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Manual Walkin'-Talkin' Blues
by Jim "Bismarck" Cobb

The Instruction Manual Walkin’-Talkin’ Blues
I just opened my new game box
When I saw the publisher was a fox
Instead of something I could use
He put in something to confuse

Hitting keys, crying “Please!”
Clicking the odd mouse here and there

I’m old. I’m so old that I remember when the manual that came with the game told a guy how to play. No more. The most important part of a manual today is the publisher’s website.

Your basic Quickstart manual of old is the whole manual in many games today.

In a way, we may be to blame. Few read the manuals at first, preferring to boot up and finding their own way around the game. To compensate, publishers added a “Quick start” section to the manual to cut down on possible frustration. Except for some simulations that have very thick manuals, manuals have become large quick start sections.

“Paper cost money,” companies say
“You guys don’t read ‘em anyway.”
“We can knock big bucks off the price.”
“You all should think that’s nice”

Saving costs, cutting lots
Minding the bottom line whenever fair

Manuals are expensive; one publisher of well-documented games says printing expenses represent over 60% of his costs. However, many publishers seem to be compounding their problems by adding pages of decorative illustrations, useless story lines, pop history and tips that would be evident within 30 minutes of play. If they have enough space for these distractions, they should have enough for clear, detailed instructions. Never mind, they don’t.

Another problem inherent in manuals is that they are finished before the game goes gold. This lag produces gaps filled by the now-inevitable readme file. This fix has been abused also with these files sometimes being as long as the instruction part of the manual. For the most part, they are inaccessible from the games itself and clumsy to print out and stick in the printed manual. Maintenance of these files becomes harder as patches multiply.

Low budget manuals printed on newsprint-quality paper and black and white images are almost indecipherable.

A solution for all these problems is the on-line manual. Incurring no printing costs, these HTML files use hyper-links to facilitate use and are updated with each version of the beta and each update of the marketed game. These manuals are accessible with a mouse click. The paperless society is still a generation or so off, however, and many gamers want to have something to carry around with them to places better left unnamed. Publishers are still expected to have something other than a disk in the box.

I don’t know; maybe I’m crazy
But I think publishers are gettin’ lazy
Instead of putting stuff in just one place
They’re spreading it all over cyber-space.

Taking abuses, making excuses
Making their website masters pull their hair

The unfortunate practice of selling the rest of the instructions in hint books aside, publishers are seeking salvation through the Internet. Answers to questions appear in forums and news groups. FAQs at websites contain information that easily could have been included in the manual. All of this information is well and good. The basic assumption, though, is that the player (you remember him; he’s the guy who paid for the product) wants to invest time as well as money in keeping up to date on a purchase he thought was complete.

The coveted keyboard command reference. Good luck finding one of these in that bargain bin sim that came in only the CD case.

Companies should be applauded for elaborating on their games. They should not use the Net as a cheap substitute for a good manual system. Too many screens are omitted from the documents; too many functions are hidden and too many icons are unexplained. Gamers should be able to sit down and know all the mechanics of what they bought when they boot up. As long as companies expect them to spend hours scouring the Net, manuals will remain sub-standards.

This here screen’s not in the book
I wonder how this is supposed to look
I don’t want to search and scan all day
I just want to boot and play.

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