I thought that the best way to announce a new feature I’ll be doing every week was with a poll that encapsulates the feature’s main question: print or online guides? (See the poll in the sidebar.)
There’s been several discussions over the past couple of years about print dying due to online publication. We’ve seen it with magazines and newspapers, and now, more recently, we’re seeing it with books. However, this debate between online and print guides has been around for several years, ever since the creation of GameFAQs. IGN also has a rather large guide section, and several other freelancing sites (such as Hubpages, Squidoo, and Suite 101) encourage users to supply their own guides, much like GameFAQs. While I see the appeal to online guides (especially their price tag), there are some things that print guides just do better. I’m not saying that online guides don’t offer anything better than print; in many ways, in addition to price, online guides have advantages over print.
Before I delve into this topic, I’m curious what the percentage of readers here prefer. Get your friends to vote too and pass this around Twitter and Facebook. The more votes, the more accurate the result will be!
It depends on my needs. If I need a quick pointer in the right direction, I want a free online FAQ. For longer, more dedicated strategy needs, I turn to a printed book.
I’ve always been a fan of print guides. I don’t like having to keep my laptop near me or having to print stuff out when I could just have a nice print guide near me. Some of the art direction in strategy guides this generation has really impressed me — namely the guides for Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, and BioShock — so that’s another aspect of print guides that I like.