Just under a year ago, Ubisoft announced it was going to stop producing physical manuals for it's Xbox 360 games, in an alleged effort to make their games 'greener' (or save money), as an internal report had found out that the paper used to make one ton of manuals took thirteen trees, and produced 6000 lbs of carbon dioxide.
Not wanting to be left behind, EA Sports have decided to follow suit, by announcing that as of the 1st March, they'll be removing instruction booklets from their sports titles - with Fight Night Champion being the first to do without. The company say they're going to offer in-game instructions instead, for those people who need a bit more explanations.
Of course, the approach here is a little bit short-sighted, as the problem with the no-manual approach is that often the more 'casual' and less experienced people miss out. If I find myself struggling on a game, the first thing I do is reach for the manual and flick through that - I never ever think to go clicking through the menus. The manual is also the first thing I look in if I can't work out what some things do, or what some modes involve - for example, the We Sing manuals have nice summaries of what the different multiplayer modes involve, and Mass Effect's manual has amazing explanations of the different abilities, equipment and walkthroughs of combat, exploring and how to drive the Mako vehicle. In fact, I didn't realise how useful manuals can be for some games until I had to do without one for playing Dragon Age II (because promo copies don't come with them) - I could really have done with one for explanations of the icons used to represent the tone of the different conversation options. And I can't possibly play a game first person shooter without having the manual open at the controller diagram, in case I press the wrong button and blow myself up with a grenade when I was only trying to reload...
If they're looking for a greener alternative to manuals, maybe they should look at the massive plastic cases they ship games in - maybe a return to the cardboard boxes of old might be in order. Or maybe they could take a leaf out of Nintendo's book, and copy those slightly-bigger-than-A4 sheets where they cram on as much information about how to control characters and stuff as they can manage - those would use less paper, surely?
A double-sided spread on how to control Mario - a more eco-friendly alternative, without getting rid of manuals completely?
