Official Guide Writer Income Revealed!

This doesn't surprise me at all. It's along the same lines as any kind of book royalties, technical or fiction - a pittance compared to what the book actually makes for the publisher.

(I worked out how much I made per hour based on all of the hours I put into the book revision I did - it did not even equal minimum wage.)

It's all relative. I cannot begin to express the joy and excitement I felt when I won $50 for my first FOTM. At the time I was a broke senior in college and being able to buy a new GameCube game was like an early graduation present. (Unfortunately I was so broke I had to wait several months for a sale so that the price + shipping was under $50).

And technically, since the FAQ was for a game I paid five bucks for on eBay, on a system I bought on clearance for $30 at Toys R Us, I made a profit :p

Brian

Prima is even listed by official agencies as a sort of temp organization: https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Prima-Temp/100595486

Eh. I'd need more than one guide's payday to judge things overall. Civ 2 is really old. $1250 for God of War sounds about right.

From my limited experience (I usually work with others on "paid guides" but everyone knows that), and personally knowing several people who do indeed write guides for a living, you CAN make a living off of it... but it's going to be a limited living. The people I know who have this as a job are either supported by family or splinting rent and bills. I don't think you can support yourself individually if you lived alone and "guide writing" was your job.

I'll also say that I was in that interview you linked Testa. I am "P3".

Interesting stuff.

What about the insanely detailed official JRPG Japanese guide books? How do they do it? I've bought a few of them and they are amazing, even if I can't understand the text! I wonder if they are produced by the developer since they have all the maps, stats, etc.

threetimes posted...

What about the insanely detailed official JRPG Japanese guide books? How do they do it? I've bought a few of them and they are amazing, even if I can't understand the text! I wonder if they are produced by the developer since they have all the maps, stats, etc.

how do they do it?

I did the same even without the developers help but with tons of research, tests and editors

so it would be pretty easier and quicker with their support of course

I've had some friends writing for games in beta, and from what I've heard it is horrible...

Bkstunt_31 posted...

I've had some friends writing for games in beta, and from what I've heard it is horrible...

*cough*

I might have some insight on the claims being made here.

Writing official guides is a nightmare, but to be fair to the developers, it's probably a nightmare for them, too. For detailed info for an at-launch guide, you ask the devs for it. Simple as that. They know what's in it, they can give you dialog flow charts, development maps and other useful tools. Whether they change it or not at launch or afterwards and whether it works as intended are other matters entirely.

GameFAQs absolutely does underpay. You will earn more money from Neoseeker and Gamer Guides for most projects. That's just a fact, and it's not terribly close.

I'll agree, you're probably not making a living off of this. I might be one of the few who does, and that's using "living" somewhat generously. It's better than minimum wage, especially considering the overhead is much lower (don't need a car, gas), but I'm probably the exception, not the rule.

I never understood the stigma about treating this as a profession, and like any profession, learning what the revenue streams are and determining from that how much you could and arguably should get paid. If somebody derives X income from something you do, it seems entirely rational for you to demand a reasonable percentage of X for your labor. You're not making a principled stand by NOT demanding a fair share, you're just somebody else's valuable fool.

Saying "an official guide author only made $4,000 off a guide that generated $1.6m" doesn't necessarily mean "and therefore you shouldn't ask for too much money, either" should follow, rather the conclusion I reach is "that guide author totally got hosed and we should be smarter and demand more".

Color me surprised that modern games are written as a solo effort. I was talking to someone waiting on a line at a gaming convention; they were playing (well, repeatedly rebooting) the JP released of Pokemon SoulSilver when the US version had just come out that month. I nonchalantly asked why they didn't switch over and they said they were actually doing "overtime" to contribute to a guide they had to write (in this case finding the cap to hidden stats).

Which then has my mind bring up the question -- how do piece-meal authors get paid? (Though at the time, I asked the naïve question of 'if you're writing a guide, why can't you ask the developer for their formula'?)