Concerns about lack of Tutorial and Price of Game

[Fyron]

You could print a special edition of the manual in color and sell it separately, for the big fans. I'd suggest selling it with a copy of the game, but most of the biggest fans probably pre-ordered a long time ago, so they'd have to pay for the game again. Could always do both though. I don't know what your minimum orders have to be for numbers of manuals, so it might not be worth it if only a few dozen (or less) people want to buy a color manual...

[Tim Brooks]

THIS is SO TRUE !! So many big companies have their developers wasting time on the most elite graphic designs... thus game content and additional features suffer.

There is a reason for this. All things being equal, the newest technology is going to sell over gameplay at retail. The major publishers can't afford not to go cutting edge, and they can't afford to do both- a game that costs several million dollars to produce won't make money. So graphics wins out over gameplay, because it sells better in traditional retail.

Just look at any development team from a major publisher, there are 4 to 6 times as many artists as there are programmers and designers.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that truly great games are overlooked, because they are not cutting edge in the graphics department - the money didin't go into a team of artists but into design and gameplay.

Now every once in a while you get both, but this is usually in a new title, where the developer already had the gameplay and design in place and the publisher didn't have to foot this bill - they concentrated their assets on the graphics. Rarley do you find sequels, that have both graphics and gameplay going for them, because the development effort was now funded with the emphasis on graphics.

[Richard]

For the costs involved I doubt enough people would be interested for us to make any money on that. A full color manual is ridicously expensive.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You could print a special edition of the manual in color and sell it separately, for the big fans. I'd suggest selling it with a copy of the game, but most of the biggest fans probably pre-ordered a long time ago, so they'd have to pay for the game again. Could always do both though. I don't know what your minimum orders have to be for numbers of manuals, so it might not be worth it if only a few dozen (or less) people want to buy a color manual...

[Watchdog]

If the manual costs that much.......then scrap it. Seriously, Give me a nice PDF (I hate adobe but whatever) and save me some cash.

If company's stop paying for them, the price would go down considerably in a few months. But that's neither here nor there.

I always lose my manuals anyway.

[ November 03, 2003, 05:28: Message edited by: Watchdog ]

[Richard]

No we have to have a printed manual, it is the number 1 way to stop pirates. Normal manuals are fine as far as costs go.

Originally posted by Watchdog:
If the manual costs that much.......then scrap it. Seriously, Give me a nice PDF (I hate adobe but whatever) and save me some cash.

If company's stop paying for them, the price would go down considerably in a few months. But that's neither here nor there.

I always lose my manuals anyway.

[Black Cat]

I have bought most of Shrapnels Games but FWIW I really don`t understand the lack of at least a text tutorial for a mini game in the demo that would at least highlight the building-research-battles-magic aspect and how they relate.

It would take what, about an hour to write one up...??

Something like do A then B then C, so you get D.

In a Game that all the vets from D1 ( which I did buy but gave up on due to the poor quality of the interface descriptions ) say is rich & complex, the Demo, with no clues as to how to make things come together is either going to leave people with the idea this is simple & dumb or so confusing and a pain to learn, they won`t buy it.

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a doc file with the demo though its pretty bare bones. There is a thread pinned near the top of this forum, something about "lost people", which has much more