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Tutorials: Train or drain?

Written by Mike Holmes on the 16th of April 2012 at 15:33

I'm getting fed up with overly complicated tutorials.

Finicky controls, vague instructions, boring text, uninspiring presentation. It seems like many tutorials are an afterthought nowadays; sewn on at the last minute with little consideration for the poor gamer who must endure the repetitive, mind-numbing process of being spoon-fed simple instructions as if they were a dribbling idiot.

Of course there are some dribbling idiots out there, and for them this handholding is often necessary, but why must the rest of us have to suffer because of that? Why can't they have a Dribbling Idiots Tutorial Mode, so the rest of us can get something better, something all together more satisfying.

Teaching us how to play a game needn't be a chore for developers. Surely our first introduction to an interactive entertainment experience should be exciting and inviting one, not a cumbersome and tiring chore that makes us want to dig our eyeballs out of their sockets with a leaky ballpoint pen. Developers should be engaging us in fresh new ways, letting us experiment with the new tools at our disposal, instead of falling back on tried and tested methods. Don't insult our intelligence.

Beat-em ups have got it right.

Here's two fighters. Here's a list of their moves. Want them to block? That's fine. Want them to fight back? That's fine too. Want them to stand helpless as you smash their faces in with a giant sword? Of course you can. Everything's fine!

Fighters like Soul Calibur V allow gamers to engage with the core content of their games, and in doing so encourage experimentation and exploration. Could this kind of ethos be brought over to different genres of games? Of course it could. It probably wont, but that's because creating interesting and exciting tutorials would cost more money. Call me a cynic.

I feel that there is a real opportunity being missed here. I remember playing Grand Theft Auto 3 for the first time. I didn't learn how to play that game by doing a tutorial. I took control of Claude, marched out into the world and started reaping devastation on the people of Liberty City with a sniper rifle and a cheat code that gave me a rocket launcher and an armoured vehicle to drive. I learned how to play the game by having fun, by exploring the world created by Rockstar, and when I was done farting around, I got on with the story proper.

There are plenty of games out there that do a perfectly good job of showing you the ropes. Tutorials can be non-intrusive introductions to narrative and gameplay. The start of the Gears of War series is an excellent example of this. I also loved the assault course at the beginning of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Adapting appropriate content is a great way of gently introducing a gamer to a foreign time or place.

But there are far too many games out there that don't put the effort in. They just throw boring text boxes at you, and force you to synthesize the experience of playing their game in some kind of alien context. It's disjointing, and it makes picking up the basics for some games a real pain in the donkey.

We've all played our fair share of poor introductions. I doubt I'm alone in thinking that there are far too many games out there that let themselves down by having sloppily conceived tutorials bolted onto them at lastminute.com. Sadly it'll never change, there's very little reason to do so other than to make us happier, and there are some men in black suits out there who couldn't give a crap how happy you are, all they care is that you've bought their game. Making sure you love every minute of it is far from their concern. The bastards.

HQ