Sorry for getting sick everyone, Capps is back and ready to go today though! I managed in my sickness to tease today's article, so for those of you who waited patiently over the weekend, or to those just tuning in prepare to take a look at A User Customizable Guide.
Now if you didn't check out the article, it's a good idea to give it a look before continuing since I'll be talking about it the entire time here.
Now this guide was set up for some electronics and not a boardgame, but there is still a lot we can learn from it.
First, see that giant wad of paper? Those are actually the instructions! Now I've seen larger in a board game actually and even have seen some folded to close to that kind of insanity. It's so big because it has the instructions in many different languages.
Now if you didn't check out the article, it's a good idea to give it a look before continuing since I'll be talking about it the entire time here.
Now this guide was set up for some electronics and not a boardgame, but there is still a lot we can learn from it.
First, see that giant wad of paper? Those are actually the instructions! Now I've seen larger in a board game actually and even have seen some folded to close to that kind of insanity. It's so big because it has the instructions in many different languages.
Now time to do some origami... Susan has been planning to hopefully write an article all about the folding of rulebooks, but I still wanted to touch a bit on this here.
That massive chunk of paper turned into the big bits of folded pages seen before you. This is one issue of having lots of instructions in multiple languages, they take up a LOT of space.
In the world of board games, sometimes foreign publishers just take on the task of translating the games. However you still can see many rulebooks with at least 2 languages in them. The amount of pages these things can take can seriously up your budget for printing a game so you have to consider this.
That massive chunk of paper turned into the big bits of folded pages seen before you. This is one issue of having lots of instructions in multiple languages, they take up a LOT of space.
In the world of board games, sometimes foreign publishers just take on the task of translating the games. However you still can see many rulebooks with at least 2 languages in them. The amount of pages these things can take can seriously up your budget for printing a game so you have to consider this.
However, this is the part that really caught my eye. There were perforated spots so you could just tear out the part you needed and not have to go through an excruciating origami lesson to try to get the instructions back into the box.
As the article did mention, this ends up as a big waste of paper, ink, energy, and would cut a chunk of profits out on top of the fact that the user is going to end up throwing away a lot of paper which is such a waste.
However, something like this really is interesting. I reviewed the rules for Livingstone a while back, and it had a separate sheet of paper for each language (and there were about 8 languages there). These were full color pages on some nice paper, it had to have cost them quite a bit. I tend to just keep my whole game together, but I could see people possibly throwing out the rules that they don't need just because they had to dig through them.
On the other side, i have a copy of Mister Bill that is quite a large unfolding mess that has many languages I will never use but make folding and storing the rules a big pain. Would it be better if I could just tear out what I wanted and toss the rest out? It really is a unique idea, I wonder if anyone has ever tried something like this in the board game realm.
The downsides seem to be on cost and waste, where the upsides are convenience. It's a tough call for me, what do you guys think? Would you prefer the ability to throw out the rules you wouldn't need, or would you rather have them all connected in one big book? Leave me a comment to let me know! Until next time: Every Game Deserves A Good Rulebook.
As the article did mention, this ends up as a big waste of paper, ink, energy, and would cut a chunk of profits out on top of the fact that the user is going to end up throwing away a lot of paper which is such a waste.
However, something like this really is interesting. I reviewed the rules for Livingstone a while back, and it had a separate sheet of paper for each language (and there were about 8 languages there). These were full color pages on some nice paper, it had to have cost them quite a bit. I tend to just keep my whole game together, but I could see people possibly throwing out the rules that they don't need just because they had to dig through them.
On the other side, i have a copy of Mister Bill that is quite a large unfolding mess that has many languages I will never use but make folding and storing the rules a big pain. Would it be better if I could just tear out what I wanted and toss the rest out? It really is a unique idea, I wonder if anyone has ever tried something like this in the board game realm.
The downsides seem to be on cost and waste, where the upsides are convenience. It's a tough call for me, what do you guys think? Would you prefer the ability to throw out the rules you wouldn't need, or would you rather have them all connected in one big book? Leave me a comment to let me know! Until next time: Every Game Deserves A Good Rulebook.