my thoughts on whatever I may be thinking about and choosing to share

I was in GameStop the other day and I saw a retail copy of the new Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion, Storm of Zehir. It apparently comes in a DVD case. When I got my copy of the Premier Edition of Red Alert 3, it came in a package slightly larger than a standard DVD case made of metal. Publishers: what gives?!?!

I have a copy of the Collector's Edition of Neverwinter Nights at home and it's easily the largest thing on the bookcase it sits on. Ditto for my Age of Empires III CE, my Age of Mythology CE, and my WarCraft III CE. I also have some older titles like StarSiege that come in oversized boxes with actual honest-to-god books in them. These days even CEs for titles come in tiny boxes (see RA3) unless they're MMOs. If I spend an extra $10-30 on a Collector's Edition, I want a big, fat box that dares me to find enough space in my house to put it in and I want it full of cool-ass swag like soundtrack CDs, making of DVDs, large-format art books, shirts, mousepads, z-board keysets, home movies of the dev's cats, novels, et cetera. Don't give me a crappy in-game halo or (even more pointlessly) a hat I can wear if I buy a completely different game and subscribe to it (RA3!!)! Hell, if your game impresses me enough, I'll be your marketing bitch--give me a real-world hat emblazoned with an RA3 logo--I actually would wear that. I just got in the Marine Mania expansion for Zoo Tycoon 2 from Gogamer, and when I opened it I found a DVD and a 4-sided card with brief descriptions of the new content and some seizure warnings! Hey, Blue Fang, how about an actual manual that explains setting up shows?!

Look at Spore's Galactic Edition; it comes in a slightly larger box with two extra DVDs for $20 extra. Fallout 3 comes in a lunchbox with an extra DVD and a cheap-looking plastic figure and a tiny art book. Don't get me wrong, I'm sufficiently nerdy that I like the idea of a lunchbox, but I can tell that they decided on a lunchbox precisely because of its relatively small dimensions--again, this for an extra $20.

This isn't my first rant on this topic and I'm sorry to say it may not be my last. I hate, hate, hate this trend. I miss my big damn boxes that barely fit on shelves. Soon I'll be nostalgic for the tiny boxes that were barely larger than a mass-market paperback. I realize this isn't an issue for console gamers who are used to getting their games in DVD cases (or things even smaller than that for people who have those handheld doodads like DS and PSP). I miss Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had actual pocket fluff (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably too young for this rant to have any meaning for you!).

 

 

 


Comments
on Nov 25, 2008

Publishers: what gives?!?!

They're just responding to the much more vocal "tree hugger" community which has asked why something the size of a CD requires packaging large enough for a Mini Cooper. The huge amount of paper/plastic waste makes them look bad.....

on Nov 25, 2008

Actually, you can blame retailers and their ever-shrinking game shelves for this one.

on Nov 25, 2008

Fooling the consumer into thinking they are getting more by oversized packaging apparently still works.

on Nov 25, 2008

everyone is getting cheap... don't expect it to change anytime soon.

Eg: 'Big' Mac

on Nov 25, 2008

Shelf space at retail outlets cost money.  Less space, more profit.

Personally, I don't want the big boxes, they always drove me nuts.  A slim DVD case works just great for me, it's easier to store as it saves space for me as well, not just the retailer.

on Nov 25, 2008

I think this trend is great! I hate to disagree, but I have so little space at home that I always threw away the bigger boxes. Back before they were book-sized they were, indeed, impossible to manage, so I always had to find space for both the manual and the CD case.

Then came the smaller book-sized ones. Though still cardboard boxes, they weren't as impractical to fit into a shelf as trophies. As the boxes (I'm not sure if they've all undergone this change) turned into DVD containers, still book-sized, it was considerably more incentive to keep everything and display; besides, here was a home not only for the CD but also the manual. A change to DVD cases was even better - less space taken up.

Now, only recently, my brother and I got RA3 premier, and, as the OP said, it's pretty small. But it's metal, contains a fair bit of paper and three CDs. Not a cubic centimetre of space is wasted => pretty much perfect economy of space.

Besides which, the psychological impact of buying a huge box and finding a single CD and a small, thin manual inside is pretty damaging. "For all this space," you'd think, "they'd at least try to justify it." That's how I used to feel; cheated of the amount of space I bought, if only subconciously.

Indeed, the largest box I bought in the last year was the WiC collector's edition, which is about the size of a really heavy-duty Raymond E. Feist novel. And, man, THAT was justified. The original CD, a "recruit your friends" CD, a "making of" CD, a Modern Marvels CD about the Berlin Wall (one where, for some reason, the German interviewees spoke at exactly the same volume as the interpreters, so it became a rather interesting challenge to make any sense from them), an actual piece of the Berlin Wall, along with a cute little certificate, and, of course, the manual. On top of all this, the box is made out of some sort of really heavy card, and covered in fabric. I mean, I got what I paid for, there. That box is pretty much packed.

In fact, had the box been bigger, I might have again felt, though perhaps to a lesser degree, that feeling of being cheated for my space. I'm happy that they keep the boxes as small as they can be. It saves space, and the space it does take up is utilized so much more efficiently that I feel, paradoxically, as if I've got more for my money.

Apologies for the rant

on Nov 25, 2008

Besides which, the psychological impact of buying a huge box and finding a single CD and a small, thin manual inside is pretty damaging. "For all this space," you'd think, "they'd at least try to justify it." That's how I used to feel; cheated of the amount of space I bought, if only subconciously.

I think the OP was referring particulary to the Collector Editions. Meaning there should be many more things besides a cd case and a manual.

on Nov 25, 2008

I think there is a formula to compute the correlation between displaying toys and how often you get laid.

on Nov 25, 2008

Hm. I guess it is just me.

 

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely convinced this is strictly a retail space issue. Two of the games I mentioned (Fallout and Spore) have not only strategy guides but "collector's edition" strategy guides for sale separately. I know for a fact that Spore has a super-skimpy manual. I think it's partly a marketing issue (milking the cow).

on Nov 26, 2008

Publishing in bound paper format costs money, plus the additional shipping and packaging costs. Much cheaper to have manuals in PDF format.

on Nov 26, 2008

Sarissi
Publishing in bound paper format costs money, plus the additional shipping and packaging costs. Much cheaper to have manuals in PDF format.

 

Sarissi,

 

I understand that; it's a pretty straightforward concept in fact. But the reality is that it used to be that you could take for granted that when you bought a game you could expect at least a token printed manual unless you were buying a "jewel case" copy from a big-box retailer.

I like game manuals and I read them. But I don't enjoy scrolling through pdf files nearly as much as I do reading an actual printed document. Yes, I could print a pdf at home, but that's not really the point, is it? There's cheap and then there's ridiculously cheap and I think that this type of scenario falls firmly in the latter camp.

It appears that I'm in the minority, but I find it disheartening and annoying that the trend to publishing games is going in the direction of the least amount of possible anything. Probably the only reason software isn't being sold in paper sleeves is that they wouldn't hold up well in shipping or they might be too easy to steal. Then again, I guess we'll eventually be buying all of software from Impulse, Steam, Direct2drive and other platforms and the tiny amount of shelf space currently allocated to PC games will vanish completely. That's another trend I don't like.

I don't have anything against digital distribution in principle, but you know what? I'd rather buy a physical copy of The Witcher Enhanced Edition and get paper books and a soundtrack CD that I can stick in my car's CD player if I choose to do so as opposed to a digital download that nets me some MP3 and pdf downloads. I guess it's just a personal preference, but I feel like I'm paying x amount of money precisely so that I don't have to burn my own CDs or print my own manual.