BradyGames has published the officially licensed strategy guide for Dishonored, which released just this week. Yesterday, they released an official iTunes map app to the game as well. It’s usually pretty clear that when a guide is published in the US, other guide publishers cannot “officially” release any strategy guide content, at least not for a price.
However, Prima Games seems to be pushing that envelope pretty hard.
If you’ve visited that website as of late, then you know that they have hired some great writers to provide “blog” content about video game news, goings on at Prima Games itself, and opinions about the video game industry. This morning, they published a Beginner’s Guide to Dishonored. This isn’t a new practice to any video game site. Many gaming sites publish little strategy guide-ish articles the week a game releases in order to garner more hits and analyze what their reader base is interested in. However, most gaming sites don’t publish strategy guides for a cost.
By posting a free article on the Prima Games site that offers free advice for Dishonored players, that’s going directly against your chief US competitor in the guide market–BradyGames. Of course, this is just a beginner’s guide, just some free tips for those just starting the game. It’s not like they’ve created maps or written long drawn out walkthroughs, something that would directly go against BradyGames’ strategy guide. However, no one can deny that such an article isn’t pushing it a little, isn’t encroaching on BradyGames’ turf just a little.
It’s a first step. It’s almost like a child who knows they can’t touch the stove, yet they touch around it (no, I’m not calling them childish, I’m just giving an analogy!).
It also makes me wonder what the next step will be, and if BradyGames will start hiring their own bloggers to write similar, “harmless” beginner’s guides for games that Prima Games creates guides for.
It reminds me of the times before guide exclusivity, when there were multiple strategy guides for the same games. I remember getting the Prima and the BradyGames guides for Donkey Kong Country, for example. Sometimes I wish these days were still like that.