Originally Posted by LeBurns
I like printed manuals ... but I never really read them. To be honest I generally look at them for the artwork. I generally expect the game to give me enough information to play the game 'in game'. Also later patches can make many parts of printed manuals inaccurate, and thus useless.


Old games used to come with in-game "manuals" from pressing F1. I think something like that wouldn't be amiss, since they're almost certainly making a manual for D:OS anyway.

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Maybe a little side-demo shipped with the game that a first time player can use to figure out the workings of the game. A five minute tutorial like this beats the heck out of a huge paper manual. After you've done the demo once, just go straight into 'New Game' from then on out.


Five minutes doesn't seem like enough, and while making it optional is a good idea, there's no reason to make it a one-time-only-and-that's-it thing.