Game Design Tutorial

Research about how to design a good Game Tutorial

Project maintained by optus23 Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham

Hi! I am Marc Gálvez Llorens, student at the university CITM Terrassa. This research comes out from the subject Project II, which has instructed by Ricard Pillosu.

Check my Github Repository Check also my power point presentation

Why Tutorials have bad reputation?

Tutorials are probably one of the most important things in the experience of your game, and guess what… NOBODY CARES!!

Well, that’s not true at all, there is games like Half life2, Mario, Megman, Spiderman that cares a lot, but we are gonna speak about it later.

The principal reason why a lot of companies fail desining Tutorials is because their Production Plan is basically centered in other tasks and are not taken into account at How to Teach Player and at the end, designers don’t have time to think and design a good tutorial. Is soo easy to put a Pop-up that tells how to play, but is not effective at all. So if we put the tutorial design at the beggin of the Gantt Chart, your duties will be think how the level are going to be designed to create a system to teach player without stop the gameplay.

Look at this:

Who reads this? This Pop-ups or Game Controller schemes can’t be in these games! They break the gameplay and stay player immersive away. But obviously there are a lot of games that are allowed to use this resource that are going to be explained later as well.

This happens when developers thinks that it’s very hard to find and put every controller and keyboard prompt in his game. But that can frustrate player and it’s so important that your game doesn’t have this errors, because if player can’t continue, you failed as a designer. That’s because I’m gonna give you a totally free pack of prompts assets in the followin link:

Teach Gradually Through Experience

Think about the Mechanic

There are several questions that you must be able to answer about every mechanic of your game:

Well, those four questions sound very simple but, there’s a lot to explain and the player must think that information about every single action in a few milliseconds.

And you could think, in Chess the player don’t has to think faster than the others to win. Yes, but that’s not the point. In chess you can prepare the strategy with time, but the basic mechanics of that strategy (Queen movement, Tower movement, etc) have to be thought as faster as you can to resolve it in your mind and improve you strategy.

Learning Curve

Let’s talk about the learning curve. To teach player your game mechanics it’s necessary to situate him in the context, for example if you are going to use the “crouch and shot” connected mechanic in the minute 50, why are you going to show player at the beginning with all the rest of the mechanics? That doesn’t make sense, the player will make a mess. So, theach him gradualy, step by step introducin him with no hurries.

Let’s see an example:

Here, the developers of Mega man wanted to show a unique mechanic thorough the experience, the player see the platform functionality and is been anticipated. The next time megaman touches a plataform like that, you as a player will know how these things act.

In conclusion, do not tell the player what to do, teach him a quarter part of the thing, and he himself will discover the rest of the game. He has to learn lots of dynamics for himself, so, give immediate feedback if player has understood it correctly every time. Clear goals are obviously necessary to situate the player in context, no ramblings. Every game has to be interactive, that means learn by playing. As a Chinese philosofer named Confucious said:

“Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three”.

So, theres a few games that shows how to play, before the game starts! What does it mean? It’s basically an interactive main menu and… thats correct! Is an strange way to teach player but, viable. Here is an example:

When player has to “dash” or “jump” to acced levels, and this knowledge are gonna be used later to play the game, it’s nice because that means player has used and acquired this usable mechanics. This usualy happens in Arcade Games like Toto Temple, the game on the picture, but there’s other creative ways to set this in other game genders.

Game Experience

Now we almost know how to teach gradually, but what about the “throw experience” term? That’s simple, if pop-ups stops the inmersion, we have to teach player by other methods like “learning by example” or teach player involving him with scene elements that show (don’t tell) what to do. Now, we are going to see a curous example about to games that pretend to teach exacty the same thing but with differents methods:

As you see, in Dead Space, your character has to dismember the enemies shooting them right in ahead. How do you theach the player this mechanic? Well, if you don’t have time to think a creative way to teach player what to do, you just gonna put some text in a wall to tell (don’t show) player: “Cut off yout limbs” on a white board, followed by a pop-up that tells you how to cut off their limbs, followed by audio log that basically tells you the same thing, folowed by another audio log that tells you the exact same thing and FINALLY a Pop-up called “dismemberment” that… tells you the same thing! Thats Horrible. I mean, put some blood text in the wall giving you some hints is it okay, buy spam information about the exactlly same thing its awkward.

The thing is that a few years later, 4 years to be right, a little game come out called Half Life2, that did the exact same thing, and the first thing they do is put an image in your mind of a dimembered body by showing you this:

And when you try to keep moving, you see a table stopping your path, so, you jump on it and… 2 saw blades appear in you perspective vision. So, when you pick up one of them, instantly a zombi appears in your first view, and your first reaction is to press the fire button, so you shoot zombie and see what effective this is. THATS a good Tutorial Design, Valve teach player without pop-us, audios, wall text, and the most important is that they do it in a half time that Dead Space do.

There is more examples about the good Design showed gradually by experience of Half Life 2:

In all thouse cases the game could told player: “Be carefull with this enemies, or combine explosive barrels with this enemiy to make’em explode” but, no, the conclusion is: don’t trate your players like morons.

Exercice 1

Let’s do an easy exercise to beef up what we learned. Imagine that the video below is the beginin cinematic of a game, describe how and what uses to teach player what is happening, and define the consequences of it. Is a good game tutorial design?

Video

Answer: In fact, yes is a good introduction design. The video show player one simple but pillar thing thowgh experience, what is gonna happen if the protagonists do the same error as the actually infected guy. So starting from this, the protagonists adquire de dynamic of dancing to pretend beeing infeted to avoid dancing zombies.

How the player’s mind works

The human mind tends to create patterns for absolutely ALL, let’s have an interactive exemple to see that in practice.

How many faces do you see here? The certain is that there is 13 faces designed to be found, but following the pattern that your mind autobuild for your necessity, you can see lots of extra faces not designed for. What if I show this:

The answer obvioulsy is 3 (beeing creative, the reflex of your face in the screen could count as 4). But, you see how easy and boring was this compared with the picture showed before? Well, that’s because the patterns that your mind created was to easy and you has not apparently a reward for this, because its obvious and anyone can do it and that make you seem like the other, not especial.

In the other hand, if I show you this:

You will probabbly frustrate after 1h searching faces, so the patterns that your mind create for understend the mechanism to find faces of this picture, will be insufficient. That gonna make player rage quit in less that 5 minutes. Do not mix up with games like Super meat boy or Dark Souls, that games are difficult but not unfair. And has one of the best learning curves of all time. The thing is find a balance that makes player’s mind make a minimum effort to engage the player.

There are game like “Trap Adventure 2” that are difficult and unfair, this is bad design? No, if your selling points are all enfocated to be an unfair challenge, in other words, you are preventing player that game is gonna be. The name itself, says it all.

As designers we must find the best way to teach a minimal part of how start creating that way to create patterns, as we saw with the faces, the game Tic Tac Toe is so fun in the beginning, but a boring game in the long run. The patterns that our brain creates in Tic Tac Toe when you have been playing for a long time are obvious, therefore, the game stops entertaining.

## Emergent Gameplay

So, once time you know how to theach patterns player to improve the gameplay, almost all games need EMERGENT gameplay. What does this means? Easy, it means give player a lot of posibilities to reach the same objective, in Zelda breath of the Wild you can kill an enemy by different ways, didn’t you? Generally these games are Sand Box, like Skyrim, Whatch dogs or Red Dead Redemtion.

That’s it, create a way to make player think about what mechanics are gonna use to kill this set of bats and what mechanics are you gonna use to kill that big skeleton finnal boss. If the mechanic are always the same, according to what we have learned, the pattern will be monotonnous, in other words, so easy to create, and finally the game boring.

The change is this:

to this:

But does all games need emergent gameplay? We are gonnna talk it later.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer section is the definition of emergent gameplay, because all games (or the 99,99%) are designed to be reached, to let player win. But in multiplayer gameplay this is not even true! For exemple, battle royal has designed to only let win the 1% of all the players in the same match, so, EVERY SINGLE play will be different. You see now how this is the paradise of the emergent gameplay? Every single human act differently, that’s why the multiplayer si famous. How to introuduce player to the multiplayer section? Easy:

The easy way to teach player how to play in multiplayer is playing the single player, don’t you? But of course there are game that don’t have single player, like overwatch. So, he uses a previous “singleplayer” tutorial introducing player the game pillar mechanics gradually with one character. And you gonna think… what about the popole who know how to play, has to play the turorial? No, it will be boring for you, so, all kind of tutorial like Overwatch must be skippeable. Also, games like Wow are totaly a surprise to Game Tutorial Design, but that are gonna be talked in the “Niche, and types of Target” section.

Why is Tetris a mathematically perfect game design that requires no tutorial?

Tetris has one of the best designs created ever. That game doesen’t need TUTORIAL, well, the real thing is that the whole game is a perfect tutorial. At the beginning, the pieces fall down relatively slow to let player think about what to do whit them, the mechanics are so so so simples, move and rotate, that’s it. Every single person has a minimum of TOC inside, so if player knows how to move and rotate pieces, why shouldn’t be ordered? Thats how Tetris teach you indirectly.

That’s not all, also Tetris has a powerfull emergent gameplay! With only two mechanics, tetris gives you the opportunity to go A->B in multiples ways.

Other games like Tetris?

Games like Osu, Geometry Dash or Stepmania don’t have emergent gameplay, why? That’s because these games has one simple objective, survive and reach the end with less mistakes as possible. And… this games have a bad Design? Absolutely no, the goal here is simple, dominate the only basic mechanic as much as you can to did the best. That’s why there is no emergent gameplay, because the player only has one way to win, but the thing is dominate that game.

Safe Space

Is it obvious that videogames need a safe space to tech player? I think no, in lots of games there is a safe space to let player try mechanics and test all buttons, but also, in the other hand are game that use other ways to enhance player knowledge and learning curve.

If you ever tryed to play pokemon, at the beggining you can’t acced to the high grass because you don’t have your frendly Pokemon, that’s a beatyful way to teach people gradualy and let player a very big safe space to do whatever before learn the fight mechanics.

But what about this:

This is the definition of teach player as of tension, the freefall or the train coming down are two ways to tell player, if you don’t act NOW, you are gonna die, so players will pretend to leant as fast as they can to survive. In conclusion, there are two methods to start teaching:

Extrem cases of tutorial

Mario, Portal, Spiderman, Megaman… are extream tutorial games, that means 90% of the game is about “Teach Gradually Through Experience”. In this case we are going to talk about every step that makes mario in the beginning. This Game example is a masterpiece of level design, everything you see in the first level teaches you to play without telling you absolutely nothing.

Super Mario Bros, example

The first thing you find is a simple screen, with a small background. Sooner or later you will see that you have hands and that there are buttons, you will discover that by doing it you can do things. Once time you move around, you will realize that you are located on the left side of the screen, therefore, as an invisible wall does not allow you to pass, you will go to the right.

We move to the right, and the first thing we see is a blinking question block that prompts us to go to it.

But, just upon arrival, the next thing that appears on the screen is a monster with a face of hostility. It moves to the left, that makes us go back to the invisible wall we mentioned. We die Since the beginning of the level is close, the punishment is not very big, so we try again.

Now it’s time to try new things. The player sees that there is a big red button (NES), and that when pressed the player jumps. So, he tries to jump on top of the enemy and kills him. WUALA!

When jumping on one of the blinking blocks we see that a strange mushroom with the same form of the enemie comes out in motion. The mushroom falls and teaches us that objects have free fall, bounces and goes towards us. We try to jump into it like the enemy before, but we see that it makes our character’s grow.

This game is very functional, every single level of Super Mario Bros is like this steps, all tech player by experience.

80’s 90’s Games resources

That question that im gonna ask is a little bit philosofical. Are Super Mario Bros a good tutorial design game due to the few resources? I mean, at the beginning of the Game Industry, games like Mega man has to use every single pixel has to show the entire game without a lot of resources because they were limited, so the designers spent a lot of time thinking about how build the level to show player without text… Well, surely it will be yes. But thanks to this, now we have the games that we have, I think.

Niche, and types of Target

MMORPG

As we know, MMORPG are games designed to the grind, the target of this companies are types of person that likes role playing and farming trough repetitives patterns. But, as we said before the repetition of the same pattern makes the game boring, why these game have millions of players?

Because there are competitive people that, to earn a “Legendary Reward” can be hour killing the same boss. It’s easy, this target, this kind of people exists, and companies like Blizzard know this. Well, let’s talk about how tutroial works on that multiplayer platforms. As we said before, the MMORPG games have a peculiar way to teach players. Basically the designers of this games know the target to which it is addressed the game, so, why waste time and money designin a “dynamic tutorial” as we saw in Mario, if the target are going to play anyway. If the company made an epic tutorial, a lot of new people will enter, but in the long run these people don’t gonna love the grind style and get out. In conclusion, if games like WOW had dynamic tutorials they will lose time and money.

Shooter and Action rol Games

The shooters or role-playing games seeks to enhance level design. As we have commented before, this is the perfect kind of games that uses Showing Gradually Through Experience. Other kind of target that uses this are Roguelike or Soulslike. There’s some examples:

In Skyrim, player has to do parkour because, a dragon is threatening.

Here in Hollow Knight, there’s a big initial safe space to try all buttons.

Same tutorial for Advanced and Rookie people?

In fact, the tutorial is the same, but for the type of player it doesn’t feel like the same. For example, if there’s a fallen tree on the road and designers want to transmet you that player has to jump or crawl to avoid it, the advanced player will pass in over 3s, but the rookie will stay a little bit more.

So, don’t do large unskippable tutorials because the advanced player will know how to play before the tutorial, either played all saga games or whatever. Make an experience level design and let players learn through experience.

Exercice 2

Put into practice what you have learned before: -First of all, place the tutorial design on your Gantt Chart. -Think about what kind of game you have and what techniques you will use to teach the player. -Finally, apply them for each mechanic if your game.

This picture is about the first room of our Game, Final Fantasy mystery world by Polar Path. As we can see in Super Mario Bros, there’s nothing more than one side to go, in this case the opened door. So, the player will try to move around and reach the exit.

This is the second room of our game, where the player is supposed to learn how move diagonally. Here, the player will see at first time an enemy walking on the top (2nd floor), anticipate player is important. He will learn about what black tiles, hooked out of level, does and finally the enemy will do the action, move diagonal. This event will be near the zone where the player has to do the diagonal pass. The enemy will walk until the other black tile in the 2nd floor.

This is where I got the information from:

School of Game Design

GDC

Leyendas y Videojuegos

Art of Game Design

Theory of Fun

Spider-Man: Attention To Detail

Gamasutra

Egoraptor