Game Manual

[Sarex]

What are your opinions on game manuals? Should the game be intuitive to play, or should it need a manual to fully understand all the features?

Edited July 13, 2013 by Sarex

[rjshae]

I find manuals are useful for planning out your character development, particularly when the game doesn't do a good enough job. They are also handy when the game includes modding capability.

Edited July 13, 2013 by rjshae

[Sacred_Path]

Dear devs, manuals are actually a good place to include more information on any given gameplay element than what fits in a pop-up

[argan]

I love game manuals. Even if they are not really needed to play the game sometimes, it is still a very nice way to get to know the game world, and more than anything it's a testament to the effort and love developers put into something. Just go read any manual for an old game...Fallout and Fallout 2, System Shock, Darklands, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Arcanum, Redneck Rampage, Syndicate and Syndicate Wars...they all added something extra to the experience and it was a joy to read when the game was installing.

 

I think Betrayal of Antara even had a couple of pages by the game producer describing the general development process of the game, and some thoughts on it.

 

Today's manuals are useless in comparison.

[Hormalakh]

I loved BG2's manual. I want a hard-copy. Screw the trees!

 

Just kidding. Don't screw the trees. Just cut them down to make my manual.

[teknoman2]

I loved BG2's manual. I want a hard-copy. Screw the trees!

 

Just kidding. Don't screw the trees. Just cut them down to make my manual.

well if they got holes and you are into that stuff we dont mind... just make sure you clean the wood before making it into paper

now on the serious side, manuals are useful if the game is complex. there are many mechanics in games that are simply not explained properly or at all in tutorials and often tooltips are not enough... oh the horror of playing arcanum without having any reference whatsoever on what i was looking at on the screen and having to figure everything out through trial and error. i felt like a scientist trying to save a failed experiment (got the game from a magazine without any manual, printed or digital).

[argan]

Oh, that's a shame. Arcanum's manual is a real piece of work by itself!

[JFSOCC]

No, if you need a manual to learn how to play a game, you've failed to make a game which a delivers the information a player needs itself.

[ManifestedISO]

I weep for unloved manuals, languishing at retail stores, piled haphazardly and smash-stacked on top of each other with ripped sleeves, dog-eared corners, and no respect for the art.

[Eiphel]

I strongly believe you should be able to pick up and get into the game immediately. Manuals should act as a reference, not as a required 101 course to study before you can play. And this doesn't mean the game needs to be dumbed down or simplified; it is perfectly possible to deliver the neccesary information on the game's fundementals within the game. Beyond this though, a manual does offer the ability to serve as a comprehensive and in-depth reference document. That's a useful function. It can also be a flavour document, and I really like that. But my one strong feeling is that all the information available needs to be accesible from within the game - even if just in the form of having a copy of the manual attached to the options menu. Having to exit the game to look something up sucks.

[DrAlexander]

I say Go Digital! But Go Digital in style . And by style I mean the 200+ pages manuals. I know that half of the BG one had to explain 2nd Ed. AD&D but for someone who hadn't the inkling of idea what a THAC0 was it was pretty helpful. This game will probably not have to go into such detail. 

I do like big manuals but I think I would rather pay to print mine than to have money allocated to printing something only some gamers will read. I'm probably biased on this because I backed for digital rewards only. 

[pl1982]

The game needs a manual. Period. However, digital is the way to go these days. I love manuals personally and also find great disgust in the lack of manuals these days, especially for complex RPGs...then again that might just be because there are so few complex RPGs these days... Point being, a game like Doom or COD probably doesn't need a manual, but a deep RPG like PE is going to be (hopefully) needs a manual (especially for things like referencing xp tables, progression charts, etc.).

 

However, make no mistake, I believe awesome in game tutorials are a must as well, but with a game like this there will be certain things that I doubt they could cover in game. However, if they somehow incorporated an in-game encyclopaedia (which BIS did to an extent with IWD2) containing all information such as progression mechanics, tables, etc. then perhaps a manual is not needed.

 

So I guess my conclusion would be: it depends on what the developers want to do/can do; if an in-game encyclopaedia can be included without breaking immersion to much then the game probably doesn’t need an external manual, otherwise it does, but from the sheer fact of the complexity of the game an additional source of elaboration on the games mechanics will definitely be needed (i.e. either in game as an encyclopaedia of sorts or as an external PDF document). I also however echo the above poster Eiphel in leaning more towards having all resources available in game (i.e. an in-game complete encyclopaedia would be ideal; akin to CIV4&5).

Edited July 14, 2013 by pl1982

[Bendu]

Total War: Shogun 2 ingame manual is just awesome. That's the way it should be.

[JFSOCC]

I'd be OK with a sort of a civlopedia type thing.

[rjshae]

I pledged at the level I did so that I can get a physical copy of the media and a printed manual. For me it's decidedly not a subject of debate, unlike virtually everything else around here.

[argan]

Screw digital, give us something real!

Edited July 14, 2013 by argan

[eimatshya]

I'm OK with the game not having a manual. Modern games don't really have decent manuals anymore, so I'm acclimated to playing a game manual-less.

 

That said, I did really love reading through the manuals that games had in the 90s. The Fallout 1 and 2 manuals, for example, were great fun.

 

I'd be fine with having to refer to the manual to understand gameplay elements, as I actually find that much less immersion breaking than having the game explain stuff to me (I've been replaying Alpha Protocol, and while overall I love that game, the pop ups tutorials really do take me out of the game).

[nikolokolus]

Sure tool-tips are great and in-game presentation of mechanics is important, but If an RPG is so simple that it doesn't require a manual for reference, then in my opinion the developers haven't made a proper RPG.

 

I'm not saying it needs to be 200 pages long and insanely convoluted, but there should be enough "crunch" in the game that I need to do some light reading if I want to get an idea of how to plan out a character's progression ... especially for a franchise that appears to have tabletop gaming aspirations.

[Jarmo]

The game should be intuitive enough to play without a manual.

If I need a specific piece of information, it's easier to find with a search from a digital manual.

 

That said, if there's some stuff that'd work better in a manual, then by all means make one.

But don't just start up making a manual and then try to think what to put there.

 

One suggestion.

 

Back in the eighties, the absolute best game manuals were made by Microprose.

There were the obvious how to play parts and keyboard layouts, but the extra info was the neat bit.

- Stealth fighter had pictures and stats and info of bazillion fighter planes of the era.

- Red Storm Rising the same of submarines.

 

So maybe something that'd explain to newcomers what's a brigandine, or estoc,

or wheellock, or lamellar, or whatever stuff the game tosses your way.

[Sacred_Path]

Back in the eighties, the absolute best game manuals were made by Microprose.

 

So maybe something that'd explain to newcomers what's a brigandine, or estoc,

or wheellock, or lamellar, or whatever stuff the game tosses your way.

case in point: Darklands' manual

[Labadal]

If I can't beat someone senseless with it in one hit, it ain't a real manual.

[Sarex]

If I can't beat someone senseless with it in one hit, it ain't a real manual.

 

Ah, so you want the police issue manuals, aka. the phonebook manuals. XD

[Labadal]

Of course. It should also be filled with so much text that 99.9% of the people reading it will fall asleep.