G4 has a pretty awesome new segment on X-Play called "The Will Wright Minute." One of my friends there mentioned it to me during PAX, and now they've posted some links to a few of the best episodes on GAF.

In these sixty-second partially-animated segments, the Spore creator holds forth on a variety of completely random topics, from the Care Bears (right) to Russian breakfasts to ants.

In a Will Wright Minute... [NeoGAF]

Long before a torrent of news, reviews, and FAQs made the Internet the go-to repository for information on a particular title, the manual packaged inside the box was our essential primer. They offered a wealth of knowledge on a game's characters, backstory, system requirements and control schemes -- helpful hints to successfully navigating a brand-new experience.

For PC gamers, they once doubled as the game's only source of copy protection, with instructions like “Turn to page 97, and type in the fifth word on the third paragraph” being a recurring annoyance in many titles. If I'd seen things like SecuRom coming, I probably would've complained a lot less.

From Game Career Guide comes an interview with Belinda Van Sickle, president of GameDocs Inc, a professional manual designer with 12 years of experience in the field. It's an interesting look at the ins and outs of an important part of a game-package, and one that's frequently overlooked.

Baldur's Gate 2's manual was 266 pages long. Empire Earth clocked in at 239. Even World of Warcraft's manual had 114 pages. I imagine that scaling back some of these tomes saved quite a few trees, not to mention production costs. But in the age of digital distribution, it's been quite some time since I've had the chance to kick back with a physical introduction to a game... kind of a sad development.

The Professional Game Manual Maker [Game Career Guide]

EA Sports head Peter Moore doesn't believe in suing filesharers, reminding Eurogamer: "It didn't work for the music industry."

"I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," Moore said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers."

"We absolutely should crack down on piracy. People put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their content and deserve to get paid for it. It's absolutely wrong, it is stealing," he continued. "But at the same time I think there are better solutions than chasing people for money."

"I'm not sure what they are, other than to build game experiences that make it more difficult for there to be any value in pirating games."

Image courtesy Microsoft

Moore warns against suing file-sharers [Eurogamer]