Increasingly expensive games, no manuals or gifts

[soulsas]

Video games have never been a cheap hobby and I think that's a hard truth, but I remember a time when there was at least some effort on the part of the industry to add value, for example, in the whimsy that existed in having manuals or posters on the game box.
I think it's unsustainable not to have anything that's really collectible. For example, I've lost count of how many times I've looked at and copied the drawings in my Super Mario World manual, which I still have today. What do you think?

 

[DanCalibur]

I don't know what you are talking about, games have never been cheaper, I can get anything I want for free on the internet, more stuff than I can ever play in a lifetime

 

[Pseudo64]

I have my xbox 360 copy of Blue Dragon and the manual is wonderful, especially since it contains the concept art from the game.

I was just a wee bit of a lad, during the ps2/xbox 360 era, so I personally didn't own any games, but I remember seeing so many manuals on my friends and cousins dvds. The reason I have some games with manuals like Blue Dragon and Red Dead Redemption GOTY (which also comes free with a whole dang map), is because I bought them specifically since they are backwards compatible with my series X, and I really love the effort put into. Some games on steam do have that digital manual as additional free download, but yeah, most of it is very basic, and nowhere near feels like books of their own like these old manuals felt like.

 

[iamthemilkman]

I was saddened towards the end of the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation when this started to become a thing. While most games for those consoles came with manuals, the last few years of the generation saw more and more games come in cheap "eco cases" and lacked a manual, having legal mumbo jumbo posted on the reverse side of the cover art or there would be a tiny little insert with it on in place of an actual manual.

While I've gotten used to it, I don't think I'll ever get used to $70+ games. I definitely buy less games when they're $70+. I wait for a discount, grab the games on Ebay at a later date, or I use Microsoft Rewards to help with the price of a game because I feel bad spending $70+ on a game. Very few are worth that to me.

 

[bjork]

The public's acceptance of digital games kind of killed this, sadly. It was always nice to open a game and see a color manual, or lots of feelies in the older computer days. But nowadays there are cases where they'll certainly make you a manual and a physical package, but what's it worth to you? I look at some of the physical stuff that exists for Switch and am always surprised that people dive in at those prices. It's a shame.

 

[Advil Lavs]

Now they even expect you to pay for the manual extra cough cough Switch 2

 

[psvitaforever]

I'm lucky enough to have witnessed those boxed pc games with big manuals inside -FF8 for pc, my first one (photo taken randomly from internet, I sold my copy long ago)

I've never been a huge collector but I had some, I remember with a smile those ps2 and ds games with full and coloured manuals, with the plot, the artstyle for the characters, all the details of the gameplay explained, etc... They were pricey, but worth the money, also with no updates day-one (the game was already completed as it was), without pricey dlcs with extra scenarios and so on.

 

[ATenderLad]

The secondhand market - Gamestop trade-in's especially, at least in America - really did a number on manuals and the like. More robust consoles meant they weren't as neccessary as they used to be, but I think that was a real death knell for the concept.

 

[Graw]

The worst part of lack of manuals, almost every game now has some kind of built in, usually mandatory and unskippable tutorial to compensate for the lack of a manual. I've just stopped playing games that looked good because the extended tutorial annoyed me too much. There's something to be said about turning a game on and being able to just jump right in without all that bullshit first.

 

[Mr. Daddy]

While I have my doubts that manuals will ever return, some developers and companies are still occasionally releasing neat little gifts in place of a manual these days. Astro Bot came with a poster that has a fun little comic on the back of it. It's certainly not a commonplace thing yet, though.​

 

[KyleOnDemand]

What absolutely broke me was when they started selling the game off the shelf with nothing but a code inside of it.

Like... dude... that's pathetic as hell