Eyes and Ears - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 103

Cheat Sheet
Here is the cheat sheet of important items from the chapter; their
definitions are given as they apply to games.
Attention Cueing: Using sound or images to grab attention. In
class, the teacher uses his or her voice, the lights, pictures
or images, and so on. In a multimedia presentation—like a
game—sound cueing is often used. A loud noise cues atten-
tion to a particular object, like the jingling noise for tutorials
in World of Warcraft .
Cognitive Load: A method of understanding how much mental
processing one can handle at any given moment. Think of it
as load on a computer processor. The fact is the human brain
has limited processing capacity and can't (yet) be upgraded.
All cognitive load from all sources is additive and contributes
to cognitive overload.
Cognitive Overload: The process by which the brain is trying to
handle too many things at once. When cognitive overload
occurs, the brain first attempts to prevent it by filtering out
things it considers irrelevant. If this is unsuccessful, the result
is disengagement.
Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: Richard Mayer's the-
ory regarding how humans learn from multimedia. It is based
on a solid understanding of the different cognitive processing
capabilities of the eyes and ears; as such, it is the basis for
this chapter.
Coherence Principle: Everything that is presented to the player
needs to be relevant so you don't bombard them. When
learning is intense, cut the music and on-screen junk back.
Break learning into pieces so that learners aren't overloaded
by extraneous data.
Contiguity Principle: The contiguity principle tells us that relevant
information should be as close to the point of application as
possible. In games, keep the ammo display near the guns, the
item display near the point of pickup, and so on.
Gestalt Theory: Without going into the psychology, Gestalt Theory
states that the brain has a tendency to organize things into