The Single Gourmand
March 15, 2016
Orchex
November 6, 2017Prima Games was the largest publishing company of video game strategy guides in the United States.
Before Prima shuttered their doors, they were building digital strategy guides to appeal to the younger market. Those are webpage versions of the physical guide. When you purchased a guide from a store like Amazon, Gamestop, or Walmart, you would also get a code that let you unlock the digital version on Prima's website. The digital version had the same content as the book but also had interactive elements like images you can enlarge and searchable maps. We designed and built quite a few of these online strategy guides for Prima and they are still being used to this day! Prima's parent company Penguin Random House has kept the website up for those who still like playing the older video games and need a little guidance.
Main page of Doom digital guide showing the table of contents
Fallout 4 interactive map
„The digital guides are ADA compliant”
The digital guides all work the same way. When you load the page there is a popup menu that is the entire table of contents for the entire book. You can click on any of the menu items and it then loads that section. Want to see the bestiary? Click that menu item and your there.
The physical copies of many of the Prima guides can have fairly small images and small text, especially when it comes to image captions. Secondly, becasse of the younger customer base for the books, the copy can be hard to read because of background patterns and textures. The digital guides are ADA compliant, white background with black text. You also can enlarge the copy if you need to. All the images can be enlarged as well.
One of the coolest parts of these digital guides were definitely the interactive maps. All the different icons are grouped into categories and can be turned off and on to better find what you are looking for. Couple that with being able to zoom in on the map it made getting around in your game a lot easier. It makes a big difference when you compare the printed map with the digital one especially for games that are packed with so many things to do like the Witcher 3.
There was a lot of attention on making these guides mobile friendly.
Of course, there was a lot of attention on making these guides mobile friendly. In today's world people are using their mobile devices more than computers and when it comes to younger people that tend to play video games it is even more so. Being gamers ourselves we know how nice it is to pop up your phone real quick if you get stuck in a game and get right back to it.
Designed to look good on mobile devices
The eguides even look good on the much overlooked tablets
List of Eguides we worked on.
Digital Strategy Guides
| Cover Art | Title | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
 | Batman: Arkham Knight eGuide | Digital Design, Layout and Interactive Map |
 | BioShock: The Collection eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Signature Series Strategy Guide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Call of Duty: Black Ops III eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Civilization V: Brave New World | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Dark Souls III eGuide | Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Deus Ex: Mankind Divided eGuide | Digital Design, Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Doom eGuide | Digital Design, Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Dragon Quest Builders eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition eGuide | Digital Design, Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Fallout 4 eGuide | Digital Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Far Cry Primal eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Final Fantasy X-X2 HD Remaster eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Gears of War 3 eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Gears of War 4 eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Gears of War eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Hyrule Warriors Legends eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Just Cause 3 eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | LEGO Marvel's Avengers eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Madden NFL 16 eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Madden NFL 17 Defensive Playbook | Digital Design, Layout and Video Editing |
 | Madden NFL 17 Offensive Playbook | Digital Design, Layout and Video Editing |
 | Madden NFL 17 eGuide | Digital Design, Layout and Video Editing |
| Nintendo Playing with Power eGuide | Layout |
 | Quantum Break eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Rise of the Tomb Raider eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Splatoon eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Street Fighter V eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition Collector's eGuide | Digital Layout and Interactive Map |
 | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt eGuide | Digital Layout and Interactive Map |
 | Titanfall 2 eGuide | Digital Design and Layout |
 | Watch Dogs 2 eGuide | Digital Layout and Interactive Map |
Creating hype commercials.
We created a few videos to help Prima's sales and marketing department. Sometimes you have to "wow" your audience to be noticed over your competition. We created a video to sell Toys R Us on pushing Prima Guides. For many years in a row we took existing game commercials and trailers and edited then together to make hype videos. The marketing team would use those at E3 and other gaming conferences to help showcase the guides that were in the pipeline for the coming year.
