Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 14:31:29 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

JAB  <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.

>
I don't know if I'm still the same person that wants to play a game with a
big manual.  Games don't come with manuals anymore, big or small.  What I
do know is I don't like it when you have to search the web for critical
information about a game that you used to be able to find in the manual.

Back in the day, manuals served two purposes. One was, obviously, to
tell you how to install, start, and play the game. But equally
important, manuals also helped fill out the world; they added depth
and complexity through the text, telling the player about that world's
inhabitants and how the various systems worked together. And the
manuals were absolutely necessary for this. In an era when games had
to fit on a handful of floppy disks, it was the only way to do it.
Even simple dialogue took up an obscene amount of space, much less
graphics which could tell the story visually.

But as technology improved, the necessity of manuals lessened.
Installation and startup were simple mouseclicks. Games had built-in
tutorials (and, as important, sophisticated graphic user interfaces)
that made it easy for players to understand the basics of game-play.
Even the most unimportant character was allowed tens of megabytes of
disk-space to express their life stories. Modern graphics could
show-not-tell you more about the world than a thousand books. Manuals
became an expensive luxury.

The best manuals, for me, were the ones that combined gameplay
explanations and world-building all in one. Origin Systems was a
master of this (with their best work being the "Book of Lore" in
Ultima 5). But I've fond memories of many other manuals of that era
too; "Kings Quest 6", or anything by Infocom. Flight sims of the era
always had very impressive manuals; "Falcon 3.0" weighed in at 350
pages, and not only detailed all its various game-modes and facts
about its planes, but also gave detailed lectures on everything from
how planes worked to advanced fighter tactics. Later games also are
memorable (I loved the manual for "Independence War" from '99, for
instance).

Still, I'm not sure I feel any desire for new games to come with
manuals. Sure, it was great to curl up with the manual and delve into
the intricacies of its world as described in the manual, but I think
I'd much prefer just to dive head-first into the world itself. These
days, if I really want wallow in a game's lore, I'm more likely to
head to the game's wikia page, even if the game does come with a
for-real printed codex manual. It's just easier and usually has more
detail to boot.