User Manuals are disappearing!

[FakeSympathy]

I recently picked up Witcher 3 for Xbox One (Hey, I am out of options right now. Don't judge) and as I opened the disc case, something caught my eyes. An ACTUAL user manual. I have played so many games but did not realized until now how user manuals are disappearing.

I owned multiple games in the past, and no matter how crap the game was, there always was a instruction manual. These were fun to look at. They gave q quick lore to the game I was gonna play, hints (although vague) to help me when I was stuck, and of course, the beautiful artworks inside the manuals. I mean, I still own physical copy of Wind Waker for gamecube, and I am still amazed at the artwork inside each page of the user manual.

These days, I rarely see them. Even when I do see them, It's usually 3-4 page of basic control explanation. No lore, no hints, and no artwork. Hell, as much as I enjoyed Witcher 3 Manual, it was black-and-white print with no color to bring out the pages. I guess with the rise of digital gaming These manuals are becoming forgotten, but damn, I would miss them if they disappeared forever.

 

[RaikuFA]

I would too. The Senran Kagura game for PS4 came with a manual. Was shocked.

 

[BrawlMan]

This is nothing new. Publishers have been phasing user manuals out since the 2010/2011. I do appreciate games that have them. I got several last gen and some current gen games that have colorful menus.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Sign of the times, my friend. Hell, I remember that same feeling of disillusionment when Sega Genesis games stop coming in hearty plastic cases in lieu of thin, easily crushable cardboard boxes and when their manuals stopped coming in color in favor of black and white!

But I think the biggest reason game booklets are going away is because they?re simply redundant. Why invest in artwork for an instruction booklet most gamers most likely won?t even bother opening when your game already provides all the visuals you?ll ever need? Why print detailed instructions when most gamers are seasoned enough to intuit control schemes from genre to genre, e.g.: right trigger is the gas and left the brake in 99.99999% of driving games, left trigger or a stick click is your scope in shooters, and if you?re on PC, chances are before you even get INTO a game, there?s a menu wherein you can map controls however you?d like. Besides, that?s what interactive tutorials are for, right? Why waste paper detailing the lore when the game/tutorial levels/menu items, etc. are all far more readily available, effective and intuitive methods of doing so? If I?m a modern developer, the last thing I want is to give a player a reason (let alone NEED) to disengage from my game to read a book.

There?s simply no reason for game booklets anymore; every purpose they served then can be done better now and more effectively if properly executed in the game itself; I?m sure it shaves off a significant cost not having to print a booklet with every hard copy of a game you press out.

 

[Weaver]

Nintendo games now have digital manuals you can open from the menu. I've noticed some steam games giving me PDFs as well. That said, most games have in-game help systems if they need it now-a-days.

 

[Worgen]

The first time I remember really noticing that manuals were gone was the first Assassins Creed. It just had a piece of paper that was an add, no booklet. Even nintendo games don't have them anymore. Oddly enough you're more likely to get them for pc games since CDprojekt likes to do really nice physical editions.

 

[Saelune]

I wish the cases would change. Honestly, manuals going away is probably fine. Less wasted paper, and the information you need should honestly be in the game itself.

But the cases feel so empty. Maybe they should be smaller if it is just the disc in them.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Perhaps they might make a return, what with games taking a few hours to install, then downloading the Day 1 patch.

 

[Zhukov]

Good riddance.

Manuals became obsolete once developers learned how to make decent tutorials and user interfaces that incorporate things like tooltips.

 

[MHR]

Only thing I would miss are little bits of information the game usually tells you on loading screens and aren't even significant enough to warrant entries on game wikis. With the reduced load times on PC, Sometimes only when games lag or bug and go on infinite-loading screens do I ever see the tips. I learn things the game tells me nowhere else, and sometimes it happens when I've already played the game for hundreds of hours.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I miss manuals too. The bits of lore I was able to gather from the Diablo II manual were...well, they added up to more than just bits. Manuals often served as jumping off points for the stories in games too. That's the stuff that I love, and I admit, I am sad that they have all but vanished.

 

[Recusant]

I remember how I felt the day that Firaxis sent out the email saying that we'd get to pick to which charity they'd give the money they saved by not printing manuals; sadly, there was no option for "Send me a damn manual, moron; I do my charity giving on my own time". It's more a function of the dominance of distribution and laziness of developers than anything else; it's perfectly easy to sit back and your fans create a wiki. You can do that for the likes of Terraria, Minecraft, and Insurgency just fine. But when Paradox decides that its next big game- its next big GRAND STRATEGY game, I might add- doesn't even need a manual, it's time to wonder what the hell happened to the industry.

Of course that's what video tutorials are for, right? Who would want to spend fifteen seconds checking the index to find something, skimming to exactly what they want to read, and reading it, when they could spend three hours watching some "gaming personality" with a double-digit IQ explain things in a medium with no search function or speed variation.

Not that I'm bitter.

 

[stroopwafel]

Not only are manuals disappearing the games themselves also come in cheap flimsy boxes. A box of cheap chocolates have more care put into it. And to round it off what you have on the disc is incomplete code that most of the time require a minimum 5GB patch to even function properly.

Physical copies of games have absolutely zero collector's value anymore. Or any value for that matter. I don't even know why they're still around other than for people in backwater towns with slow internet.

Art books are definitely getting better and better though. For me they kind of replaced physical media.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I don't think people want manuals back so much as lore/secrets/information books. Like something you'd see in a collector's edition of a game. I don't think any of us want to reread every time they buy a game how to press the right trigger to fire your weapon. No, what we really miss were the in-depth weapon/power explanations and maybe little tidbits into the game lore and character bios and etc.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Sign of the times, my friend. Hell, I remember that same feeling of disillusionment when Sega Genesis games stop coming in hearty plastic cases in lieu of thin, easily crushable cardboard boxes and when their manuals stopped coming in color in favor of black and white!

They did? To my recollection, that didn't happen in the EU, or at least not around here. Plastic clamshell cases down to the Mega Drive's very end. Notable exceptions like Sonic & Knuckles notwithstanding, which did come in a cardboard box, probably because the weird cartridge shape would've required a custom plastic case and I guess Sega didn't feel like shelling out for that.

I do kind of miss manuals. Mostly for the extra bits or lore, artwork or little tips on how to best beat enemies. Although I suppose all of these could easily be replaced with an ingame codex. Provided the extra reading isn't actually required to understand wtf is going on ingame. Looking at you, FFXIII.

 

[Dornedas]

Not only are manuals disappearing the games themselves also come in cheap flimsy boxes. A box of cheap chocolates have more care put into it. And to round it off what you have on the disc is incomplete code that most of the time require a minimum 5GB patch to even function properly.

Physical copies of games have absolutely zero collector's value anymore. Or any value for that matter. I don't even know why they're still around other than for people in backwater towns with slow internet.

Art books are definitely getting better and better though. For me they kind of replaced physical media.

If you have a disc in there in the at all and not just a little paper slip with a steam code on it.

I don't think people want manuals back so much as lore/secrets/information books. Like something you'd see in a collector's edition of a game. I don't think any of us want to reread every time they buy a game how to press the right trigger to fire your weapon. No, what we really miss were the in-depth weapon/power explanations and maybe little tidbits into the game lore and character bios and etc.

Honestly that's what I liked about the Risen 3 "Collector's edition".
Shut up I'm German I have to buy every single Piranha Bytes game and shill for them.
Ahem where was I. The game had 2 collector's editions one with a statue and all the other stuff a "proper" expensive collector's edition has to have.
The other one was like 10-15 Euronen more than the base game and had amongst other things a little lore book.
And in the actual manual there were some explanations about the guilds and short stories about the world from fans.

I don't know whether that was in the standard version's manual.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Good riddance.

Manuals became obsolete once developers learned how to make decent tutorials and user interfaces that incorporate things like tooltips.

This.

I would choose a google search over looking through a manual anyway. So that makes them like... Double obsolete.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I have officially been spoiled, if manuals ever come back I want something in the lines of these:

Spoiler

Skip to 5:15
Imagine a Dark Souls-like approach to lore in a game and while you can picture the lore of that game, a book like this would deepen the story even further.

Back to the topic: I think they had a good run, now with the internet and more advanced tutorials you can learn more about the games, making the manual a little bit redundant. But since this industry is still hellbent on making the boxes look like DVD and Blu-ray cases, it's always going to stick out that something in that box is missing.

Just a question: Is it true that Super Mario Galaxy 2 came with a DVD explaining how to play the game? If it did, I am speechless.

 

[McMarbles]

I don't think I've seen a user manual outside of Marvelous Entertainment games for years.