Kuokkanen -> RE: Game manuals should be in-game (12/15/2008 9:54:13 PM)
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quote:
I would pay extra for a printed manual for a game that I really wanted but I guarantee that the same people that cry now about not having printed manuals included would scream at the higher cost if printed manuals were included. I guess there is no win-win scenario for this. Yes there is: make available two versions of the game, one with manual, the other without. There are even games that have received additional (paper) documentation that can be bought separately. quote:
Personally I prefer a printed paper manual. I do understand, however, that it not only increases the cost of the game but that it oftentimes becomes out of date when the game is patched. Most likely only some parts of the manual is going to be outdated. Everything else can be described with patch documentations. That's what's done with other (analog) games: errors slip into rulebook, when those are found, corrections are made available in Internet... IF they are made at all: someone forgot to type rules into Total Warfare about physical damage against conventional infantry, and it still isn't in errata files yet! quote:
Analog wargam manuals are expensive mainly because you are paying for games themselves. As for the printing costs - they usually include a hard cover, and over 2 hundred pages of high quality paper with high quality colour illustration. That applies for books that are at 40 € or higher. Cheaper books are often black & white with maybe few color pages between (like BattleTech Field Manuals)... Mercenary's Handbook (BattleTech book from 1987) is exception, but paper is poorer quality and page count isn't high. By the way, new BattleTech rulebooks (starting from Total Warfare) have page counts over 300, pages are top-notch, and there are colours everywhere! quote:
Also, prices of PDF versions don't have to have anything to printing costs. A perceived and practical value of digital version of a book is much lower than perceived and practical value of printed version, so a distributor needs to severely decrease price to attract customers. Now we need someone to tell THAT to game publishers. I think Matrix knows this already...
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