Facts about Players - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 82

two data-gathering methods differentiate people in how they “read” a
situation. Those individuals who tend to sense want very clear instruc-
tion on just about everything. If the player with a sensing disposi-
tion cannot see clear data in their instructions, he or she is not going
to learn anything. On the other hand, those individuals who prefer
intuition are more given to theory and abstract data. Hidden meth-
ods of teaching, such as the discovery learning method we have dis-
cussed, will be more effective with these people. In game design, it
is therefore important to triangulate our methods of education and
learning design to make sure that both individuals who gather data
concretely as well as abstractly can be accommodated in their learn-
ing. This involves offering tips and pop-ups for the concrete learner,
and discovery learning for the theoretical learner. How is this pos-
sible? Well, scaffolded instructions that look for learners to make mis-
takes before inundating them with pop-ups is one option, and there
are many others. We will talk about a lot of them in Chapter 8.
The third MBTI category is concerned with how individuals solve
problems. Again, this is important to our game development process
as the fundamental difference between games and films is that the
user must solve problems or overcome obstacles in order to advance the
narrative, in many cases. If we look at games like BEYOND: Two Souls
that feature narrative and cinematic heavy cut scenes and storytelling,
it can sometimes blur the line between the two, which is indicative of
the evolution of the medium, in my opinion. In any case, this third
portion of the MBTI is divided into thinking and feeling . hese two
things differentiate how people apply the information that they have
gathered in the previous indicator to the solving of complex issues in
their lives, jobs, and so on. Thinking individuals make logical deci-
sions based on a third-person assessment of a situation. They are the
“lawful neutrals” of the psychology world—they will often make a
rational assessment based on quantitative and neutral data. On the
other hand, the feeling individuals tend to make their decisions based
on personal association. They put themselves in the place of the prob-
lem, and feel through the situation accordingly. Ever wonder why a
game that is technically, artistically, and mechanically solid still has
dissenters? Welcome to the world of individual differences psychol-
ogy. No matter how solid your design is, someone, somewhere, will
not like it; and this particular branch of psychology does its best to