Eyes and Ears - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 100

Segmenting Principle

This is an easy principle: break complex things down into smaller steps.
If we consider Super Mario World ™ for the Super Nintendo Entertainment
System ™, we know that the cape allows us to do many things. It
allows us to fly, but also controls our ascent and descent, and lets us
kill things with our big Italian plumber belly. This is really a multi-
part process, however. Running has to happen first, which consti-
tutes pressing a direction and holding down the run button. When
a certain speed is reached, the player has to jump into the air; at this
point, control shifts from traditional platforming controls to an effec-
tive up-and-down control to ascend or descend. Ultimately, the entire
principle boils down to “break things into smaller steps where pos-
sible.” Consider this breakdown for how to fly in Super Mario World :

VIOLATES THE SEGMENTING PRINCIPLE ADOPTS THE SEGMENTING PRINCIPLE

Infographic showing the feather item,
the cape appearing on Mario 's back,
and him flying into the sky.

Infographic showing the feather item and cape
appearing on Mario . Followed by this is a controller
overlay showing what to press to make Mario run. The
next fading image shows Mario in midair with the new
controls illustrated.

Pre -training Principle

This is a good one, but it seems like we stumble over it an awful
lot. The pre-training principle tells us that people need to have com-
plex material with high element interactivity broken down into key
terms or concepts, that might otherwise be referred to as jargon.
Essentially, until a learner has significant schemata surrounding a
particular topic, he or she has to pull out each concept piece by piece,
which can very quickly cause a cognitive overload, which isn't fun
(sort of the antithesis of what you want out of game design, unless
you're a sadist). Pre-training means that people need information
before complex topics come and broadside them, and we are generally
pretty good at providing this in games in the form of tutorial levels
and pop-ups; however, we often violate enough of the other prin-
ciples that the learning doesn't stick. Look at the following example
from a generic JRPG: