Game manuals should be in-game

[Jeffrey H.]

I prefer pdf manuals on the media. I can store and print the paper to my own likings and there is no need to spend $$ and fuel on shipping paper bundles around.  

[Kuokkanen]

I would pay extra for a printed manual for a game that I really wanted but I guarantee that the same people that cry now about not having printed manuals included would scream at the higher cost if printed manuals were included. I guess there is no win-win scenario for this.

Yes there is: make available two versions of the game, one with manual, the other without. There are even games that have received additional (paper) documentation that can be bought separately.

Personally I prefer a printed paper manual. I do understand, however, that it not only increases the cost of the game but that it oftentimes becomes out of date when the game is patched.

Most likely only some parts of the manual is going to be outdated. Everything else can be described with patch documentations. That's what's done with other (analog) games: errors slip into rulebook, when those are found, corrections are made available in Internet... IF they are made at all: someone forgot to type rules into Total Warfare about physical damage against conventional infantry, and it still isn't in errata files yet!

Analog wargam manuals are expensive mainly because you are paying for games themselves. As for the printing costs - they usually include a hard cover, and over 2 hundred pages of high quality paper with high quality colour illustration.

That applies for books that are at 40 € or higher. Cheaper books are often black & white with maybe few color pages between (like BattleTech Field Manuals)... Mercenary's Handbook (BattleTech book from 1987) is exception, but paper is poorer quality and page count isn't high.

By the way, new BattleTech rulebooks (starting from Total Warfare) have page counts over 300, pages are top-notch, and there are colours everywhere!

Also, prices of PDF versions don't have to have anything to printing costs. A perceived and practical value of digital version of a book is much lower than perceived and practical value of printed version, so a distributor needs to severely decrease price to attract customers.

Now we need someone to tell THAT to game publishers. I think Matrix knows this already...

[Mobeer]

ORIGINAL: TonyE
I can speak to a couple of reasons it doesn't happen more often. Creating Windows standard context sensitive help files is a real PITA! The good tools to make such manuals make is a little less horrendous but also cost big money (RoboHelp $1000, Doc-To-Help $900) PER author. It is so much cheaper to buy Adobe Acrobat and make an unlinked PDF, not to mention unimaginably easier. It surprises me that anyone makes context sensitive Windows help files!

There are other intermediate options that can be used, straight HTML that the game opens contextually, much easier to create and maintain.

That leaves motivation. Most of us just want to write code and get stuck doing support as well. I for one am happy to build a HTML calling mechanism in programs but there is little chance I'll be the content creator of that Help unless I'm getting paid well to do so.

I have been using FastHelp: http://www.fast-help.com/

A single user licence costs $299 for the non-international language version.

The biggest costs in making help files would seem to be:
(i) becoming familiar enough with the software, especially if the software lacks good design documents
(ii) author time preparing the help
(iii) developer time linking the application to its help files
(iv) testing time to check that the help is actually helpful to people other than the author and developer

By comparison the software is comparatively cheap.

I am a bit surprised by your phrase "Most of us just want to write code" - do you mean "us" to refer to programmers only? In "my ideal help project", the help would be written by separate members of staff, based off design documents and checked by testers. Alternatively, having the testers write the help can be useful, as they are most likely to notice where the user interface needs revision to reduce the need for help, rather than writing comprehensive help for an overcomplicated design.