Can we Improve Tutorials for Complex Games?

1.6M views · 5 years ago · explainer · intermediate · evergreen

Game Maker's Toolkit asks whether tutorials for complex games can be done better. The video looks at ways of introducing mechanics and information to players.

HN recommends it, alongside other videos on teaching players, for anyone thinking about introducing a game's content in a sensible order.

“GMTK recently did one about tutorial too, worth watching”

2 comments from Hacker News

r
@rspoerri2024 · in “The quest for a Wiki-less game”
The problem is that two different systems collide (in the example of Terraria). Having an open world game and a learning curve for the things the user needs to understand to progress. Looking up informations in a wiki most often happens when the game gets boring or overly complex for the player to have fun (check Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow theory on that). Games that do that well, such as Zelda (which does this very well) introduce new mechanics and scenarios in an very iterative way. By having a linear structure. Other games use AI to control the gameplay flow. A linear level structure could look like this: A & B are different types of enemies | A (new enemy) | A,A (more complex situation) | B (new enemy) | B,B (more complex situation) | A,B (new combination) | A,A,B,B (complex new combination) | ... This method works with lots of systems, such as level design elements, enemies or construction of ingame elements. The problem is that procedural content generation and open worlds make it hard for the game designer to introduce the content to the player in this order. interesting videos on this topic: - link (Half-Life 2's Invisible Tutorial) - link (Director AI for Balancing In-Game Experiences) - ▶ this video (Can we Improve Tutorials for Complex Games?)
RecommendsView on HN
t
@thrdbndndn2021 · in “The UX of video game tutorials”
GMTK recently did one about tutorial too, worth watching : ▶ this video (GMTK was already mentioned in the article, but for a different video.)
RecommendsView on HN