No one reads manuals because no one makes manuals worth reading anymore. Back in the day though, I'd flip through manuals all of the time. With the number of times I read through the manual to FFVI cover to cover when I was younger, you'd swear it was the greatest book ever written.Darth_MAM said:
What happened to game manuals!?
- Thread starter Ninonybox_v1legacy
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Ultima VI: The False Prophet - came with a cloth 2-sided color map. Cloth! So you could roll it up and store it and not worry about tears, etc. like a paper map. The world was so huge that you needed a map. Nobody seems to care that much anymore. "Look it up online", and makes the player-community do all the work.
Interesting thing about Battlefield 3, is that the manual is actually on the disc. I really like the Red Alert 2 manual, which had literally ALL of the units, buildings, and characters described in detail. Also, the Halo manuals are always nice, because it looks like they make an effort.
i noticed that aswell, one of my mates got and took out the manual, we thought they messed up and left out a few pages but it was just smallkman123 said:
the first and second had back story, message from the devs, and info on the weapons, the third was just bleh
sometimes if a game is really good i go buy the stragety guide or something to make up for the manuals even if i dont need any help
The manual just doesn't fit the current business model. It's cheaper and easier for devs to let the internet handle it, especially when you factor in digital distribution. That, and the fact that if Witcher 2 taught us anything, it's that gamers will whine endlessly before they would even consider RTFM or turning down the difficulty.
it also shows gamers are utter morons, in the prolougue it actually showed the controls and how to do everything, i am honestly confused about how people got confused by the "complexity" of Witcher 2 (btw witcher 2 is my favourite game) but i guess its more complecated than run down a linear corridor and shoot peopleKahunaburger said:
In case you forget.666Satsuki said:
Case in point, I went through almost my entire first run of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories not knowing how to access enemy cards. Now, I was a dumb kid that didn't read manuals, so I didn't have it anymore. But damn, it would have been nice, because enemy cards made the game a lot easier.
Really useful when you take a break on a game for seventeen forevers, only to have forgotten everything you once knew and don't feel like going through the tutorial all over again.
(Yeah, some games provide tutorials from the pause or option menus, but there are still quite a few that keep them locked to the beginning of the game.)
I've been enlightened now as to what game manuals did 
So, my revised opinion is this.
I don't think we should print more manuals. Obviously, it's a bit wasteful - I do, however, understand how much more they could add to the gaming experience. Perhaps a compromise, then, would be a sort of online manual?
So, my revised opinion is this.
I don't think we should print more manuals. Obviously, it's a bit wasteful - I do, however, understand how much more they could add to the gaming experience. Perhaps a compromise, then, would be a sort of online manual?
environment? Money saving?
I dunno, I do miss a good manual. I still treasure the WoW manual, it's like a bloody novel.
I dunno, I do miss a good manual. I still treasure the WoW manual, it's like a bloody novel.
I'm probably like most, in that I never read game manuals. If a game is well designed I shouldn't need one. I might grab the manual to look up the controls, but typically I can look those up in game. So it's unnecessary.
Because of all this, the game companies probably stopped caring, just like the rest of us, and I don't blame them.
I'm actually glad, because some games I've played, the manual has given some minor spoilers in the character descriptions. I know a character is going to be introduced, before they are introduced.
Because of all this, the game companies probably stopped caring, just like the rest of us, and I don't blame them.
I'm actually glad, because some games I've played, the manual has given some minor spoilers in the character descriptions. I know a character is going to be introduced, before they are introduced.
I agree. The last decent sized manual I seen was for Civ IV, it was huge and included a flow chart of the tech tree. Civ V did a pdf manual which is not really the same but at least they put the effort into it, unlike most manuals now. If your not going make the effort for the manual just write the controls on a post it note and stick it in the box, because nothing disapoints me more than a manual thats three pages long.
Tutorials got better, and that paper is an easy cost to cut that can save a business hundreds if not thousands.
The need for game manuals as tutorials for how to play a game have indeed become rather redundant, simply because it's much more effective and enjoyable for the tutorial to be implemented as a part of the game.
As repositories for a game's background, story, and lore? Still valid in my opinion, some of the best game manuals (not that many bother to read them at all) are richly detailed and provide some interesting context and/or information about the game's setting. For an easy comparison, compare the game manuals from ME1 & ME2; the former is significantly larger and in colour, the latter is much smaller and in black & white.
All those advertisements? Always been there, always been an annoyance. They do seem to stand out more with the smaller game manuals in general these days.
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Anyways, the main reason for game manuals being so much less substantial these days?
Cutting costs
When you really get down to it, this is real reason; the rest is just fluff. Saving the trees? A beneficial byproduct by doubling as a good excuse. The give-away for this is the fact the majority game manuals, even on big-name titles, are in black & white rather than in colour; the correlation between shother manuals being in grayscale and the longer ones in colour is actually quite significant. At the moment, it's mostly first-party developpers who still use longer and a full colour pallette for their game manuals; a few notable third-party developpers may be exceptions, but they are not indicative of the whole. The main aim is clearly to optimize profits, and on a large scale a few cents off the unit cost can have a significant impact; it's also not uncommon for PC games to have their instruction manual either included on the game disc as a file or for it to be downloadable, making that a more effective cost-cutting measure (though these can be more substantial than the minimalist game manuals, potentially on par or even better than the good ones while still being cheaper to produce).
By extension, one could also argue this is the real primary motive behind the move towards digital distribution; quite a few of the other benefits and other arguments are just being used as justifications for said move. Even if making the game discs is relatively cheap, the scale at which they are produced can add up; throw in the costs of packaging, game manuals, and shipping, it really adds up. Profits is revenue less costs; and reducing costs by removing all the hassle involved in releasing a physical product can have a surprisingly dramatic effect.
Everyone gets the benefits, but it's probably not good for the PR to say how much the publisher is benefitting from these decisions. It's not hard to figure out, but they've wisely not drawn attention to it.
As repositories for a game's background, story, and lore? Still valid in my opinion, some of the best game manuals (not that many bother to read them at all) are richly detailed and provide some interesting context and/or information about the game's setting. For an easy comparison, compare the game manuals from ME1 & ME2; the former is significantly larger and in colour, the latter is much smaller and in black & white.
All those advertisements? Always been there, always been an annoyance. They do seem to stand out more with the smaller game manuals in general these days.
---
Anyways, the main reason for game manuals being so much less substantial these days?
Cutting costs
When you really get down to it, this is real reason; the rest is just fluff. Saving the trees? A beneficial byproduct by doubling as a good excuse. The give-away for this is the fact the majority game manuals, even on big-name titles, are in black & white rather than in colour; the correlation between shother manuals being in grayscale and the longer ones in colour is actually quite significant. At the moment, it's mostly first-party developpers who still use longer and a full colour pallette for their game manuals; a few notable third-party developpers may be exceptions, but they are not indicative of the whole. The main aim is clearly to optimize profits, and on a large scale a few cents off the unit cost can have a significant impact; it's also not uncommon for PC games to have their instruction manual either included on the game disc as a file or for it to be downloadable, making that a more effective cost-cutting measure (though these can be more substantial than the minimalist game manuals, potentially on par or even better than the good ones while still being cheaper to produce).
By extension, one could also argue this is the real primary motive behind the move towards digital distribution; quite a few of the other benefits and other arguments are just being used as justifications for said move. Even if making the game discs is relatively cheap, the scale at which they are produced can add up; throw in the costs of packaging, game manuals, and shipping, it really adds up. Profits is revenue less costs; and reducing costs by removing all the hassle involved in releasing a physical product can have a surprisingly dramatic effect.
Everyone gets the benefits, but it's probably not good for the PR to say how much the publisher is benefitting from these decisions. It's not hard to figure out, but they've wisely not drawn attention to it.