How to How-to: a guide to How-to's
Tutorials are tricky. Like, not playing them. Playing them should be easy. But designing them so players aren't just being held back AND making sure players understand the things you are trying to teach them. That's the tricky bit.
I'm not only referring to that bit at the start of the game that tells you the controls. When I say tutorial, I also include the bits of help the game can provide the player to ensure they get the experience the creators intended. Like, tool tips and explanations of stats and such.
Tutorials, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Also like people, they sometimes don't exist. Also like people, some are more widely liked than others. I'm going to go through some different types of tutorial, and tell you what's good and bad about them. That sure sounds like fun, doesn't it.
First and foremost, the tutorial that doesn't exist. Some games, depending on what they want the player to experience, decide to skip the part where they teach the player how to play. Games like this tend to be either too simple to require a tutorial, or purposely hard, and just refuse to give the player any help. There are of course some positives to this method. A lack of tutorial or indeed, any help at all, encourages players to form a community to solve the problems together. With the rise of digital distribution comes the death of the paper game manual. Hell, even boxed release are starting to come without the old school manuals. Nowadays it's more advertising and legal notices. Oh, and those stupid download codes. Side note, all that says to me is "Hey, we could have put this in the game, there isn't really a reason we didn't, but if you want it, you can download it". Anyway, depending on the game, a lack of tutorial can be ideal. Dark Souls' tutorial basically just tells you what buttons to press. However, as many of the mechanics in that game are situational and context based, the effectiveness of just telling the player what buttons to press becomes less and less. This is okay in a game like Dark Souls as the intention was to be difficult. To this day, I have never met anyone who has beaten the game without looking something up. To that end, this is an effective way of handling tutorial, but it wont work in every game.
Pictured: A helpful tip for playing Dark Souls
The next tutorial I'd like to talk about is the controls screen. This is stupid. Don't do this. Like I said, mechanics are contextual. Giving the player a list of the buttons they need to press and telling them what they do is all well and good, until they actually start playing the game. Players may memorize those controls, but that doesn't mean they'll know when to use them. A static screen with a picture of a controller doesn't teach anyone how to play the game. It simply teaches one to control the game. Control and play are not the same thing.
"Great. Now I know everything" - No one
Probably my favourite tutorial in any game is the one in Farcry 3: Blood Dragon. I don't exactly what to call it, so we'll call it the diegetic tutorial. In this method, the tutorial is presented as real to the character. By that I mean it is not simply something that the player is experiencing, but the player character as well. You see this a lot in games like the Uncharted series, where the story is presented cinematically. Something like midway through a cutscene, the game will prompt the player to press the melee button. In the cutscene, the character will punch someone, thereby teaching the player the melee button AND that it punches people. Simple really. I mention Blood Dragon because it used the classic method of interrupting gameplay with a textbox explaining the mechanics, BUT the character was also experiencing the textboxes. The frustration of Rex Powercolt being interrupted by these textboxes (as they're just teaching him how to be him...and move and stuff) mirrors that of players already familiar with the game, and helps to alleviate it, while also setting up the comedic tone of the whole game.
Yep. Okay. Yes. Thanks. Thank you. I get it. Alright. Uh-huh. Right. Good.
Tutorials are a balancing act. There is a fine line between teaching and patronizing. You don't want your game to treat the player like an idiot...unless you want the game to treat the player like and idiot. The point is, there are no hard and fast rules for creating tutorials. You need to establish what message you want your game to send and design a tutorial that fits in with the game. Otherwise, people either wont understand the game, or wont care to try.
