We've all (probably) been there. Some game you're playing or new software you've acquired forces you through some unskippable tutorial and you just want so badly to just go right on ahead. You might think, "Man, that's annoying!" But have you ever thought about why this is a thing that happens so often? I of course mean something beyond just trying to teach you how to play or use something. I can't really speak for any actual development team out there, but I get the feeling that in some cases the answer is very simple. It's because many people do not read when it's provided as an option. If someone is not forced to read something, he or she usually will not do it. The fact is that people are generally just impatient beings and in some cases simply oblivious as to what they're actually looking at.

I noticed how painfully obvious that was around when I first released that Purple Coin game. Every page that had a download link somewhere told you how the game was supposed to be played. In game you had on-screen instruction prompts. One of them appeared at the start of every round that told you that you could press a button to bring up help, of which a grand total of one person actually spotted. The rest of the instructions popped up on screen whenever you had some action available to you. They weren't in any way hidden, but people sure did tend to miss them! Most recorded footage of the game from NCFC 2012 and before demonstrated that pretty well; people never knew what the game actually was from the start. (To be clear: I have nothing against the fine folks that were kind enough to stream gameplay or otherwise record it. I'm only noting the things that I've observed. It's also the easiest example to write about; there are many others such as general Let's Play videos I could go searching for and cite but I don't think that is necessary.)

So how does one go about trying to get people to play a game or use some software correctly if they aren't going to do any homework first? After all, that ever-important first impression could be hanging in the balance. The obvious choice is to force them to. Don't let them pass X goal or go to Y menu if they haven't done something that would indicate that they either read what needed to be read or knew what they needed to know. But surely there's a better alternative? I've been pretty much unable to actually think of one. Designing something to be self explanatory isn't really an option; if it can be goofed up it probably will. With that in mind, do you think you can come up with helpful practices when designing for a non-reading generation? Are brute force and just letting whatever happens happen truly the only ways?


Consider this a draft topic for one I might post in the Developer Discussion forum on MFGG, and also simply a notepad for my thoughts on the matter. I think this looks a bit too mean right now, though it is how I honestly think.
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Edited by: Miles, Jan 26th, 2014 @ 11:55 am

Fujiko's awesome Pokemon comic comes to mind.

An interesting topic to ponder. I must admit that despite possessing excellent reading skills when I want to use them, I sometimes choose not to use them when I swim quickly through uninteresting reading material. And every once in a while, I miss something interesting when I'm reading at a fast rate. That's not to mention the people who play your games who might be very young or non-native English speakers (or, heaven forbid, those who just don't like reading).

I'm not sure of the best way to handle this. In some games - for example, simple platformers that use only the arrow keys and a single button - where designing formal tutorials is a waste of time. A simple F1 help screen might suffice (but if you're going to go that route, you'd better give some kind of indication that the F1 key exists, because not everyone bothers to do that). I can also think of some games - namely, those with novel gameplay or offbeat control schemes - that benefit greatly from in-game tutorials. If that's the case, it helps to make them fun (so fickle players won't quit when facing the prospective of a long, unskippable tutorial), integrate them into gameplay (without feeling artificial or tacked-on), and deliver information only when it's needed (avoid long explanations of how to use skills or items that aren't available yet).

Thanks for your response. I was thinking mostly about the "those who just don't like reading" section of folks, though I probably should have acknowledged the others somewhere in there. Oops.

I think it's really good that you playtested your game and got this feedback. From my opinion, I think you've taken the feedback which raised an issue with your game, but then asked the wrong question about how to solve it. Now, from my understanding, you had instructions in your game, but these were the issues raised with it:
a) They were hidden. I know you say they weren't, but they were. People expect instruction to be in-game, not around the download links or anything like that. It was something they had to look for underneath other buttons and such, or in some cases not even in the game, but outside it.
b) The instructions consisted of text which many players either didn't bother to read or didn't understand what was being written.

Now, I don't think the problem is that 'how to we write stuff to a generation people who can't read' like you describe. Most people have reading comprehension (though this might be different when communicating to non-native speakers and young children), but they also instinctively know when they shouldn't have to read something. I think a better question that you should be asking is, "How do I better communicate the instructions to the player?"

Have a look at this video from Extra Credits who cover how to do this better, mainly in the form of tutorials:
http://youtu.be/BCPcn-Q5nKE

It would also be worth studying how other games manage to do it. I've personally found both Portal and Candy Crush (yes, Candy Crush) to be brilliant examples of tutorials/communication done right and they're both pretty easy to get a copy of and study (Portal is cheap and fairly quick to play through, and Candy Crush is free). They both take the idea that you gradually introduce new mechanics to the game and teach people to use it as they go along. Also, you can turn on developer's commentary in Portal and here the developers actually discuss how they approached designing every single puzzle and mechanic which is really helpful and interesting.

So yeah, hope that helps, and good luck with your future games!

Also, could you link your game, I'd be curious to play it to see the sorts of things people describe in action.
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Edited by: fantanoice, Feb 9th, 2014 @ 6:40 pm

Thanks a ton for your response. Seriously, I appreciate it quite a lot. That video was excellent. I see very well the things I goofed up with and what I should have done differently. Kind of a shame that I won't be able to apply it to but one more game, though. After my current project is finished (if it gets to that point), I'm pretty much quitting.

Here is final version of the game I spoke of, The Purple Coin: http://www.mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=2&id=28372

Important note: Previous versions lacked that unskippable one-time-only text tutorial at the beginning. Other things relevant to what I'm been talking about have always been there: on-screen button prompts, F1 help menu, as well as in indication that the F1 help menu exists; though I admit that the indicator fades away far too fast and in most levels is semi-hidden by the coloration of the text. Oops.

Portal for sure, definitely. But I'm not so sure about Candy Crush. A friend of my dad's came to me about not being able to get passed something. It was evident that she was having one of the same problems with that game that people were having with mine. On-screen instructions were being ignored or were not obvious enough. The problem was she wasn't clearing away enough of some kind of block, which the game will show you with icons at the end of a round. That went completely unnoticed until I pointed it out, and it covered like a quarter of the screen. That's the kind of thing I've been wondering how to get around when designing.

I have not actually played that game myself, though, so I have no idea what the tutorials in that game are like.

In the case of Candy Crush, I usually group the levels into groups of around 10. The first couple will introduce a new mechanic and have some reasonably simply levels to teach you how they work mechanically. After that, you get some more difficult ones to really test your skills with it. Then they have some essentially impossible ones unless you happen to get a good deal on the RNG (a system I have some criticisms towards but isn't really relevant to this discussion). In my experience this has been a fairly good way of introducing the mechanics, but yeah, your story shows an example where it wasn't enough for one of the players.

I guess all you can really do is use it as a learning tool, learn from others mistakes and learn from your own.
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Edited by: fantanoice, Feb 9th, 2014 @ 11:03 pm