ABSTRACT
Within the gamer and development communities, ‘walkthroughs’ are among the most contentious of all gaming texts. This might seem peculiar as there is nothing in these innocuous looking books or the myriad text files distributed online to match the deliberate transgression or overtly political motivations of Yaoi or slash art and fiction, for instance (see Burn 2006b). Similarly, walkthroughs do not encourage or inform gamers how to perpetrate illegal acts of copyright infringement or Intellectual Property theft. In fact, for Mia Consalvo (2003a), walkthroughs may be thought of as ‘virtual tour guides’ that help gamers towards success. Although they are actually a good deal more complex and varied in their aspirations and intentions, at the simplest possible level, walkthroughs may be understood as texts that offer advice and guidance on completing specific videogames. They provide accounts of the journeys through videogames, detailing their spaces, explaining the solutions to their puzzles and laying bare their intricacies. As I have noted elsewhere, walkthroughs offer narrativised, egocentric accounts of the ways of tackling the game. They present a relational space similar to a pirate’s treasure map (take ten paces forward, you will come to a rock, take three paces left . . . ) that indicate the ways in which, for example, secret areas may be uncovered (Newman 2005: 57).
