If you've been playing video games for as long as I have, doubtless you remember how important GameFAQs once was to folks trying to beat games, before commercial games websites worked out that the SEO juice for posting one (probably AI-generated) "guide" per individual thing you have to do in a game was more potent than a thousand reviews.

One of my favourite things about the FAQs that were posted on GameFAQs was when the author decided to use the "Legal" or similar section to have a good old rant about something which obviously meant something to them. Here, for example, is the copyright section of "Kertra"'s 2003 guide to Metal Slug on NeoGeo:

This FAQ is for personal use only. Do not distribute it or use it for profitable purposes. If you want to post this FAQ on a website, contact me before doing anything and send the URL of your site. Plagiarism is a crime, just ask. I have no objection on my FAQ being posted on someone else's site but you must give credit where it is due. 

Also, please keep in mind that under no circumstances, are you allowed to make any changes to this FAQ! It must remain as it is and moreover, you are not allowed to rip off part(s) of this FAQ to put in another FAQ. No banners or advertisements are to be attached to it and it must remain in its original form (NO HTML!). Moreover, the site must be a non-commercial and non-profitable one. 

This document is protected by US Copyright Law, and the Berne Copyright Convention of 1976. I'm well aware of my rights and will not hesitate to take legal action against you if you don't follow these guidelines. If you wish to take some info from this FAQ to include in a more elaborate one, write to me first and tell me what it is all about and I'll think about it.

This is excellent stuff. I love how it gradually builds and escalates as it goes on, culminating in threats of legal action under both United States copyright law and the Berne Copyright Convention. Amusingly, they'd researched enough to know that the Berne Copyright Convention existed, but got the date wrong on it: its most recent revision appears to have been 1971, not 1976. It goes deeper, though; 1976 is actually an important date to copyright law, because there was a revamp of the United States copyright legislation that year.

The exhortation to not attach banners or ads to the FAQ and the stern NO HTML! appears to have not been legally enforced by poor old Kertra, mind, as GameFAQs is now owned by Gamespot, and I suspect if I turned off my adblockers to look at it, there would be at least one banner ad somewhere, and the site now automatically HTML-ises all FAQs rather than hotlinking directly to the text files.

Let's see if we can find some more of these. Here's a good one, from DingoJellybean's Final Fantasy VII FAQ of 2001: (As a bonus, check out this archive link for DingoJellybean's old GeoCities site, featuring some delightful early 21st century HTML jank and an early example of a blog.)

NOTE: From now on 1/10 Final Fantasy 7 messages regarding how to beat the game will be answered. If you ask me a question already on the walkthrough, your email will be submarily deleted. Use Crtl+F to search what you are looking for. Even if you beg me to read the email I will most definitely delete the message. Too many stupid questions already in the walkthrough has been asked of me. I got over 700 emails regarding this game alone, I will delete those with the subject Final Fantasy 7 on it. If you do subject a title something else, but you ask a Final Fantasy question on the message, your email will be permanently blocked, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I updated this FAQ massively, in hopes that questions will be answered in the FAQ. I've included everything to make sure dumb emails won't come to me again. If I'm in a good mood, I'll answer your email, but when I see another FF7 question that puts me out on a bad mood. If you want to talk that's fine, but I know what is in my FAQ and what is not. I will read your message occasionally and decide what to and what not to reply, and if you flame me or criticize me negatively I will send a flame right back at you and block your email address so that you can never contact me again unless you create a new email account and behave. This is also quite possibly the LAST time I will ever update the FAQ. If enough requests comes in(which I doubt) the FAQ will be updated if you are specific in which areas needs to be updated. Also take a look at Mr.Prolific's million dollar worth FF7 FAQ, its great and has massive information only Kao Megura can provide.

Now that's a quality rant. Okay, it's not a "copyright" or "legal" section, but this is another prolific subgenre of GameFAQs rants: people who wrote an FAQ getting absolutely apoplectically furious that anyone emailed them about their FAQ, when more often than not they put their email address in the FAQ.

I'm a particular fan of the threat to "submarily delete" [sic, obviously] your email and the tonal whiplash that is "if you flame me or criticize me negatively I will send a flame right back at you and block your email address so that you can never contact me again unless you create a new email account and behave". Magnificent stuff.

Let's see if we can't find another good one. Oh, this one is nice, not for being mad (which it isn't), but for actually being remarkably pleasant. I would place good odds on this one, from a Sonic the Hedgehog FAQ written in 2003, being by a girl, just because of the sheer lack of overtly aggressive posing:

If you are going to use this guide on your site, the least you can do is ask permission first by e-mailing me at <REDACTED BY PETE>. Make the note short and sweet. If you're e-mailing me about anything, whether it's related to this guide or another one or what, put what you're talking about in the subject line of your message. I need to be able to differentiate the spam from the important stuff. I really can't keep people from stealing guides, I mean, it's going to happen, what can I do? But you know. Whatever. Just ask before you do it. Most people can do it with little or no problems.

If you use my guide on your site, you may HTML-ize the text or change the way it's set up on the page, but don't change a single letter. All words must remain the same - don't alter anything whatsoever. I would like to see screenshots added to some of my guides though. I always thought that would look super-sweet.

"Snow_Dragon", as the author calls themselves, also gives a shoutout to their Dad in the credits section for "moving the big computer into my room". Sweet.

It's weird to say, but I miss this. All this represents a long-gone era of the Internet, replaced, as with so many things, by social media. There are still folks out there writing FAQs on GameFAQs — and God bless 'em, as I'd still always rather go to GameFAQs than a clickbait guide on a commercial website, even if GameFAQs is part of Gamespot now — but the earnestness, the passion, the inexplicable fury of those little personal asides in late '90s/early '00s GameFAQs submissions is just one of many things that I don't feel like we really see any more.

Oh well. At least all those lovely examples of the art form in its prime still exist. Here's hoping GameFAQs is around until the very end of the Web.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 282: A lost art - the GameFAQs Legal section appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Earlier today, I was browsing around the Internet looking for some tips and tricks on how to better play Dungeon Travelers 2. I tried GameFAQs, and the content there was disappointingly light, though there is a good character guide at least. Then I resorted to Google, and I was reminded of something that's been bugging me for a while.

Here's my Google results for "dungeon travelers 2 walkthrough":

"Oh," I thought, skipping past the GameFAQs entry because I'd already checked it out. "There's some more walkthroughs out there. IGN have got one, huh? Well, that should be decent enough."

As anyone who has ever attempted to look at one of IGN's walkthroughs — or indeed one on the "GameWise" site above it — will know… no. This is emphatically not the case. Here is IGN's walkthrough for Dungeon Travelers 2:

That's right! There's absolutely fuck all there besides the most basic database information for the game itself. And if you thought GameWise might be any better, being higher ranked on Google? Nope.

GameWise takes considerably more words to say that it doesn't have any content for the guide, and outright lies to the reader by saying its "team of contributors will help you work through the game via a step-by-step tutorial" and that it will "take you all the way through the game to 100% completion including unlockable quests and items". It's boilerplate text, of course, but it's complete bollocks and, more to the point, it's evidence of a particularly dishonest practice that goes on alarmingly frequently these days: sites that put up "landing pages" for things that people might be searching for, then don't populate them with content right away (or sometimes, as we can see here, at all) so that they can get some of that sweet, sweet ad revenue by someone who doesn't know any better clicking on them without having to put any actual work in.

This is actively making the Internet less useful, particularly as both IGN and GameWise have clearly made the effort to get themselves highly ranked on Google as a "trustworthy" source. And indeed both of these sites may well have helpful walkthroughs and guides for more mainstream, popular games, and in that instance, them showing up on Google is absolutely fine. But to list a "false positive" result like this is extremely dishonest and incredibly frustrating for the reader.

I'm reminded of the evolution of my time at USgamer. When the site launched, each of us on the team were specifically given pretty much free reign to cover what we wanted in our own personal style: the thinking was very much along the lines of 1up.com back in the glory days, when there would be distinct "personalities", each with their own specialisms, building up their own communities of readers. It was great; it was fun to write, and the community appreciated this honest style of writing.

Unfortunately, it didn't satisfy the suits as it wasn't raking in enough ad revenue. So out went the freedom and in came a more strict regime. Whereas once I took the approach that I had once taken so successfully on GamePro — look out for things that looked interesting that other sites hadn't covered in detail, then cover them in detail — I was reduced to having to seek approval for every news story I posted, and this led USgamer's news section to start looking more and more like every other gaming news site out there, covering the same old stories in the same old way.

This only got worse once I got laid off and was working out my notice; the site started to post guide content for recently released games, partly through the site's partnership with Prima Games, whose website was also part of the Gamer Network umbrella. I had to split guides into parts so they could be published across several days and rake in more clicks than they would have done if posted all in one lump; worse, I didn't have the creativity to write my own stuff, since all the content was already done and I was pretty much reduced to being a data entry person, editing and tidying up the raw copy so it looked good on the site. And, of course, even worse than that, the hours that I was tied up pissing around with these stupid guides were hours that I couldn't spend writing more interesting things or telling people about games they might not have heard of before. (I am 100% sure that this was deliberate.)

Guide content has its place, but it should be on a dedicated site that specialises in it — such as GameFAQs — not used as insultingly transparent bait to get people to visit your site and cross your fingers that they might read something else you've written while they're there. (They won't.) And it absolutely, definitely should not be used in the way IGN and GameWise use it, which is to hook people in without actually providing any content at all.

It's not just guide content, of course — IGN in particular has been caught playing the SEO game with articles about games and tricking Google into thinking they are "reviews" when they're nothing of the sort — but guide content represents by far the most egregious examples of this bullshit going on.

If you are engaging in this, you are making the Internet a less useful place to find information. Stop being a cunt and write something helpful to go with your beautifully optimised search engine bullshit, or don't list the page at all.

The post 2242: Another Frustrating Way Clickbait Ruins the Internet appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.