[...guide authors approach games with the mindset of a medical examiner. They do not play games so much as dissect them, which erodes enjoyment of the hobby they like best. Rarely can authors “just enjoy the game;” instead they must “stop every 20 seconds to write something.” ...]
Is this really the case?
I would rather believe that the writers are gamers too. It's quite common for gamers to play a [fun] game through more than once. So there's plenty of chance to enjoy the game without "dissection", then document the success on the next take.
The way the article put it makes it look like it's a kind of OCD behavior. Which sounds unfair.
I would argue this the most likely case - I do similar with movies. It's usually not until the 2nd or even 3rd time through a movie I'll really pay attention and 'understand' the plot, I spend a lot of time focused on the background and technical aspects, trying to pick up on Easter eggs for instance, or marvelling at how well something was shot.
You can ask me how I liked the movie, but it's highly unlikely I'll have any idea what happened or even the characters' names, but you bet I'll be remembering a certain shot, a piece of music, maybe the way a prop worked. Am I enjoying the movie wrong? Or just enjoying it in my own way?
(Just to throw out an anecdote, my high school physics teacher had us watch the 1998 movie Contact over a couple classes. That scene near the beginning after the father collapses, where our main character runs upstairs to the bathroom for medicine, I don't know what it was about that shit but it stuck with me for a long time. It was about 5 years later I finally sat down and watched the movie, twice back to back actually, that I realized what was going on and couple appreciate the film even further)
My jaw hit my lap in the theater when I saw that shot. To this day, the DVD for Contact is my favorite with the amount of BTS included. Actually, it was the first DVD I ever purchased just hoping there would be something interesting.
That's the one. It's an impossible looking shot that even if you know how to do VFX is hard to figure out. It's actually done with a combination of some pretty simple techniques, but like any good bit of magic, it only seems obvious after you've been told the trick.
PangeaPanga (a very good Mario player) made this Super Mario World hack named "Item Abuse 3" in 2015. The hack isn't human viable, it just contains so many frame perfect tricks that must be performed over and over or you die. Designing games, even very hard games is probably something the author can understand.
But this isn't about Panga's achievement, it's a TAS, a Tool Assisted Speedrun of Panga's hack. For Item Abuse 3 to make any sense Panga had to release a TAS of it anyway, as "Look this Mario hack is impossible" is not at all interesting, so the TAS is the only way to show that it's a complete technically beatable game that is also too hard to be possible.
But the TAS video I've linked above isn't Panga's proof of concept TAS, it's an independent effort. A whole group of people co-operatively came up with a way to beat this impossible SMW hack faster than Panga, spending hours on one trick, slowly making their way through the whole hack to shave off less than one minute.
Still that ought to be enough right? Nope. Here's XHF01X's even faster TAS of the same hack which entirely skips some of the already impossible stuff by doing even more impossible things.
My internal monologue when I do anything even for the first time is always as if I am “writing a guide”. Taking something apart, cooking, playing a game, etc. It doesn’t prevent me from enjoying things and I don’t think actually writing it down would be that different
I’ve thought about how I would create a game walkthrough and taking short notes or audio/video recording while thinking out loud and then expanding it at the end of the session wouldn’t be too difficult or intrusive.
Yeah I think it's a bit unfair too. Taking things apart to learn how they work is fun, it's part of the hacker mindset. I view FAQ and walkthrough creation the same way.
Teaching is also the best way to learn or retain knowledge, and the process helps you get to know and appreciate a game you already enjoy.
I've never done that but I've played many games where I spent more time outside the game thinking and plotting and planning than I do actually playing the game. I mean, there's a reason people sometimes tease Path of Exile by calling it "Path of Excel" because of all the interactions you can reason out.
It also says "erodes enjoyment of the hobby they like best" though. That's more than just interruption. The difference here is probably one of degree more than anything, you can take anything too far.
Speaking as someone with several Steam guides and at least one on Gamefaqs, this is silly. Yes, sometimes I had to take notes manually, but for some other games, I made the guides I did by reading the game's data files.
It's far easier to make item tables when you can read the data file saying it's a 2% drop or what have you.
In a lot of cases, people play the game through first before doing follow-up playthroughs dissecting it.
And dissecting (or tangentially related, speedrunning) the game is its own fun.
I felt it when I was playing Diablo 3 a few years ago; the 'core' game is a four chapter story (5th added with DLC) where you go through it with your character. But after that you can replay it at higher difficulties - again, nothing new there. But there are a dozen difficulty levels after 'normal', so you can keep going. And the goals shift. You no longer play to get through the game's story, you start to play to find better gear, gather materials, cross your fingers and hope to find a rare enemy that gives you access to a secret area. Eventually, the levels became a blur, the story something you just skip over because the in-game writing / voice acting is pretty poor (cutscenes are on point though). Later on they added Adventure Mode, allowing you to skip through the game world out of order and pursue different goals (e.g. "kill this enemy in this area") across the maps to work towards a reward, and Rifts, (semi)randomly generated dungeons that you are challenged to run as fast and frequently as possible. Finally there's Greater Rifts, challenge modes where the global goal for all players is to get to the highest, most difficult level. They further extended the lifetime and replayability of the game by adding Seasons, where you create a new character to get through the game for unique / one-off rewards.
I'm not sure where I'm going with that but long story short, there are many ways to enjoy a game that are not limited to the game itself as it's meant to be played.
Disclaimer: I run a fan website for a long-running game franchise where some of our members have gone really deep into the game(s), destructuring it, learning to and writing code to read and edit save files, going through the internet archive and contacting people to try and find and salvage old, defunct instalments and side projects of said series (like online modes, mobile games on feature phones), etcetera. Others (re)translate the games, write down novelized versions of games and movies, create art, discuss theories, make predictions about future instalments, etcetera.
I wouldn't have met my girlfriend if I had 'just' played a game.
As a kid I enjoyed games so much that I felt the need to understand and create them. That’s how I started doing this. The craving to pick every detail apart was incredibly gratifying to satiate and actually made it so I got so much more out of the games. It gave me insight into all aspects of creating them, which was more or less my passion and obsession for a very long time.
As a kid I loved Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System so much I tracked all the stats of the monsters, characters, mapped every maze, etc. I basically wrote an in-depth GameFAQ on pen and paper. I did it because I loved the game. I also tried various things (like trying to kill the Succubus who is supposed to kill you the first time — you could). I’ve also played the game through countless times (the most recent time being last year when Ages came out). I didn’t not enjoy the game. I enjoyed it far more than most people and in deeper ways.
I think there is an idea that if you look too hard at any art form (paint, film, comics, music...) you kill the magic. I’m not sure who believes that idea. The more I learn about any art form and the greater my skill at analyzing it, the more enjoyment I get from it.
Yeah I always assumed the people that write these have played the game a bunch of times. There will always be superfans, and its kind of cool they have an creative outlet for their passion that helps others.
I always look on how the game do the math, once I know how it computes probability I always lose interest on it. Discovering that through game play is entertaining for me.
Is this really the case?
I would rather believe that the writers are gamers too. It's quite common for gamers to play a [fun] game through more than once. So there's plenty of chance to enjoy the game without "dissection", then document the success on the next take.
The way the article put it makes it look like it's a kind of OCD behavior. Which sounds unfair.