Manuals, In-Game Text, and Credits - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 38

5
Manuals, In-Game Text, and Credits
John Feil
5.1 Quick! Write this Manual!
In writing for games, there is no more harrowing task than writing the game manual.
You're sitting there one day, writing dialog or prepping for a totally different game and
then WHAM! You're stuck writing a piece of instructional prose with an extremely
short deadline and a crippling word count. Further, you realize that the information
you are going to use to build this document is changing on a daily basis and will do
so until past the point when the manual is due to be finished.
If you are reading this chapter, it is entirely likely that you have just been assigned
one of these things and are in a panicked frenzy. Relax for a moment. Take a deep
breath. No one reads the manual, anyway. Well, except your boss, and all the people
who are looking for their credit inside the covers, and the marketing department.
Oh, and the legal department, so keep it clean. But those players out there? They
only want to know some very specific things, like “What does the 'X' button do?�
and “How do I chain combo attacks so I can get maximum damage on the boss
enemy in level 8?�
Some of these questions you can answer; some are out of your realm. That is the
essence of writing a good manual: knowing what the player has to know and what
you send him to the strategy guide for.
5.2 The Short Manual
This section will go over the basics of what you need to put into a short manual.
Short manuals are just that: short. They fit into a DVD case and are often about
14 pages long or less. Frequently, this won't be enough room for what you want to
put in, so the overriding goal of the short manual is: keep it brief and don't put in
anything the player can't use.