R.I.P game manuals

[Farmer Reil]

Well there are basically three types of manual:

- Manuals that just tell you how to play the game in question. I.e., 'normal' manuals. These days they're mostly useless because the quality and usage of in-game tutorials have increased dramatically.

- Manuals that provide tonnes of backstory to the game and characters in addition to controls etc. That's what a website is for. Useless.

- In-depth manuals such as those for text-based management sims like Football Manager. Extremely useful, and not easy to do away with without alienating new player entirely and taking away a vital resource for veterans.

So basically this is no big deal to me. The useless manuals were useless anyway and the others won't be going anywhere. Having said that, I did like to read the backstory to RPGs and stuff on the way home from the store on the bus, but like I said... welcome to 2010. We have iPhones and all sorts of shit. We can still do that.

[K]

http://www.geekologie.com/2010/05/what_if_super_mario_bros_was_m.php

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

The day publishers stop physically printing novels I'm going to stab JK Rowling in the eye.

[SeanDMan]

- In-depth manuals such as those for text-based management sims like Football Manager. Extremely useful, and not easy to do away with without alienating new player entirely and taking away a vital resource for veterans.

Which could never be put on a website. Ever. Must be printed. Must be. Or the world ends.

[Gongsun Zan]

Meh, most games use a similar control scheme anyway. Anything that's not immediately obvious is solved by pulling up the config menu. I'm surprised nobody's gotten rid of them earlier.

[Farmer Reil]

- In-depth manuals such as those for text-based management sims like Football Manager. Extremely useful, and not easy to do away with without alienating new player entirely and taking away a vital resource for veterans.

Which could never be put on a website. Ever. Must be printed. Must be. Or the world ends.

Well if the game is running full-screen (which it usually would be), it's a tad inconvenient to have to alt-tab to a website to look up certain details you can't remember.

If you can't remember which button "walk left" or "shoot" is by now, you probably had to get your son to install the game, so just ask him.

[SeanDMan]

That was below the belt; besides, I don't have any kids (that I know of).

Also, what difference is there between a Sports Management sim running in full screen and a, say, roleplaying game running in full screen? Why is it more convenient for your sports management sim to have paper documentation?

I play EHM (the hockey version of CM) which comes with a great PDF manual. Never had any issues, so I don't know why you would. Alt-Tab. If you're not familiar with them ask your mum, I'm sure she can point them out with those nimble, skilled fingers of hers.

[DJ Ice]

Just to clarify: Sports Interactive are not a branch of Ubisoft. Because I really don't want there manuals to stop

[Docpepper]

yeah I miss the thick manuals.some games still have ok manuals. PES 2010 comes to mind it's better than the manuals of EA games.I think the main reason they are getting rid of them is as Sean mention cost cutting measures. I'm sure if they could charge extra for the manual most game companies would.

[METALMAN]

the manuals for the Civ games were like War and Peace. Only better.

[Kyle_]

I haven't actually read a game manual in years

[zero]

Ever since GameFAQs, manuals and strategy guides have been useless. Although I'm sure gamers, with their famous sense of entitlement, will demand a 70% price reduction because of this, even though the majority of them haven't flipped through a game manual since Bush's first term.

[TKz]

I always liked them when I was younger because it was something to look at on the car ride home or whilst my parents were still looking around town. Good times.

[Skummy]

Oh shit, I used to have this collection of ten old RPGs, and the manual for one of them was bigger than most novels. All the dialogue and what-have-you was in the manual, so rather than coming up on screen it just told you to read from a specific page in the manual, but so you didn't just cheat and read the whole thing, there were loads of fake-out bits that never actually occurred in the game. Bloody mental.

[Farmer Reil]

That sounds like the best game manual ever. Any chance you can remember what the game was called?

Oh, and SDM... yeah... fair point. ¬_¬ I was just basing my arguement on the fact that in most RPGs these days everything is explained in tooltips anyway, so you rarely need to look at the manual. Just hover over the stat/item and it'll tell you everything you need to know and lots of stuff you don't, too. But I can see your point.

I completely forgot about Real Time Strategy games too. They need a manual.

[Herr Matzat]

I miss the boxes that PC Games came in, too.

Seconded.

Thirded. I still think I have my Icewind Dale box laying around somewhere.

If all the games i own had these boxes my room would be full. I prittymuch threw all of em away once... it´s such a wast. I like the smaler boxes a lot better. Sames goes for VHS vs DVD... one season of x-files on VHS takes up as much space as 5 Seasons of 24... it´s much better these days!

I love manuals though, it´s just nice to have something to go through wen you are not yet able to play for some reason, i don´t need hugh books, i don´t even need game controls... just give me a short story and a few pages of artwork. These companies can complain as much as they want about piracy, if they devalue the physical product it´s just another reason not to buy the physical product.

[SeanDMan]

These companies can complain as much as they want about piracy, if they devalue the physical product it´s just another reason not to buy the physical product.

A thousand times this.