Why Do We STILL Hate Tutorials? - YouTube by Adam Millard
Teaching people how to play videogames is a subject that’s gotten more and more attention in recent years. Where once videogame tutorials existed as a single boring training room or an incomprehensible list of the controls, now videogame tutorials span epic quests, cinematic adventures and concise, easy-to-digest lessons… So why, in spite of all these improvements do tutorials still not work for many different games?
Try as they might, game designers can’t seem to get us up to grips with games through just tutorials alone, and so it falls to The Architect to dive into wormholes, defend ancients and explore strange new lands to try and find out why this is the case. As it turns out, we’ve been neglecting a bunch of different ways to teach videogames that tutorials have been overshadowing for years, each with their own strengths, and their own weaknesses.
Adam argues that tutorials are disliked because they don’t work: teaching mechanics don’t teach strategy or some games like Stardew Valley need wikis to be able to play effectively.
Tutorials are great for:
- Simple interactions
- Objective rules
- Learning your ABCs
They are bad for:
- Large volumes of data in simple way
- Building on existing knowledge
- Vague concepts that require more intuitive knowledge
Tutorial alternatives
Discovery based learning
Information through exploration
Good at:
- Making learning a fun challenge
- Creating knowledge that sticks
Portal is a great example of doing this: it teaches things little by little through small, constrained challenges, forcing players to discover the solutions.
Bad at:
- Players can fail at learning from abstracted teaching tools
- Universal application
Research based learning
Flexible access to information
It can be frustating to play games where you need to learn all the systems by yourself. For example in Binding of Isaac, players don’t know what items do until they pick them up, sometimes leading to bad builds and more frustration.
Good at:
- Developing a broad knowledge base
- Empowering players
Transparent access to information can help learn these kind of games without having to rely on wikis.
Bad at:
- Deeper understanding
- Practical skills
Acclimation based learning
Passive conveyance of information
Gradually introducing new concepts and teaching players, layer by layer.
Mario games use Kishōtenketsu mechanic to teach player mechanics of the game.
Good at:
- Intuitive understanding
- Unobtrusive education
X-Com kills almost all of your rookies in tutorial and then offers cheap replacement, teaching you that losing your units is not the end of the world (or game).
Bad at:
- Applicability to all games
- Teaching information at fast pace
With all these trade-offs, what to do?
Combining multiple sources and approaches from the previous is the key to teaching players effectively.
Players can also start learning by starting with simpler games in the same genre and using what they have learned in more complex games. This is a form of Piggybacking.
Different people also learn different ways.