Manual disappointment

[Tim Brooks]

quote:

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I was expecting a full manual--I don't mind printing it out as we did for SEIII--but this is a disappointment. And yes, I saw the Posts about piracy but once again paying customers are hurt so supposed pirates are thwarted. In my youth I pirated a few games but never really played them and certainly never considered buying them. I got'em to take a look. I now own hundreds of original games in boxes.

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Hi Guys:

Just so you understand our position. Yes, piracy is one of the issues here and it is an important one. You have to understand the amount of money invested in just the parts to the game. The Last thing any publisher can afford (especially a small publisher) is wholesale piracy as it deletes the investment monies, making it less likely that the game would be supported in future Versions. Remember that investors look at the return on their dollars. If less than they could make in, say, mutual funds, hey then why take the risk. It is all about limiting risk. And the more you set yourself up for ease of piracy, the more it will be pirated. This isn't a great answer for the gamer, I know, as I am one myself, but it is the reality.

But to me is an even more important point. That being the other markets. This is a game that, at some future point, deserves the retail chain, especially in foreign countries where shipping costs can really limit your internet market. If we were to release the manual in other formats, the chance of the larger retailers picking it up would go way down. The more you "deplete" the product like this the less interested the stores are in the product. And for the same reasons - they have to get a certain return on their investment in the product and if they see it being depleted through piracy, they won't take it.

The honest gamer gets hurt by this, I know, and I am sorry for that. We could print a manual and offer it at cost to those who really want it, but we have our doubts as to how many would really pay for this (thus the reason why we didn't include it to begin with - the extra cost involved in printing an almost 400 page manual - plus the issue of the depleted graphics you get in printing 72dpi images).

This is the way we came up with to give the gamer the quality graphics, and the information they need. In so choosing this method, we are minimizing the cost to you, the consumer, maximizing the ROI of the investors and maximizing the amount of money Malfador can make, thus allowing many more Versions to come in the future.



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Tim Brooks
Shrapnel Games

[C4]

IMO the manuals are too superficial. The printed manual is of very little value. The html manual only covers the basic basics. Combined with a tutorial that stops before game action really gets started and SEIV becomes a lot more difficult to learn than it needs to be.

Sure, I can move ships around and blunder through ship combat. But, ask me what to do anything more than that (like what technologies to research) and I'm lost in SEIV.

[Urendi Maleldil]

You could offer a strategy guide later on that would contain more advanced stuff.

[JimBones]

The situation forced me to use alt-tab to access the HTML manual and I have to admit that this works pretty well.

[aweill]

Where is the manual on the CD? My CD only lists the setup, readme, icon, autorun files, and the demo folder. Am I missing something obvious here?

[LintMan]

The manual is packed inside the setup executable and is installed at the same time the game is installed.

When the game is installed, it puts an icon in the start menu for the manual. Or you can just point your web browser to the manual directory under the SEIV directory. (The manual doesn't work quite right in Netscape, so use Explorer).