Actually. Apparently we were never really friends anyway, cause I looked to see if I’ve played any of your games anndddd yeah, I wanna say I found less than 4 on the list.

I’m not trying to be mean, I have a reason to not be friends with Ubisoft anymore, and it’s not because I don’t pick up many of their games. It’s because of a recent announcement that could get OTHER game developers/publishers to fall in line. I came across a news article at PSXExtreme that said in an attempt to go eco-friendly, Ubisoft will stop producing in-the-box paper game manuals for their games. Sure, they can quote how many BTUs or CO2 or whatever is created every year from printing game manuals, and it might be big (but I doubt it is), but I still believe it would be a bigger crime to leave out the game manuals for games. I’d also like to mention my skepticism that their real motivation was not to “go green”, but to just save money.

This really is a terrible move on their part, and I pray that other developers (who I actually buy games from) don’t see this and think, “yeah, lets ‘go green’..and by green we mean save money at the cost of our consumer’s happiness! mwahaha”. Having a digital manual would be completely worthless to us gamers. More people would just get up, get on their laptop, and look up solutions to their problems than click on their in game manuals, and as absurd as that sounds, it’s probably true.

It seems silly to argue over game manuals (to some), but think about it. What’s the first thing you do when you open up your game? You look at the manual on the ride home, or maybe while it’s installing. It only adds to the excitement of owning a new game. If the manual was done right, it would add to the thrill and feeling of entering into this new world, and truly engulf you.

When you think about it, them not printing off manuals may be a “green” move, but you know they are saving plenty of money, and yet, they will still expect us to fish out $60+ for a game, not to mention any DLC(which they don’t even pay packaging, shipping, or paper fees for).

Some other people make a good argument, too, about how most paper comes from 2 sources: tree farms where we plant trees specifically to make paper, and recycling. I feel like the 2 sources aren’t the worst thing to the environment, and that they could cut back somewhere else if they wanted to “go green” in a more productive way. Good intentions, bad execution Ubisoft. If this starts a movement for all game developers, you will go from not being my friend, to being my enemy.

What SHOULD be happening in the gaming world when it comes to game manuals, is 1) they should be in full color, 2) they should be BIGGER and have MORE info in regards to backstory, characters, and anything else and 3)…well just more emphasis on the first 2.