Going "green" seems to be the theme lately in the gaming world. After Harrison Ford teamed up with Talkie to produce a soon-to-be-released "green" Facebook game, EA is doing their part to help the environment.

The publisher has confirmed they will no longer provide printed manuals, but will instead have a digital manual available on the game disc instead.  It will be easy to access as you will simply have to select "Manual" from the game's main menu. 

Their first digitized manual was released with their game, Fight Night Champion, which simply contained the game disc, an online pass code slip, as well as a warranty pamphlet.  The pamphlet reads, "Thank you for supporting our efforts to significantly reduce paper in our products."

It's doubtful that this will impact many gamers as no one really reads the instruction manuals anymore anyway, but for the collectors out there who proudly display their SNES cartridges while boasting their having a mint copy of the Instruction Manual, sad days may be heading your way.

With Ubisoft having already adopted the no-paper-manual idea, and EA following suit, it looks like this idea is here to stay, much to the chagrin of collectors.