Game manuals - Paper or plastic?
Feature
Have you purchased a game, started playing, and then had trouble with a section of the game only to find that there is no paper manual in the box?
Let's go back a few years, to the golden age of computer games (OK, we're talking about the mid-to-late 80's here folks, not the golden age after the release of Halo 2 on Xbox). Most games came out with a delightfully coloured box with a description of what the game was about and some nice screenshots to lure you in. Once you decided to fork out your hard-earned cash and take it home, you were welcomed with a number of items. Floppy-disks (these are the small square things that your games used to come on in the old-days), maybe some advertising material, possibly a quick start-up guide, on certain occasions a map or a code-wheel, and of course the 100 page manual.
Some of the games required that you read certain parts of the manual as a copy-protection device, while others had other bits of interesting information on the subject matter of the game. Most just had details on how to play the game, keys to press, what the joystick or mouse did, and this was what I guess most people used the manuals for. Of course, you could just play the game and work out the controls as you went, but reading the manual before you played gave you the edge, especially since you could read the important parts of the manual on the way home from the shops. Ahhhh... the memories.
The gaming industry has undergone plenty of changes since then. Games now take months, if not years, to develop. They require many more people working on the games than they used to, each person with a specific skill... artist, music director, game designer. The games industry is becoming more and more like the movie industry as we speak. They even have game trailers/teasers just like the movies.
The games themselves come out in a smaller package (many just in a DVD case) and have little information on how to play the game without having to open the on-CD manual. Only games with complex menus have in-box paper manuals. Many, if not all games released these days have some sort of manual attached to the installation CD or an in-game manual which can be accessed during play (even for some games that have a paper manual such as CivIII or Sid Meier's Pirates!). Is this just a cost-cutting exercise, or is there some merit to it?
OK, let's be honest, how many of the current games actually need manuals anyway? In the aforementioned 'golden age' home computers were in their infancy and most gamers were just getting started and probably needed a manual just to work out which way the disk went into the disk-drive. Many of today's games only require you to point and click with the mouse or use keyboard arrows to guide your character/vehicle around the game. Do we really need a manual for that? I think not, and this is surely one of the reasons behind the disappearance of the paper manual. Sure, there are also more complex games that do require a manual. But why do they need a paper manual when there is an in-game manual as well as an in-game tutorial and a digital version of the manual on the installation CD?
The answer is simple. Some people want to be able to flick through the manual and find important sections that will come in handy when playing. Important stuff like 'Battleships can bombard from three squares away' and 'you need iron to build a swordsman'. Some games have so much detail that it is impossible to remember everything. That's when the manual becomes important. And who wants to interrupt the game by needing to view the help file, when, if they had a manual in front of them, they could just continue playing while reading what needs to be done.
Do we want to be able to have the manual open in front of us, instead of having to access the digital manual on the CD or the in-game manual? I, for one, do. Don't let the designers stop making the in-game or on-CD manual though, as many people would still use these. But if we're paying ever-increasing amounts for games, then why shouldn't the publishers at least provide us with some sort of a paper manual, even just for the kids to read on their way home from the shop after purchasing their new favourite game. Is it too much to ask for, or am I just being nostalgic?