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Categories: Interview
Tags: bradygames, Interview, strategy guide
Dan Birlew
danbirlew.com
Strategy Guide Writer
Video Game ExpertWith over 50 strategy guides to his credit, there’s a good chance Dan Birlew helped you beat some of your favorite games – and that’s in addition to explaining what the hell was happening in Silent Hills 1 and 2.
Game Couch: How did you become a strategy guide writer?
Dan Birlew: I’ve always been a writer. I’ve been writing since before I could write. I used to have my mom draw comic books for me on notebook paper, and I would tell her what should go in each pane and caption. Around 26, I was spending a better part of my week playing PlayStation games and answering other people’s game questions online. My wife told me that I had to get serious about my career, so I either needed to get a job writing guides or quit going online. So I submitted a writing sample and cover letter to BradyGames in 1999. At the time, they had a link on their site to e-mail their acquisitions editor. The sample I created was for Resident Evil 2. I included a brief ‘Game Basics’ section explaining the controls and some tips for mastering the game, and then I created a walkthrough for the first stage. I submitted that on a Sunday night, and much to my surprise received a reply from them the next morning. I called and spoke to a woman named Debra McBride for twenty minutes. Again, she surprised me by immediately hiring me to write my first guide for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. I was so happy I went into the bedroom and jumped on the bed like a five-year old. My wife was sleeping in it at the time. She probably thought the room was on fire. But when she finally understood what I was raving about, she was surprised and happy, too.
GC: Is it a fulltime job?
DB: Some years it has been, but recently not so much. The number of guide publishers has dwindled to two, and both houses are cutting back on the number of guides they publish per year. As you might imagine, this leaves the market a bit over-saturated with guide authors. So it’s quickly becoming a part-time job for most work-for-hires in the business.
GC: I imagine that your work is very deadline intensive. What’s the typical timeframe for getting a game, writing the strategy guide, and getting it printed?
DB: Honestly our whole schedule depends on the developer and when they feel comfortable releasing a build to us. Quite typically we don’t see a build until a game has reach beta status. That milestone could occur anywhere from two to three months before a game releases. But because most developers hold us to a rather rigid and time-consuming approvals process, such a schedule only gives us about two to three weeks to create the guide, if we’re lucky. The author is responsible for playing the game, capturing screens, writing — and in some cases, editing — the content, formatting the text for layout, and also creating any maps or graphs needed. That’s a lot of work to accomplish in a week or two, so it leads to many sleepless nights. The book typically has to go to the printer about two weeks before release date, so that may shorten our approval and writing time even further.
GC: Can you describe your work process? Do companies hand you the game and walk away or do they provide copious amounts of documentation?
DB: The first step of course is to pop the disc in a debug and see if it will even play. If so, we see how much and start working from that. But very frequently nowadays, the game is still in pieces as little as three months from release date. At that point, we start asking the developer when the game is going to be playable and whether the release date is going to slip.
Regarding materials, the relationship between developers and guide publishers has improved over the years. The truth is that we get some form of design or walkthrough materials from the developer on most projects nowadays. As few as five years ago, such assistance was RARE, at best. And if you’re doing a Japanese-developed game, forget it. The best hope in that case is that the game is already out in Japan, and that a Japanese strategy guide is available. But the problem with developer-provided data is that most of it is already outdated to the build you’re playing, so you really have to pick through what they give you with a fine-tooth comb. Even a table full of in-game stats is going to be wrong or outdated in more than one instance. I can say for certain that all guides published in the US are written purely from the author’s perspective. So developer provided material can either be a boon or an albatross to a project, depending on whether the data is updated during the project (which it usually is not).
GC: Can you pick and choose which games you write about? Have you ever gotten stuck with a game you hated – if so, how did you handle that?
DB: Wow, it’s like really hard for me to hate a video game, no matter what the circumstance. I’ve just played so darned many that I can spot good and bad points in almost anything, even highly-rated titles like Twilight Princess or Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto. When I get a game that’s less than stellar and I can tell that it’s not going to sell a lot of guides, that’s a bit of a letdown, I suppose. But like I said, there’s good and bad points to almost every game. A person has to be extremely positive to be any kind of writer, and remain strong in the face of what is demanded. But even when I’m doing mediocre stuff, I still enjoy the writing and creative aspects of the book so much that the software doesn’t get me down. I still push hard and create a great guide for the few people who will buy it, because that’s what it’s all about. And to tell the truth, I sometimes get more appreciation from publishers and readers for my work on smaller titles than I do for most of the big-name games I’ve written about.
Regarding project choice, it’s all in the publishers’ hands. I tell editors what kind of games I like, and I think for the most part they pay attention. They know that I like action and shooting games, and some types of RPGs. There have been projects, like MMORPGs and such that I really can’t stand, where I start on it and finally have to call them and tell them I’m not right for the project. But for the most part, I’m interested in all the titles they offer me. Paying attention to the likes and dislikes of an author is important to most editors, because they want the best guide possible. Most editors know they’re not going to get the best guide for the advance money if they assign me to stuff like Nintendogs or Brain Age, if those had actually been guide titles. Thank goodness they’re not, I suppose.
GC: How has this job changed your appreciation of gaming?
DB: I’ve had some inside access that’s been great, and quite a bit that’s not-so-great. I’ve got some great stories to tell new folks I meet who want to know what it’s like to work at EA Games or Capcom, or how much Resident Evil 4 changed just a few weeks before it hit the shelves. I can relate some truly off-the-wall drinking stories that took place at E3 and at author conferences. I can truly appreciate the efforts of a design team that makes drastic improvements to a game within one week. Their schedules are usually just as bad as ours, but for a much longer duration. I’m not sure I could do what programmers and modelers do and maintain any rationality. Maybe that’s why many game designers are so eccentric?
GC: What do your strategy guides give me that I’m not going to find online?
DB: Well-placed, didactic screenshots, for one. Licensed content reviewed and approved for accuracy by the software development team. Professionally authored and edited content that you can actually comprehend, instead of trying to guess or having to e-mail someone. Courtesy, which you won’t get on most game forums you go to. Helpful maps, whenever we can provide them. Plus you pay once, rather than getting hooked into some “coaching” scheme. Please, for the pride of your parents, do not EVER sign up for some scam like that. Every time I see a game coaching site I wish there was some way to make their HTML explode or something, just to prevent them from ripping off kids. Sore subject, I suppose.
GC: Can you tell me what you’re working on now?
DB: Nothing, honestly. Like I said, the guide market has dwindled a bit. I do have some projects up for negotiation, and I’ll be requesting more projects during E3. Meanwhile, I’m working on a fiction novel for ‘tweens and teens. I conceived it as a five-book series, and I have a short list of literary agents to whom I wish to show my work. I sincerely hope to publish it before the end of the year, and I hope that everyone who has enjoyed one of my strategy guides will take a leap of faith and check it out when it hits store shelves.
GC: Thanks, Dan! Keep me updated on the novel.
On July 13th, 2008 at 3:48 am, Silvercube wrote:
i liked this interview very much!
its sad to see the strategy guide market dwindling, mainly because of the internet.
some strategy guides i have, i love, final fantasy 8’s strategy guide by brady games was amazing!
i actually have maybe 30+ guides at home. most of them were well done.
the worst strategy guide i ever got was crackdown. augh the writing style was terrible! (okay agent, here’s your mission.. blah blah.. the author wrote in a way that sort of had a similar style to the narrative of the game itself, but i was not interested in reading that.)
when i was younger i was thinking of having a job similar to this, but i realized im not very good at explaining things in great detail…