrote what I saw.

These professional guide writers, by contrast, appear to put in hundreds of hours playing crappy, incomplete games that they don't even like, constantly talking to devs, dealing with Bethesda-level bugs. It's much harder work.

I just don't understand why some people here thought it was some sort of sweepstakes. These guides have like a mythical quality I will admit. Every once in a while, a person will be actually impressed by it. ^_~

TestaALT posted...

I just don't understand why some people here thought it was some sort of sweepstakes. These guides have like a mythical quality I will admit. Every once in a while, a person will be actually impressed by it. ^_~

I don't know which ones you read but most of the ones I read were really trash (Final Fantasy 12 or God of War 3, for example)

poor infos
too much artworks that ruin the page
written by people who barely knew the game
terrible translations
etc etc etc

you can be impressed by them only if you like artworks (most of them have galleries) or if you are a casual gamer (or a "casual author"...)