7 ms·

> From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear camps of "people

by ethbr0 3y ago

> From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear camps of "people who always read the manual" and "people who never never read the manual."

allannienhuis 3y ago
for some, reading the manual was also fun. For most, reading the manual was an admission of failure.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Manuals in the 90s were sometimes actually fun. I still occasionally reminisce about that time in primary school, when one of the classmates bought (well, his parents did, I suppose) an original, boxed copy of StarCraft. He used to briefly lend the CD, and at some point copies of the CD started circulating, and he would just share the CD key with a few people - but in between, he lent me the manual. I think I was the only one who really cared about it. I've had it for months, I think. Read it cover to cover more times than I could count. Pretty much memorized every bit of lore and trivia there was in it - and there was quite a lot. The manual itself was a small booklet, with a couple pages of backstory for each of the playable species, plus a lot of extra world-building details about individual units, buildings and planets. So even as I didn't have access to the game, my own imagination built a whole world and infinite stories out of what some would consider "filler content". But this filler content made me care, and eventually shell out my pocket money for Brood War, and later on, money from my first full-time job on the collector's edition of StarCraft II. That SC manual came probably at the tail end of the era where the publishers put any kind of effort into manuals. Case in point: SC:BW came with just a tiny booklet with about equal split between lore/context, instructions for the new and changed game aspects, and legal/credits. SC II came... well, I don't know with, by that time Blizzard stopped caring about the game story anyway. (Oh, and speaking of warm memories of computer manuals in the 90s, I have a special place in my heart for the big, heavy, couple hundred pages long manual to Word 6.0 (not 100% sure about the exact version), and earlier, for the interactive self-training application that came included with Windows 3.11 - that one taught me how to use the mouse!)
  - sbierwagen 3y ago
    I fondly remember the manuals for Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm. More than a hundred pages each, the second contains extensive in-universe descriptions of the units, talking about dispenser jamming issues in the minelayer corvettes and the odd center of gravity on the interceptor fighter due to its offset gun. Complete fluff, of course, with zero impact on gameplay. Perfect nerd bait, like those giant books of exploded diagrams of Star Wars ships that specified the wattage and manufacturer of each turbolaser battery on the Death Star. https://www.moddb.com/games/homeworld-cataclysm/downloads/homeworld-cataclysm-manual https://www.moddb.com/games/homeworld-cataclysm/downloads/ho... More interesting in retrospect, the first manual contained extensive descriptions of kiith clans. They go on for dozens of pages, and don't show up in the game's actual story at all. Someone spent serious effort writing them. Why? Left over from an earlier version of the game pitch where the player would have to manage relations between competing groups on the mothership? https://sierrachest.com/gfx/games/Homeworld/box/manual.pdf https://sierrachest.com/gfx/games/Homeworld/box/manual.pdf
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Thanks for the link; I played the OG Homeworld a bit, but got it IIRC from one of those game magazines with CDs, and if there was a copy of the manual there, it must have been digital, and I didn't notice. Skimming from the dozens of pages I would love to have read back then, I think this may be the case of writers creating a detailed setting for the game early on - only fraction of it could become part of the gameplay, but presumably designers and writers were using it as a reference. And, come release time, it didn't hurt to include the world-building bits - it might just get some players to enjoy the game more (I know it would've had this effect on me), while the alternative, back then, was for those details to never see the light of day. And/or maybe they hoped to make some follow-up games, or tie-in novels, etc. - then including those details was both important to solidify the fictional universe, and would drive some secondary sales for the game itself.
  - bnralt 3y ago
    Also interesting that if you read the original Starcraft manual, you'd notice that there were massive retcons as early as Brood War (particularly with the Terrans). Some board games come with pretty hefty manuals, still. Twilight Imperium comes with a whole separate lore booklet that has nothing to do with playing the game.
Dalewyn 3y ago
This exists everywhere. People who knows their stuff read the manual, those who don't didn't. Especially common are the people who get others to read the manual for them and answer all their questions, because they themselves obviously have no time to be reading them but more than enough time to grab some unfortunate sod to do so.
eru 3y ago
If you are fascinated by those game manuals, Tunic is exactly the right game for you.
chefandy 3y ago
As a designer, I can assure you that 90+% of computer users will never read a line of actual software documentation in their entire lives. It's not because they're lazy, it's because they don't have to. In many cases it doesn't even exist. The FOSS community almost universally blames marketing and advertising for the dominance of commercial consumer-level software, but that doesn't hold a candle to the experience upgrade of using professionally designed software. To people with a mental model of the way computers function, the differences seem trivial, or even annoying. To everybody else, they're essential. To a developer, an interface is the way users interact with the application. To everybody else, the interface is the application.
- mitchdoogle 3y ago
  It seems to me like some of the most successful commercial software virtually requires either reading the documentation, or doing some sort of training
  - xapata 3y ago
    Or being taught informally by a colleague or a friend. I am curious which is most prevalent!
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Such as?
    - moqmar 3y ago
      Excel, SAP, AutoCAD, Photoshop, and many many others. All require quite a bit of training even if you already know similar software.
      - chefandy 3y ago
        I learned excel and photoshop on my own, without documentation, just figuring things out as needed. Asking a coworker "do you know how to refer to the value in another cell?" is not the same as reading documentation. Both SAP and Autocad are super domain specific, and likely used by far fewer than 1% of computer users. Even then, new CAD self-learners would almost certainly start with a newer, more intuitive CAD app to get their feet wet.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Yizahi 3y ago
I always read hints and in-build help. This is not the case in this game. It explicitly went against the "common convention" so to say. In all location guessing games you get one try per location, and most times you don't need to read instructions if you see a different guessing site. Number 5 is also a tell and different pictures. If it was say 2 tries with different pictures, people would have suspected that something wrong. If it was 5 tries but with the same picture, also suspicious. But it literally had the same game flow from as other guessing games. And about the instructions. Sure, it is useful to read them, but even more useful, for all humans, is to rely on the training. We don't carry around dictionaries to talk, we don't read "Introduction to Javascript" daily, we don't use UX designer guideline book to open a faucet in the bathroom. And re-training is not free, that's why so many people jumped in based on their old skill. Not based on their ignorance, but on the skill, and that's important distinction. People actually knew how to play such games, that's why they subconsciously omitted instructions.
- Yajirobe 3y ago
  > In all location guessing games you get one try per location Not in tradle, for example

by ethbr0 3y ago

allannienhuis 3y ago

for some, reading the manual was also fun. For most, reading the manual was an admission of failure.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Manuals in the 90s were sometimes actually fun. I still occasionally reminisce about that time in primary school, when one of the classmates bought (well, his parents did, I suppose) an original, boxed copy of StarCraft. He used to briefly lend the CD, and at some point copies of the CD started circulating, and he would just share the CD key with a few people - but in between, he lent me the manual. I think I was the only one who really cared about it. I've had it for months, I think. Read it cover to cover more times than I could count. Pretty much memorized every bit of lore and trivia there was in it - and there was quite a lot. The manual itself was a small booklet, with a couple pages of backstory for each of the playable species, plus a lot of extra world-building details about individual units, buildings and planets. So even as I didn't have access to the game, my own imagination built a whole world and infinite stories out of what some would consider "filler content". But this filler content made me care, and eventually shell out my pocket money for Brood War, and later on, money from my first full-time job on the collector's edition of StarCraft II. That SC manual came probably at the tail end of the era where the publishers put any kind of effort into manuals. Case in point: SC:BW came with just a tiny booklet with about equal split between lore/context, instructions for the new and changed game aspects, and legal/credits. SC II came... well, I don't know with, by that time Blizzard stopped caring about the game story anyway. (Oh, and speaking of warm memories of computer manuals in the 90s, I have a special place in my heart for the big, heavy, couple hundred pages long manual to Word 6.0 (not 100% sure about the exact version), and earlier, for the interactive self-training application that came included with Windows 3.11 - that one taught me how to use the mouse!)
- sbierwagen 3y ago
  I fondly remember the manuals for Homeworld 1 and Homeworld Cataclysm. More than a hundred pages each, the second contains extensive in-universe descriptions of the units, talking about dispenser jamming issues in the minelayer corvettes and the odd center of gravity on the interceptor fighter due to its offset gun. Complete fluff, of course, with zero impact on gameplay. Perfect nerd bait, like those giant books of exploded diagrams of Star Wars ships that specified the wattage and manufacturer of each turbolaser battery on the Death Star. https://www.moddb.com/games/homeworld-cataclysm/downloads/homeworld-cataclysm-manual https://www.moddb.com/games/homeworld-cataclysm/downloads/ho... More interesting in retrospect, the first manual contained extensive descriptions of kiith clans. They go on for dozens of pages, and don't show up in the game's actual story at all. Someone spent serious effort writing them. Why? Left over from an earlier version of the game pitch where the player would have to manage relations between competing groups on the mothership? https://sierrachest.com/gfx/games/Homeworld/box/manual.pdf https://sierrachest.com/gfx/games/Homeworld/box/manual.pdf
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Thanks for the link; I played the OG Homeworld a bit, but got it IIRC from one of those game magazines with CDs, and if there was a copy of the manual there, it must have been digital, and I didn't notice. Skimming from the dozens of pages I would love to have read back then, I think this may be the case of writers creating a detailed setting for the game early on - only fraction of it could become part of the gameplay, but presumably designers and writers were using it as a reference. And, come release time, it didn't hurt to include the world-building bits - it might just get some players to enjoy the game more (I know it would've had this effect on me), while the alternative, back then, was for those details to never see the light of day. And/or maybe they hoped to make some follow-up games, or tie-in novels, etc. - then including those details was both important to solidify the fictional universe, and would drive some secondary sales for the game itself.
- bnralt 3y ago
  Also interesting that if you read the original Starcraft manual, you'd notice that there were massive retcons as early as Brood War (particularly with the Terrans). Some board games come with pretty hefty manuals, still. Twilight Imperium comes with a whole separate lore booklet that has nothing to do with playing the game.

Dalewyn 3y ago

This exists everywhere. People who knows their stuff read the manual, those who don't didn't. Especially common are the people who get others to read the manual for them and answer all their questions, because they themselves obviously have no time to be reading them but more than enough time to grab some unfortunate sod to do so.

eru 3y ago

If you are fascinated by those game manuals, Tunic is exactly the right game for you.

chefandy 3y ago

As a designer, I can assure you that 90+% of computer users will never read a line of actual software documentation in their entire lives. It's not because they're lazy, it's because they don't have to. In many cases it doesn't even exist. The FOSS community almost universally blames marketing and advertising for the dominance of commercial consumer-level software, but that doesn't hold a candle to the experience upgrade of using professionally designed software. To people with a mental model of the way computers function, the differences seem trivial, or even annoying. To everybody else, they're essential. To a developer, an interface is the way users interact with the application. To everybody else, the interface is the application.

mitchdoogle 3y ago
It seems to me like some of the most successful commercial software virtually requires either reading the documentation, or doing some sort of training
- xapata 3y ago
  Or being taught informally by a colleague or a friend. I am curious which is most prevalent!
- chefandy 3y ago
  Such as?
  - moqmar 3y ago
    Excel, SAP, AutoCAD, Photoshop, and many many others. All require quite a bit of training even if you already know similar software.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      I learned excel and photoshop on my own, without documentation, just figuring things out as needed. Asking a coworker "do you know how to refer to the value in another cell?" is not the same as reading documentation. Both SAP and Autocad are super domain specific, and likely used by far fewer than 1% of computer users. Even then, new CAD self-learners would almost certainly start with a newer, more intuitive CAD app to get their feet wet.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Yizahi 3y ago

I always read hints and in-build help. This is not the case in this game. It explicitly went against the "common convention" so to say. In all location guessing games you get one try per location, and most times you don't need to read instructions if you see a different guessing site. Number 5 is also a tell and different pictures. If it was say 2 tries with different pictures, people would have suspected that something wrong. If it was 5 tries but with the same picture, also suspicious. But it literally had the same game flow from as other guessing games. And about the instructions. Sure, it is useful to read them, but even more useful, for all humans, is to rely on the training. We don't carry around dictionaries to talk, we don't read "Introduction to Javascript" daily, we don't use UX designer guideline book to open a faucet in the bathroom. And re-training is not free, that's why so many people jumped in based on their old skill. Not based on their ignorance, but on the skill, and that's important distinction. People actually knew how to play such games, that's why they subconsciously omitted instructions.

Yajirobe 3y ago
> In all location guessing games you get one try per location Not in tradle, for example