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[slayn]

the problem with your combined wiki is that I think your theme is a little too broad.

you can sum up wikipedia in a single word: encylopedia.

When I look at your wiki, I can't easily predict all the information I could find there.

When you tell me your site has all product information... well... what does that mean? What falls under 'all?' a faq doesn't really fall under 'product information' to me. That is, your scope is so broad that you fail to sell your product to me since my needs are more specific.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

how is that a fault? In a sense, a wiki entry on each game becomes the ultimate "game shrine", collecting history, media, gossip, strategy, etc. is it any more a pain to select "strategy" than avoid the forums or lame ass character contests on gfaqs? It's hard for me to understand why people wouldn't want a better version of what already exists.

 

[TekunoRobby]

GameFaqs itself works great. The site is easy to manage; browsing from cheat codes to the FAQs is both painless and simple to do. There is no need to change that, maybe except add a special "Super FAQ" option where users can do their own fully featured guide with pictures, etc. If you're complaining about the boards well that's your own damn fault for inviting stupidity into your PC.

I invite and welcome competitors to challenge GameFAQs and its ilk however unless they offer something other than guides with pictures and the ability to edit them, its going to die hard and fast in the face of the already established websites.

 

[fallout]

yea, no shit. that's why I want people to know about it. GameFaqs has years of great strategy guides interspersed with archaic presentation and some of the worst community on the net.

To be fair, I had no idea how shitty the GameFAQs community was until I started frequenting GAF. Hell, I'm not even sure I was aware they had forums. I had always just used it as a FAQ resource. I know that's not the debate at hand, but I figured I'd mention it.

 

[Nerevar]

I don't think a Wiki is necessarily a good idea for publishing strategy guides on the internet. Hell, there's even disagreement on the best method for beating a game within individual walkthroughs.

 

[slayn]

how is that a fault? In a sense, a wiki entry on each game becomes the ultimate "game shrine", collecting history, media, gossip, strategy, etc. is it any more a pain to select "strategy" than avoid the forums or lame ass character contests on gfaqs? It's hard for me to understand why people wouldn't want a better version of what already exists.

I was referring to the site rastex was brining up. Not to say that its a poor implementation or something, but that I think it will fail (at least fail in this specific task of faqs) for the very opposite reason that the small wiki places will fail. It is too broad such that people won't think of it right away.

If you want to beat gamefaqs at its own game, you need the first website that pops into people's heads when you say the word 'faq' to be your site. And I can't see people hearing the word faq and immediately thinking 'ProductWiki.'


furthermore, I don't see how your new site is doing anything better. Even if we were to assume it matched gamefaqs perfectly for amount of information. Gamefaqs provides me with nice clean interface to quickly get to a list of faqs. I can then quickly glance each one to determine whose writing style and orginization most appeals to me, and save the text file to my hard drive where I can then quickly make changes as I progress through the game to make notes of secrets I had not yet done or areas I need to come back to.

Furthermore, in the rare instance that a graph, chart, or map is neccisary (and in my gaming experience this is very very rare) instead of just being eye candy, someone can put up a png or gif on gamefaqs which works perfect for me. Large images in the faq itself just slows the loading of that faq which would drive me nuts.

What does this new site offer me to improve upon that?

 

[El Papa]

Well, that's what's great about wiki then, you could have multiple methods of defeating certain areas or bosses in one faq instead of having to check a bunch of different faqs methods different people use. You can then have screens demonstrating hard to explain techniques or areas. In theory it's so much better than Gamefaqs.

 

[CamHostage]

They should probably e-mail some major GFaqs contributors and have them put their work on here.

IGN's FAQs site tried reaching out like this when it launched a little bit after GameSpot bought GameFAQs, and it only went so-so. A lot of those guys are so entrenched with GameFAQs that they were outraged to be contacted by the "corporate world" (even though GameFAQs was owned then, and was profitting off their free work). Their boards had stuff trying to gather the troops together and fend off any request to co-host their work. Many of them were reasonable and said, "Hey, it's my stuff, and I wrote it to help people, so who cares who has it as long as they ask and I still have control." But a lot of others also were justified in erecting a wall after being burned by start-up FAQ sites just wholesale copy-paste stealing from GameFAQs.

As for the Strategywiki haters... well, let's hear your tune in 5 years when strategywiki has screenshot and map-laden faqs for all the major games and gamefaqs is still stuck with enormous text files written by 13-year-olds and filled with terrible writing, unnecessary attempts at humor, and extraneous crap nobody cares about. Assuming the wiki takes off, that is. Not that any do.

Same deal that it's been done before and has gone nowhere. HTML and integrated pictures and all that, when you look through the stuff that IGN was able to share (not exactly trying to pimp IGN over Wiki, I just know its FAQs site and the guy running it), it's not that common to see feature-rich FAQs. All that stuff is still just plain text -- most FAQ writers don't want to bother with all that stuff, even if it's something as simple and useful as ahref anchors on the index. That, and they're in love with ASCII title images, for some reason.

GameFAQs would be hard to take down. It's hard enough in the first place to give reason for why it should be taken down (other than that some people don't like the people from their forum.) Good luck in the alternatives providing a similarly useful service with maybe some nice frills as well, but that's all you'll be, the alternative FAQs site, not the next GameFAQs or GameFAQs killer.

 

[CamHostage]

Haha, they just copy and paste guides from GameFaqs: http://strategywiki.net/wiki/Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time/Walkthrough

Yep, sounds like teh future to me.

Holy crap, I didn't even look at the site before I posted, but man, now that I have ... f' StrategyWiki. Whoever's running it got in without knowing the first thing about FAQs or rights management, they just wanted to get a FAQs site going to be popular and, I assume, collect a few donations from here and there.

Sample FAQ (*after user edit*)
Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Walkthrough
=======
This page was deleted at the request of the original author, Alex Eagleson. Do not post copyrighted material from GameFaqs without permission. Talk about idiotic and underhanded, I mean what the ****.

 

[Earthstrike]

Gamefaqs has the following advantages.

Multiple FAQs instead of just one. If you don't understand one FAQs way of doing something you can always look at another.

The Boards allow for users to complete FAQs faster as they interact with eachother and answer eachothers questions. Communities produce FAQs faster than individuals.

Huge pre-existing contributor database.

 

[Jiggy]

I find GameFAQs to be a decent site, with message boards on par with or better than most on the Internet. Don't know what the deal is with all the bitching about it here on GAF.

That's the deal. Being on par with most of the Internet is nothing to be proud of, really.

 

[MoxManiac]

Who the hell goes to gamefaqs for the message boards?

 

[Reilly]

I like Gamefaqs for the simple fact that it's design isn't graphic heavy and it loads really quick. As for the message boards, they're alright. I only ever post on it if I have a specific question about a really old game. Some of the people that post on it are really helpful too. Stop hating.

 

[black_13]

Like everyone says, who cares about the boards, GF has some of the best and biggest guides on the internet and you never have to worry about going through tons of ads and stuff to see it.

I've contributed to the site as well.

Plus the DMC board I check out aren't all that bad. Quite a few hardcore DMC players there who know what their saying.

 

[Lemurnator]

I personally don't want to attract any more of the idiots from GameFAQs.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

A wiki is a great idea. Kudos!

I had the idea for a video game wiki.
Just history and stuff. But, I'm thinking of scrapping the idea for now.
It would take forever and a day just to get it up to par with the regular old wikipedia and management would be impossible. We all know how you evil video gamers are, I'd have psp graffiti on every page.

Insert shameless plug here.

As for spoilers being in gamefaqs forums. If they used phpBB they could add spoiler show/hide text. That way you have to click the spoiler text to even see the spoilers.

Anyway, it's good to be back in GAF.
Cheers, and a round of drinks for everyone.

 

[cs060mk2]

What about Mobygames? Its great and way better than GameFAQs if you are interested in the story of old games... (the trivia section).

It has FAQs and walkthroughs and also screenshots of games. I hope GameFAQs die and Mobygames pwnsz the world.

 

[DDayton]

The problem I have with OPEN wikis is that they tend to presume that everybody on the planet is equally qualified to instruct on anything. Gamefaqs = tons of zealots writing their own guides to games; one person writing each guide. A wiki = tons of people slashing and burning their way through each game.

Now, if you used a wiki format and had a closed group of editors...

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

The problem I have with OPEN wikis is that they tend to presume that everybody on the planet is equally qualified to instruct on anything. Gamefaqs = tons of zealots writing their own guides to games; one person writing each guide. A wiki = tons of people slashing and burning their way through each game.

Now, if you used a wiki format and had a closed group of editors...

That can be done.
Not sure if you can do that with the MediaWiki software that StrategyWiki is using, but I'm almost positive other variations allow that. I know the owner/admin of the wiki can "lock" pages that are completed so they can't be edited again.

 

[belgurdo]

I was a member of GF for two years and outside of dealing with a handful of asshole posters and many, many instances where I had to butt heads with moderators, I generally didn't have much of a problem getting information from there. Hell, they were the first site to figure out most of GTAIII's cheat codes, if I'm remembering clearly. Recently their forums have turned into shit, yes, but if you know where/what to post, you can get a lot of information from people there if need be

 

[rastex]

the problem with your combined wiki is that I think your theme is a little too broad.

you can sum up wikipedia in a single word: encylopedia.

When I look at your wiki, I can't easily predict all the information I could find there.

When you tell me your site has all product information... well... what does that mean? What falls under 'all?' a faq doesn't really fall under 'product information' to me. That is, your scope is so broad that you fail to sell your product to me since my needs are more specific.

To be honest, FAQs would be cool to have directly, and we DO support and welcome that, but most likely in practise our site would just link to another FAQ, either on GF, or whatever. In regards to this whole wiki thing, I think GF should just introduce some wiki technology for FAQ writers to collaborate on. So you get the wiki functionality, and you also get the traditional functionality that GF has always provided.

In regards to Game information in general, www.gamestats.com, www.mobygames.com and gamefaqs are all excellent resources.

 

[borghe]

That can be done.
Not sure if you can do that with the MediaWiki software that StrategyWiki is using, but I'm almost positive other variations allow that. I know the owner/admin of the wiki can "lock" pages that are completed so they can't be edited again.

we use mediawiki for our intranets here at work (I set them up and ported them) and you can definitely do this.

the problem is where do you decide "who is qualified" and how do you attract those "qualified" people to work on your wiki. and who moderates assuming issues come up amongst the editors?

IMHO gamefaqs is the best way to do it. a wiki is fine for a site like gamespot or ign, but by that point they already have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into their own content management software to do the same thing.

essentially where I am going with this is that while it certainly seems like a feasible idea, it really isn't. you will either end up with many pages that aren't accurate enough, or pages where infighting and disent occur. mind you you will also end up with some really nice pages, but in many (most?) cases it will not be good.

Gamefaqs is the best concept IMHO. give a moderated forum (not literally the GF forums, but the site) where authors can submit their faqs. If an author wants to work in a collaboration they can. If not they can work alone.

 

[My Arms Your Hearse]

Alex Eagleson does a shitload of FAQS for gamefaqs... some of the better ones too.

 

[typhonsentra]

That's the deal. Being on par with most of the Internet is nothing to be proud of, really.

So why single GameFAQs out?

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

we use mediawiki for our intranets here at work (I set them up and ported them) and you can definitely do this.

the problem is where do you decide "who is qualified" and how do you attract those "qualified" people to work on your wiki. and who moderates assuming issues come up amongst the editors?

Very good points.
I was thinking of a video game wiki where you only had the facts to worry about.
ex. What year was game made, who published it, what system was it on, etc...
No review scores, no guides, nothing that would provoke big arguements.
Then list everything in a timeline, alphabetically, and/or by platform.

I'll probably scrap that idea though.
I suppose I would still run into the same problems.
I could enter all the data myself, but then I wouldn't have time for anything else, like a job.
I can't even imagine how many games have been made since the first video game.
It would take an eternity to do and I don't have time for it.

 

[cvxfreak]

This is not going to turn out as well as it should. One hint of plagiarism for any guide will get the GameFAQs authors all over the website. Anyone being able to edit guides will stir disagreements among authors over the explanation of certain content - it's hard enough for many top tier authors to collaborate with one another, let alone multiple people.

And for the record, none of my FAQs will be used for StrategyWiki.

 

[Dsal]

As long as you avoid the "forums" like the plague and have AdBlockers on, GameFaqs is a very functional no-fuss website. Sure it looks dated, but at least the number of steps between you and the faq you're looking for can be completed within seconds. You're in and out of there as quickly as possible, and really what other criteria is there for the successful distribution of info? Everything else would be either clutter or gravy.

I've even used it from my phone in a couple of rare instances when over at a friend's house who didn't have a net connection, and the simple presentations helped with that as well.