I often like to replay plenty of JRPGs and survival horror games. Over the last year I’ve run through various Resident Evil and Final Fantasy games in anticipation for upcoming new releases in both series. When replaying these games, I like to open some sites on my phone to keep track of when to find certain items, look up information about a character, or check tables for various obscure mechanics. Simple stuff I’ve usually never completed before or I can’t quite remember. While replaying Final Fantasy VI, I looked up some info on the Veldt. I absentmindedly pressed on a link and, next thing I know, my phone is so hot I could fry an egg on it. That’s because I had opened a Fandom wikis link.
Back in the day, when the Fandom wiki division was known as Wikia, I used it a lot more. Most of the time for the same reasons I just described, but sometimes I just wanted to look up details about my favorite games, refresh my memory, or maybe help a friend playing a game for the first time. Nowadays, I avoid using Fandom wikis as much as possible. Or rather, I can’t use them at all.
First, there’s the aforementioned issue of the website making my phone and laptop overheating or slowing down drastically. Probably a byproduct of the aggressive ads that simultaneously pop up while you’re trying to navigate any page of a wiki. And that alone is already enough to make me not want to be on a Fandom website. But sometimes I forget how bad it is or I click without looking, and then my laptop needs to have a virtual coughing fit for a few seconds until I can click off the site.
Then there’s the layout and design of Fandom pages, things like the infamous sidebar, the unrelated wiki pages being promoted, the useless AI answers giving incorrect information, and the right side of the screen being completely taken over by some random puzzle or link. It’s shocking how little the Fandom wikis want you to use them. They’re like those colorful frogs that signal to other animals that they are poisonous. However, sometimes I just want to access the information of a Fandom wiki and simply drink the poison voluntarily—if and when the website works.
In the years since Fandom became so hostile to use, a lot of popular wikis have migrated to alternative, self-hosted platforms. Some of the most well-known cases being the Terraria and Hollow Knight wikis. But not all alternative sites are as fleshed out as these or what already exist in Fandom. Sometimes, the focus of those alternative sites is very different, and don’t really work as a substitute for a wiki. And even when these non-Fandom alternatives exist and are great, Fandom’s aggressive SEO push renders them difficult to access with a Google search. Of course, it doesn’t help that Google is also becoming more unreliable every day.
In the grand scheme of things, Fandom wikis being what they are is a relatively small problem. But it’s still a real shame that it’s become difficult to find alternative wikis for games and other media. Recently, I have turned to using GameFAQs guides instead, which helps a lot, but it’s not the same. Sometimes, what I want to find is not something that’s easily available on a guide, such as a specific illustration, sprite, or artwork. I know it’s not practical for every Fandom community to migrate their content, but I’ll welcome it every time it happens.