Comment by scottjackson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottjackson | Hacker News Reader

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The first few panels (World 1-1 in Super Mario Bros.) reminded me of this: http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=465

I love having any excuse to share this link.

<quote>

the big question of level design - and i mean that every level design lesson i ever write will be a response to this question - is: how do i teach the player these rules? an unfortunate trend in contemporary games is to spell out every detail in a hand-holding “tutorial” session at the outset of a game - unfortunate because it shows both a great deal of contempt for the player’s intuition and a lack of confidence in the designer’s own design. but more than that, it’s a design failure because it tells the player the rules instead of allowing her to learn them.

what if the first level of the game were laid out in such a way that the player could learn the rules simply by playing through it, without needing to be told them outright?

</quote>

The article's a critique of World 1-1 being the perfect tutorial level for Super Mario Bros. Go read it.

As wonderful as World 1-1 is for teaching Mario, I think that "Tell the player what you want them to do, allow them to see it succeed, then let them apply it" will crush "Let the player explore the 'physics' of your world, hope they proceed" in terms of task success. And these days, we can measure that intuition.

Artistic intuitions of game designers have been measured in the crucible of conversion rates and been found wanting.

Does anyone here sell applications? Play the first five minutes of WoW. Notice how they guide you along by the nose and make it easy for you to succeed and feel awesome doing it. All applications should do that.

I think WoW has to do that because it's a very complicated interface with roots in the text-based MUDs of old (for example the combat log). I don't consider it an example of good UI/tutorial design.

Valve's Portal is how game tutorials should be done in my opinion. It introduces an unfamiliar game element (the wormhole gun) gradually: first you walk through pre-made wormholes, then you get to shoot one of the two wormhole entrances, and only then both of them. Even when you have the full portal gun, you get taught the various tricks (like accelerating by falling into a portal) one at a time. None of this is explained by a wall of text, rather, the level design itself suggests the only possible solution. This is all done so subtly that it hardly feels like a tutorial at all. In fact, for the player, the levels just get gradually harder and require you to combine more and more of the skills and tricks you've figured out earlier.

It works brilliantly, and makes for a much stronger experience than any of the text or voice based game tutorials I've seen so far.

Agreed.

Related: playing through Portal with the developer commentary on is really interesting. For anyone who's interested in this stuff, it's a must-listen.

Likewise with Left 4 Dead, another Valve game.

the text-based MUDs of old

Hey now, text-based MUDs are not yet obsolete. There are quite a few folks out there playing them. Most often, they are free, they do not put viruses or DRM on your computer, and they work for the folks who are trying to play online computer games out in the boonies with low bandwidth.

Speaking of text-vs-graphics game eras, reminds me of my first impressions of Diablo:

"Oh, this is like NetHack-------++!"

One thing's for sure though; they ain't new-fangled!

I definitely clocked a lot of hours on Magrathea MUD back in 2003-ish on my 486 over dialup. Ah, memories!

> Artistic intuitions of game designers have been measured in the crucible of conversion rates and been found wanting.

Artistic intuitions aren't a factor. Game design is heavily playtested and even split tested.

Being led by the arm is fine and it makes people do things, but then they forget how to do them without guidance! They're learning that a feature exists, not how to do it and apply it for themselves.

That WoW example isn't there to make players learn how to use features. It's there to sell the game: "Some day, you'll be able to do all this"

That's kind of what you're saying but you're not making the distinction between teaching the player skills and selling the product. Miyamoto is talking about the former.

I think the more intuitive and simple the game is, the less amount of "tutorials" you will need. And if your game is as simple and intuitive as Mario, you don't need a tutorial at all.

For more complex games, such as WoW, you obviously need another approach. The tell - show - try you describe sounds like a good way of doing that.

That might be true for task completion, but the feeling of discovery when you figure out how a game world works is far more fun.

The spelled out tutorials are a necessary consequence of a free-to-play model with lots of competition. If I pay $50-100 for a game, I will spend the time to learn it. If a free game on facebook is complicated or confusing there are 100s of others that will immediately satisfy with no learning curve.

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