Video game walkthrough

A video game walkthrough is a guide aimed towards improving a player's skill within a particular video game and often designed to assist players in completing either an entire video game or specific elements. Walkthroughs may alternatively be set up as a playthrough, where players record themselves playing through a game and upload or live-stream it to the internet. Walkthroughs may be considered guides on helping to enhance the experience of players, to assist towards unlocking game achievements or simply as a means to socialise with like-minded individuals as a distraction from everyday life.

Walkthroughs originated as text-based descriptive instructions in magazines for playing through a video game. With the growth in popularity of computers and the internet, video game walkthroughs expanded to digital and video formats, with the typical average age of watchers being 23 years old and predominantly male, according to a study undertaken in Finland during 2015. Some individuals and companies have been known to earn lucrative income through the process of recording and offering guides publicly.

Video game walkthroughs were originally included in video game magazines or on text-bulletin boards. In the late 1980s through to the mid 2000s, video game walkthroughs were also available through telephone 'hot-lines' in the United States. Despite the rise in popularity of internet based guides, text-based walkthroughs are still present today in both print and digital formats. Examples of print publications include strategy guides published by Prima Games, whereas text-based digital guides are hosted on gaming websites such as IGN,GamesRadar, and GameFAQs, often in the form of . Until its closure by parent company Future plc, Computer and Video Games (CVG) also created and hosted digital guides on their (now defunct) website, computerandvideogames.com.

Player created digital walkthroughs are typically designed to assist other players in accomplishing certain feats within video games and are similar to text-based or telephony-based walkthroughs, except they can also be solely for entertainment purposes. These digital walkthroughs are typically uploaded to video sharing websites such as YouTube or live-streamed playthroughs to media streaming sites such as Twitch.tv. Let's Play videos are a special type of walkthrough generally more focused on entertaining rather than informing the viewer through humorous commentary given by the video's host as they complete the game.

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