Bryan Dawson explains what it takes to write a strategy guide

Want a strategy guide with that? In this installation of the OptX series "What it Takes" we sit down with our own Bryan "DrDogg" Dawson and ask him what it takes to write a strategy guide. He just completed the "Smash Brother's: Brawl - Official Game Guide" and if you have spent any time playing this game, you know this was no easy task.


Kat Hunter: DrDogg... you are certainly no stranger in the DoA community or CGS in general, but for everyone who may be new to our site, can you tell me a little bit about how long you have been playing fighting games in general?
Bryan Dawson: I've been playing fighting games since the first version of Street Fighter II hit arcades, but I didn't start playing competitively until Tekken Tag Tournament hit arcades in the mid-90s.

Kat Hunter: You were pretty successful in the Tekken scene, yes?
Bryan Dawson: When I was first introduced to competitive gaming I wasn't really that good (although I thought I was). But once I started to learn about tournament level competition I was able to get myself up to a high level of play in Tekken, placing high in several national and international tournaments.

Kat Hunter: Your experience in fighting games certainly does not stop at competition. You are actually the guy who "wrote the book" on Dead or Alive 4.
Bryan Dawson: I write strategy guides for Prima Games (Random House) and DOA4 was one of my first guides for them. I've also worked on Mortal Kombat Deception and Armageddon, Naruto: Rise of a Ninja and Super Smash Bros. Brawl in addition to non-fighting game guides. DOA5 should actually be coming up here within the next few months,

Kat Hunter: Is there a release date for DOA5 yet?
Bryan Dawson: There's no official release date yet, but Itagaki has stated multiple times that it will be the next game he works on after Ninja Gaiden II releases in June. I would expect it around March of 2009, but that's just an estimate at this point

Kat Hunter: In this series, we dive into people in the gaming industry to find out how you do what you do... and for everyone who has read these guides, the amount of work that goes into it seems more than daunting. Let's take a look at Smash Brother's Brawl which was the last guide you wrote. When Prima came to you, the game obviously had not been released... how do you get your hands on a copy of the game?
Bryan Dawson: It depends on the publisher. With Nintendo, they're extremely protective over their products so I had to wait until they were ready for me to fly to their North American HQ in Redmond, WA. I was on hold waiting on the word from roughly October through January when I finally got on a plane. I almost missed the CGS World Final because I thought I was going to be in Redmond. With other publishers they send a build out to me and I work on it from home. This is the case with Microsoft who is now publishing Team Ninja titles.

Kat Hunter: OK, so we are in the super-secret Smash Brothers room at Nintendo headquarters. Obviously you start by playing through the game... but where do you start with a guide? Is there a basic outline you follow etc?
Bryan Dawson: I start an outline of the game before I head out to the publisher if I'm familiar with the product like I was with Smash. I then make adjustments to the outline as I progress through the game. With Smash it was difficult because there were a lot of unknown factors such as the number of characters and stages. The size of the Adventure Mode was also a surprise, but that's the easy part. Often times when I'm working on a guide I'm using a beta build. When the beta crashes, I generally lose my save data
This happened about halfway through my work on Smash. If you've played the game you know there are a large number of unlockables in the game, so this did not go over well. Luckily Nintendo worked with me and got a fully unlocked build a few days later. And speaking of being super secretive, Nintendo had Wii I was working on locked to the desk

Kat Hunter: I mentioned to my friend from Ziff Davis that you were working on the guide, and he wanted me to send you his best wishes. That he would not wish this game on anyone trying to find and explain all the unlockables.
Bryan Dawson: That's the hard part of working on guides. A lot of my friends were envious of me when they found out I was working on Smash. The same thing happened with DOA4. However, I don't get to simply play through the game and have fun with it. I have to chronicle everything I do in the game using detailed notes, formatted into a special Prima coding language. So when I was working on Smash I had to stop playing every 5 minutes or so and then type up notes for 10 minutes.
A lot of my friends ask me to get them a job and I have to remind them over and over that this is not all fun and games. I've hardly played Smash since it released due to the fact that it's just not the same as it is when you're only playing for fun. It really kills your appeal toward gaming

Kat Hunter: how many hours did you spend on Brawl?
Bryan Dawson: I worked on Brawl in Redmond 7 days a week, for 10-15 hours a day, then I came home and worked on what was left for another week for about 10 hours a day. After I get all of the text done, I still have to make hundreds of screen caps, go over corrections with a non-gaming copyeditor and then deal with corrections from Nintendo, Sega, Konami and the Pokemon people.

Kat Hunter: How do you make screen shots on a Wii?
Bryan Dawson: Prima has a special Shuttle PC that's been configured to work as an HD video capture unit. So I basically take hours and hours of video while I'm playing, then go back through and turn it into hundreds of screens. I had roughly 700 GB of video by the time I was done.

Kat Hunter: What was the most frustrating part of this particular guide, outside of the save issues you had... any specific character or level that was an issue?
Bryan Dawson: The most frustrating part of any guide, for me at least, is the fact that I'm running on a limited time schedule. Since I'm coming from a competitive fighting game background, I always want every character strategy section to be the best it can be.
However, when you only have 3 weeks to cover 35 characters, 41 stages, 51 items, 700 stickers, and everything else in Brawl, you can't focus your time solely on coming up with the best possible character strats. I learned early on in my Prima career that I don't go for the detailed strats I want in the guide, I set my time limits and do the best I can under those constraints.

Kat Hunter: Realistically, how many of these a year do you need to do to drive that fancy car?
Bryan Dawson: lol. I need to write roughly 6-7 per year to live comfortably ^^

Kat Hunter: Let's say you were evil, and decided to share with me all the DoA5 details before the game released, what would happen? I am sure they threaten you pretty soundly.
Bryan Dawson: I would basically lose my job. A lot of people wanted to know who the extra characters were in Smash or details about DOA4, and I can't say anything to anyone. I wrote an article for AOL before I left for Redmond and Nintendo questioned that even though it was written before I had access to the game. I'm under a strict embargo with any guide I work on. If worse comes to worse I can even get sued.

Kat Hunter: Lastly.. if someone wanted to order one of your famous guides, where would they go, besides their local GameStop?
Bryan Dawson: Prima is a Random House company so you can find my guides almost anywhere; Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Amazon.com, pretty much anywhere books are sold.

Kat Hunter: Any last thoughts on this years DoA4 divisions before we leave?
Bryan Dawson: San Francisco will dominate. No one else has a better DOA dual. You have the number one female and a male player that can and likely will finish first or second in the league. Honestly, you're the only GM that seems to have grasped where the points will be earned this season. Although I think Chicago will be right there with San Francisco with a solid DOA team and a good Forza squad.

Kat Hunter: Thanks Bryan.

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Related Links:

- Other Books by Bryan Dawson
- Dead or Alive 4 Official Game Guide at amazon.com
- Super Smash Brothers: Brawl Official Game Guide at amazon.com
- Interview with Bryan Dawson on Prima Games Site recounting his experience with Brawl.