Quote:
Originally Posted by Painmantle
But that does NOT excuse OOTP as a company from producing a complete product for the consumer, and that would include a manual for what is easily the most complete, comprehensive and in-depth Baseball game on the market.
Quite Frankly it is beyond my comprehension that anyone (Vet or noobie) doesn't understand that concept and why the consumer not only expects a manual but deserves one.
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I agree in principle, but that doesn't seem to be the way things are going in the computer gaming world.
I've purchased plenty of games over the years, and the manuals just keep getting less and less informative. The task of instructing players on game mechanics and strategies has gradually been handed off (either intentionally or not) to the players themselves. That has been facilitated by the development of forums, the creation of Wikis, and by gamers who produce "how to play" videos that they post on Youtube.
You can say that the companies that do this are abdicating their responsibility to create a manual, or you can say that they are enhancing their product by relying on the "wisdom of the crowd."
That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it's the way things are now. It's just one aspect of the overall trend toward the democratization of information. Manuals are an example of the top-down model of information that is being supplanted by the bottom-up model pioneered by Wikipedia. Both models can co-exist, but there are a lot of advantages to the bottom-up model that OOTP hasn't fully taken advantage of.