Perturabo -> RE: User Manuals, Boxes and things like that... (7/9/2008 12:38:32 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Greybriar I miss the good old times, too, Perturabo. Remember the large printed game manuals included with the MicroProse games, for example? I started playing on PC too late to have contact with them. All games that I have from MicroProse are re-editions. I have one MicroProse instruction - from Mechawarrior 3 - it's not large, but looks good and is in-character. I especially like SU-27 Flanker manual - it's a 200 page book and has plenty of info. IIRC SU-27 Flanker 2 had much thinner manual. Another manual that I like is for Baldur's Gate - 80 pages - it felt almost as a manual for a PnP RPG. The only problem was that half of things described in game world section weren't in game, which made it pretty disappointing. On the other hand BG2 manual was not only much smaller and less interesting, but also included spoilers XD . Arcanum manual was great - it has one of the best of world descriptions in gaming history and is written in good style. Damn, I'm only 24, but looking on present games market makes me feel old XD ... quote:
ORIGINAL: Greybriar The word I got was that store retailers didn't want PC games to take up as much shelf space so they pushed for and got the smaller retail boxes. From what I heard it's Walmart's fault and fault of PC gaming going down the drain with demise of small, dedicated independent computer game stores. Basically, PC games moved to big hyperstores like Walmart and they didn't really tolerate something taking so much space only because it's expensive and looks good. quote:
ORIGINAL: Greybriar I can understand their point of view--have you ever seen the retail box of the Seven Cities of Gold Commemorative Edition? That thing is huge and all it contains is one 3.5" floppy and a small manual. So it looks to me like some of the PC game publishers were responsible to a certain degree. That's weird XD . It reminded me that some game publishers in Poland tried to save money on manuals. For example Polish CD-Project cut Fallout manual from 120 pages to 40. quote:
ORIGINAL: Gary Childress I think part of the reason that games don't come in big boxes anymore is that it just takes up more volume in landfills and is a waste of resources. Landfills? That's a heresy[:'(]. I still have my Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter and Discworld II boxes[:D]. Also, cardboard boxes are made of cardboard. In opposition to big plastic cases, they are easily recyclable. Also, they have enough space to hold a decent 200-300page manual a map, a reference card and some extras. Yeah, and they look like something that costs over 40$, not like those old re-editions for 10$. quote:
ORIGINAL: sterckxe In addition : what's stopping those who want a printout of a pdf to make one ? It's what I do and thanks to some nifty printer driver software I can make booklets, print 2 or 4 pages on 1 sheet, only print what I need to have on paper as a reference etc. Having to buy a printer and inks and paper to have something that should be provided inside the price of a game? Also, what's the point of selling games on CDs through internet, when there is no printed manual? Actually, what's the point of selling games on CDs only without a manual (I'm talking about certain wargame publisher, which takes 50-60$ for a game and 16$ for postal to Europe and leaves player with a 375 page .pdf to read on screen/print... - at least Matrix Games offers cheaper digital version and my CCMT box actually had a manual inside.). quote:
ORIGINAL: sterckxe Don't get me wrong, I like printed manuals for the initial read-through of the rules, but afterwards I prefer the pdf file because it allows me to quickly scan/search for a certain word/expresssion and find all the references. Yeah, that's why both should be provided[;)].
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