Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Sound Idea

This week, video game publishing company Ubisoft announced that it would no longer print game manuals for its games. Instead manuals will be digitally installed in the game disc or it can be viewed on its own website.

The reason for this decision is because this is part of a green initiative to save paper and reduce the publisher's carbon footprint. Frankly, I do not believe it. This seems more like a financial decision designed to cut cost than any goodwill decision to save the planet. (Of course, I’m no fan of Ubisoft so I might be biased.)

Having said that, the idea of getting rid of game manuals is a sound one. Most gamers, especially the young one, do not read the manuals. They just go straight into the game and learn by practice. This is helped by game tutorials or on-screen commands prompts. Manuals are just not as useful now as they were in the past.

So I’m all for getting rid of the manual. Beside, it really would help to save paper.

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