Last November, I spotted a Craigslist posting seeking walkthrough writers, and I threw my hat in the ring. In those early freelance days, it was one of many applications I would fire off each day.
That evening, a guy from Mahalo.com called my cell, asking if I’d be interested in writing a Call of Duty: World at War walkthrough — starting the next day. Mahalo is the “human-powered search engine” that provides viewers with links and info on various topics, but lately they’ve found success as a generator of original walkthroughs. I’ll try anything once, right?
Fresh copy of game in hand, laptop by my side, I sat in front of the TV and started plugging away, delving into one of the strangest ways of playing video games that I’ve ever experienced.
A child of the Late Atari/Nintendo era, I’m a pretty skilled gamer, but I usually don’t think much about what I’m doing, particularly in the moment. Sometimes the grind of an easy first-person shooter requires little more than autopilot, and I can let my mind wander as I cull the enemy horde. Writing a walkthrough prevents this practice. I think about exactly what I did and how I did it, and write it down before it slips the mind. Furthermore, all those times in gaming where you magically conquer a challenge by a stroke of good fortune or some weird glitch — those won’t fly. They’re the bane of walkthrough writing, because you then have to play through the section again in order to synthesize a printable strategy.
In talking about this with curious friends, I describe walkthrough writing as simultaneously enjoyable and tedious. On one hand, I’m playing video games, and for that matter, it’s closer to literally being paid for playing video games than any other form of game writing. Even with reviews, you have to sit down and type when you’re done playing, whereas walkthrough writing occurs during the act of play. Still, the stop-start nature of penning a walkthrough inherently ruins the flow of a game, to the point that it does become a bit of a chore.
Yet, I’m still writing them. In fact, I’m on deck to start a Resident Evil 5 walkthrough this weekend.
It’s funny, because each time, when really in the grind of typing out repetitive gameplay strategies, or wishing for a game to end already (as I tend to do with most games these days), I swear these things off. But I always come back. The monetary aspect doesn’t hurt, but I do in some ways enjoy that whole process of picking up a game on launch day, sitting down with it and starting a massive gaming binge. It’s something I don’t often have time to do anymore, and I like having an excuse.
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