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A point about games documentation ... it hasn't disappeared, it has been
outsourced to 3rd parties. True, in-box docs are nearly non-existent.
Instead there are entire books created and sold that detail the game (to
the point of "cheating"). They're referred to as "strategy guides" and are
created with the dev's support.
656 pages, hardcover. No in-box docs do that!
--
William Gaffga
www.wilyguy.net/portfolio/ http://www.linkedin.com/in/willgaffga
H: 805-492-0192
M: 805-405-6602
S: willgaffga
On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 5:53 AM, Ryan Minaker <ryan -dot- minaker -at- gmail -dot- com>wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm researching to write an article, and I'm wondering if anyone can share
> any ideas on *why software and product documentation is getting smaller and
> less useable as time goes on*. One example that I use is with video games.
> Back in the mid-late 90s (some even into the early 2000s) games still
> usually came with solid user guides. These days it seems as though they
> give you a quick-start guide and you're own on your for figuring everything
> else out yourself. For mel, this usually means sorting through
> user-genetated forums for hours... *ugh*
>
> It seems like there's an epidemic out there and user-generated
> documentation seems to be getting more and more popular, but it's really
> not efficient (in my opinion). Even companies like Adobe, Microsoft have
> resorted to this... Last week I was searching for something in Captivate
> 5.0 help, but I was getting irrelevant user-generated hits for Captivate
> 5.5 and 4.0 etc. Let's just say it was a serious hassle, and something that
> impacts my life constantly.
>
> Does anybody have any ideas why is documentation going away? Is is that
> budgets are being cut? Is it the lack of audience analysis... so just let
> the audience, who may no be able to write, write the documentation and post
> it to a forum? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ryan
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