[Atrocities]

Ok let me put it too you this way. I used to pay $40.00 to $50.00 for a game that actually came with a manual. It didn't cost me any thing extra.

Today I still pay between $40.00 and $50.00 dollars for a game but no manual. So now not only do I have to pay full price for the game, I have to pay even more for the paper and the ink to print the game manual???? In todays age publishing a manual is no where near as expensive as it was five or even two years ago. Hell with all the new Xerox and LeXmark copier and printer technology they could mass produce manuals all day and still cost only penies. Whereas the cartrages of ink for my HP printer costs $50.00 dollars each and last only about 250 pages.

No Thanks. That is just greed on the game publishers end pure and simple.

Even more evidence of greed. We used to get nice solid jewel cases for the game disks. Now all we get are paper disk covers. Hum... how much do jewel cases cost? While we pay about $20.00 for 100 of them, they the game publishers pay about $0.6 cents for them.

(Small game publishers like Shrapnel are exempt from this. heir profit margins are so small that these costs do end up saving money and are perfectly valid cost control measures. But larger publishers who sell tens of thousands of games can aford the extra $2.06 that it would cost to include a manual along with a protective jewel case for the game.)