Video Game Manuals - Where Did They Go?

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Fetzenfisch

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well if you look at the majority of gamers today the manual would look like
1 page
saying tl;dr : just play it bro

gamers arent able to read more than 6 lines of text anymore. proof: you are on it right now.
 

Stall

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SmegInThePants said:
if we had good manuals, you would be much less likely to pony up for the strategy guide.
The only time I ever bought strategy guides was when manuals were still "good".

Your statement makes no sense...
 

TheIronRuler

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I loved the paper manuals, I especially loved those that were written properly, like the one that came with Tropico 2. That was an interesting and funny read. I'm serious, among the actual tips you had little 'did you know' segment about Pirates and plenty of jokes inside.
Now the jokes went to the radio station in Tropico 3&4. Still great, but I missed the old style.
 

StarCecil

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Stall said:
SmegInThePants said:
if we had good manuals, you would be much less likely to pony up for the strategy guide.
The only time I ever bought strategy guides was when manuals were still "good".

Your statement makes no sense...
I find the strategy guide argument to be flawed as well. Games like Dragon Age or the Elder Scrolls, the sorts of games with plenty of secrets that one would need a guide to find, have entire wikis devoted to them - fans that have every detail of the game down past what a single strategy guide could ever hope to accomplish.

Besides, as with the above, the only time I ever needed a strategy guide was back when games had great manuals.
 

HappyNoodleBot

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SmegInThePants said:
if we had good manuals, you would be much less likely to pony up for the strategy guide.
or the Collector's edition. I loved the old manuals but I never really bothered with them to learn controls. It was, as many have mentioned above, the extra content.

However either they add the cost of the manual onto all games or they charge twice the price to those that really care. I for one am happy to buy my games without the bells and whistles for half the price.
 

Xanadu84

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Practically, we have infinitely better manuals these days. It's called, "Google". Want bathroom reading? Use your smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc. Realistically, it's not a loss.
 

StarCecil

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Xanadu84 said:
Practically, we have infinitely better manuals these days. It's called, "Google". Want bathroom reading? Use your smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc. Realistically, it's not a loss.
It's not just the "bathroom" reading that counts.
 

Xanadu84

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StarCecil said:
Xanadu84 said:
Practically, we have infinitely better manuals these days. It's called, "Google". Want bathroom reading? Use your smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc. Realistically, it's not a loss.
It's not just the "bathroom" reading that counts.
I just mentioned bathroom reading because that is where the manuel would be the most handy. Everything else that counts is even easier for the internet to provide an alternative.
 

StarCecil

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Xanadu84 said:
StarCecil said:
Xanadu84 said:
Practically, we have infinitely better manuals these days. It's called, "Google". Want bathroom reading? Use your smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc. Realistically, it's not a loss.
It's not just the "bathroom" reading that counts.
I just mentioned bathroom reading because that is where the manuel would be the most handy. Everything else that counts is even easier for the internet to provide an alternative.
Not necessarily so. Part of what justified the price tag was all the extra bits that came in the manual, and sometimes the much extra bits that came with the game itself. I'd be hard pressed to use the internet to justify the full price of the game.
 

DarthSka

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They seem totally archaic, but I always can't help but feel a little disappointed when I first open up a game case and all I find is an ad for another game I don't care about and a think 2-4 page manual saying "these are the controls and here's some legal shit". Every now and then I pull out some older game cases like Twilight Princess and read through it just for the hell of it. Ah, the old days.
 

Zoomy

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I miss my old copy of Civilisation IV. The manual was as thick as a DVD case. The fact that someone sat down and wrote all that suggests a level of care. These days you get your button press quick sheet and away you go. It's like "here's your scrap, now frig off peasant. You want to read something? Try reading the Watchtower".

I also really miss my Mass Effect manual, mainly because it had the DVD key written on the back.
 

Something Amyss

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Stall said:
SmegInThePants said:
if we had good manuals, you would be much less likely to pony up for the strategy guide.
The only time I ever bought strategy guides was when manuals were still "good".

Your statement makes no sense...
It makes perfect sense, because this is part of the mentality of the people marketing the games. And while it may not have snagged you, the fact that sales of strategy guides are pretty good into the era of Youtube Walkthroughs and day one FAQs is far more telling.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
The fastest way to get me to trade in a game is to not include a manual, I mean if everything is on disk then I can just acquire the whole game later when its cheap used, if its got a nice booklet then that might be gone from older copies of the game. AND I FUCKEN LOVE A GOOD MANUAL.
 

StarCecil

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Stall said:
SmegInThePants said:
if we had good manuals, you would be much less likely to pony up for the strategy guide.
The only time I ever bought strategy guides was when manuals were still "good".

Your statement makes no sense...
It makes perfect sense, because this is part of the mentality of the people marketing the games. And while it may not have snagged you, the fact that sales of strategy guides are pretty good into the era of Youtube Walkthroughs and day one FAQs is far more telling.
That's a good point. Marketing and logic aren't hand-in-hand. However, do game manufacturers get a "cut" of strategy guide sales? It's been a while since I've ever bought one, but I thought the publisher's were independent of the developers.

And while we're talking about strategy guides, I remember myself and a friend going to pick up our copies of Dragon Age 2 and being offered by the counter girl 15% off the price of the guide if we bought it with the game. We declined and she says, "No one ever wants to buy the strategy guide..." to which my buddy says, "That's because they have the internet." We both have the Dragon Age wiki bookmarked.
 

Xanadu84

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StarCecil said:
Xanadu84 said:
StarCecil said:
Xanadu84 said:
Practically, we have infinitely better manuals these days. It's called, "Google". Want bathroom reading? Use your smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc. Realistically, it's not a loss.
It's not just the "bathroom" reading that counts.
I just mentioned bathroom reading because that is where the manuel would be the most handy. Everything else that counts is even easier for the internet to provide an alternative.
Not necessarily so. Part of what justified the price tag was all the extra bits that came in the manual, and sometimes the much extra bits that came with the game itself. I'd be hard pressed to use the internet to justify the full price of the game.
Except that including a Manuel is kind of like justifying a larger price tag on an MP3 player because it can play 8 track tapes. It has become an unnecessary feature. It would be better to put those resources towards the game itself, or the games web site. I don't feel any loss in loseing a feature that I can get a superior version of elsewhere.
 

DanielDeFig

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I loved manuals, I would sometimes read the whole manual before playing a game.

But I don't miss it. I appreciate the fact that game publishers are saving on vast amount of resources and money, by converting their manuals into digital form. Also, with a dedicated wiki for every game, I don't need a manual to look up how to fix my problems anymore.
 

Belaam

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Not only the manuals, but the giant, fold out posters of tech trees, or the map of the land printed on cloth. Good ole Star Wars: Rebellion had a giant chart with character bios of every character you could control in the game along with every ship.

I'm sure its largely a mix of better in-game guides plus tutorials built into the game, but I am definitely a fan of the old books and guides. Though I did start gaming in an era when games asked me stuff like "What is the fifth word on the 45th page of the manual" as an anti-piracy effort.
 

StarCecil

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Belaam said:
Not only the manuals, but the giant, fold out posters of tech trees, or the map of the land printed on cloth. Good ole Star Wars: Rebellion had a giant chart with character bios of every character you could control in the game along with every ship.

I'm sure its largely a mix of better in-game guides plus tutorials built into the game, but I am definitely a fan of the old books and guides. Though I did start gaming in an era when games asked me stuff like "What is the fifth word on the 45th page of the manual" as an anti-piracy effort.
See, this is what I was talking about. In my original post I meant to emphasize that a fat manual was considered the very least a company could do. Other companies just went a mile beyond by including so much extra stuff - and not the crappy collector edition shit either. This was the standard box.