Ubisoft Says No More Game Manuals 400
Posted
by
timothy
from the that-would-bug-me dept.
from the that-would-bug-me dept.
thsoundman writes with this excerpt from The Gamers Blog: "No more manuals? Ubisoft announced last week that they will be ditching the trend of printing instruction manuals for new games under the 'green' initiative. While no other publishers have jumped on that 'green' train just yet, it is likely that others will follow suit. Printed manuals have been part of gaming since you bought PC games in plastic bags. There have been many standout eras for manuals, such as the NES-era booklets to the manuals that accompanied Electronic Arts vinyl-sized game sleeves. Some may argue that the advancement in on-screen contextual commands and first-level tutorials have made the manual pointless, but is this really the case?"
Well at least they dropped (Score:5, Interesting)
the brown paper written in black with anti-piracy codes (remember Sim City?!)
Re:Well at least they dropped (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about brown, but a number of games back in the 80's came with black-on-purple code sheets which (it was said) would confuse photocopiers. Personal scanners didn't really exist at the time, these were 8-bit games distributed on tape.
'Green'? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Has anybody read a modern game manual? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny, modern instruction manuals are....worthless. There's about 10 pages of front matter, including boilerplate information from the console manufacturer (controller configuration, seizure warnings, etc), ToC, etc. Then there's about 5-10 pages on the actual game. Then once you start the game you go through 30minutes to an hour of non-skippable tutorial. It's obnoxious. How many different ways can you explain to someone to hit the button to jump and the other one to shoot?
I remember, back when games were much simpler, even stupidly simple games would have much larger instruction books. Dare I say they were even fun to read? They were full of story, jokes, cool art, etc. To this day, I have all the instruction books for my old NES and SNES games. I wouldn't buy a game without them. Now I couldn't care less about them. Which is sad to say because I write technical manuals for a living. I'd be lying if I said that videogame instruction books weren't influential in me going down this career path.
Re:Has anybody read a modern game manual? (Score:3, Interesting)
Side note, and more than slightly off topic, but I would so very much like to see the original 2 X-COM games recreated to run on modern systems. No changes to some real-time-turn-based hybrid bullshit, just pure I take my turn then the computer (or online opponent) takes it's turn with destructible environment features. This would even be a good fit as a console game at this point in tech. With everything else getting remade or rereleased for the sake of nostalgia, why not X-COM?
Re:So games will be cheaper then? (Score:1, Interesting)
I care. Here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, logging is a major industry. So now, not only is Ubisoft screwing me out of the ability to play the game that I bought, they are trying to take away my livelihood, too?
Evil Bastards.
Re:Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
I've spent many loading times in Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, reading manuals. Guess its just me.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why bother with manuals? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes but you'll rarely see a 20 hour singleplayer mode outside of RPGs these days.
Re:Has anybody read a modern game manual? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oblivion (Score:1, Interesting)
I needed to read the manual for Oblivion, I must have missed something during the tutorial (that your 'tab' menu is a doubly nested notebook control and that your lifebar, weapon equipped, spell equipped and compass were the outermost tabs).
Made the game unplayable not knowing how to change spells/equipment.