Eyes and Ears - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 101

VIOLATES THE PRE-TRAINING PRINCIPLE ADOPTS THE PRE-TRAINING PRINCIPLE

You gained a level! Open the menu to
level up your character and select new
skills and attributes.

1. Your character became stronger and gained an
experience level! Open the menu with A.
2. New levels mean new skills and attributes, press B
to assign points.
3. These are your skills and attributes.

Personalization Principle

The personalization principle dictates that learners understand mate-
rial that is presented in a conversational tone better than material
that is dictated to them in a traditional or didactic fashion. In game
design, this means we have to make sure that our instructions try
not to break the fourth wall too much—unless it is intentional, of
course—and that we are not dictating to the player, either in our text
or auditory instructions. This can be applied by using a conversational
tone, or in-character voice-overs to direct players to particular actions
or behaviors. Overly stilted language creates additional cognitive load
and makes learning more difficult than it needs to be. Consider the
following example from a generic MOBA type game:

VIOLATES THE PERSONALIZATION PRINCIPLE ADOPTS THE PERSONALIZATION PRINCIPLE

In order to use a character's skills, the player must
input a Q, W, E, or R keystroke. In turn, the player
must also activate movement with the mouse, which
will elicit forward, aft, starboard, or retrograde
movement of the player-avatar in game space.

Greetings champion! Take the keys and
send your minions to battle with the
mouse. Fire your deadly spells with the
Q W E R keys. Triumph and untold doom
await!

Redundancy Principle

Because we know that the brain processes audio and video along dif-
ferent channels, and we know that the load incurred by doing this is
additive , it is important that we not cognitively overload our players
by wasting cognitive space on things that are redundant. Specifically,
Mayer's redundancy principle states that human beings incur addi-
tional cognitive load when they are presented pictures on screen with
accompanying simultaneous audio and text. Meaning, if you are going
to design a video game and provide on-screen instructions to players,