All of this in just the first 50 seconds of the game. This is when you start controlling your character, and one of the important mechanisms and lesson of the series is taught to you: you are going to climb plenty of ledges, and every time you do, things are going to break, but Drake’s tenacity never will. The game switches to a cutscene to give you a short rest period after which it teaches you the other gameplay mechanics like shooting, reloading and throwing a grenade by tossing you back to the scene which you thought you wouldn’t be returning to so soon. This scene is actually a small segment of one of the best sequences of the game, The Train Wreck.

 

Many game designers in the last few years have realised tutorials are enjoyed more when they are integrated into the story rather than unfolding them as a separate entity. It caters well to both an experienced and an inexperienced audience.

 

But this does not mean you get hurled into this game and get knocked out if you make a mistake like in Dark Souls. While the chances of you dying in the first chapter of Uncharted 2 are very slim, it manages to create an illusion where you are forced to respond quickly by creating a false sense of urgency. Not once did I feel like the tutorial gameplay broke the immersion.

 

But does that mean my previous understanding of a tutorial just got invalidated? What if a game has a lot of interactions idiosyncratic to the series and you have no choice but to patronize the players and hand-hold to better prepare the player? Let’s face it, some of us belong to an exploratory mindset category, and we prefer pressing every button and interacting with every object in the environment to see how it works rather than being instructed by the game. Being patronized is a buzzkill.

 

There is research that compares pedagogical, accidental and non-pedagogical learning in terms of how much time children spend exploring a toy. The children who were given no instructions on the toy spent more time playing it as compared to children who explored a new mechanic introduced to them through instructions or the instructor unveiled a feature by making it seem like an accident. [1]

 

Doesn’t the above research make it evident that designing a tutorial that does not appeal to an exploratory learning audience can hurt your game and limit the time players spend on it? So should players be tossed into a scene and expected to learn the mechanics based on their curiosity to explore the environment?

If that’s the case, what happens to the interactions that may not be discovered through exploration?     

 

Let me take you through a game that ingeniously used a combination of the pedagogical and exploratory method. For this next part, I would encourage you to tap into your toddler self.

 

Fallout 3

The game exploits the fact that your character starts off as a newborn learning important physical skills like crawling and walking which is analogous to the child-like nature of a tutorial.  When you are born, you get to pick your gender that introduces the interaction mechanic with other characters. It actually makes sense to take it slow at the beginning, and nobody would question the pace of learning things because you are a child growing up. You then turn one, and the game encourages you to get out of the playpen area and interact with objects (exactly what little me would have done). You are then shown a glimpse of stats as a storybook called S.P.E.C.I.A.L (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. Yes, it is an acronym) which is an important rule set you follow later in the game. Because the storybook is the only major event at that age, it is easier for you to recognise it when you see it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your mind now begins to compartmentalise interactions by your character’s age. Because of these associations, the in-depth processing of your brain when you try to recall an interaction would be faster. Fast forward to when you turn 10, you receive your first ever pip-boy in the game and real life (if you haven’t played fallout before). The overseer says, “Get used to it”. At this point, the player gets the hint that the pip-boy might be something that’s going to need some practice to master and it’s so pivotal that it will be with you for the rest of the game. You then skip years a couple more times and learn a bit more about the gameplay. By this point in time, the players find the vault really dull. It is uneventful and claustrophobic.