Bullet Point Learning Design - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 136

heat map, which is a map of where deaths or other important events
occur, and then dynamically adjust the level design to reroute players
to places where they will be met with more success. There are so many
teaching tools at our disposal; it behooves us to learn to use them
so that our players can enjoy our games to the greatest extent possible.
Test and Retest Player Skill Level
It takes a long time for things to move from short-term or work-
ing memory into long-term memory. We are not exactly sure how
long this kind of thing can take to the second, but it is generally
accepted that in good educational research, it is necessary to retest
learners after they have been given some kind of learning treatment
and then left alone for a while. In your game, it is important to keep
up with learner play knowledge by making sure to constantly test the
player. Teachers do this by re-applying numerous methods of validat-
ing learning, like tests, performances, speeches, and so on. In games,
this means we need to continually increase difficulty, but occasionally
present the player with older, easier tasks. This is done in an effort to
check to see if the player's long-term memory has been altered by the
teaching mechanics. If players are learning how to get farther in the
game, but forgetting the fundamental mechanics, they are not far
from becoming frustrated. For this reason, it is important to collect
data on whether players retained information taught to them in the
early tutorials, and respond accordingly with dynamic difficulty or
rewards. In ensuring that players consistently have a high level of con-
tent knowledge, we will keep them in the flow channel and on task for
the largest amount of time possible.
Use Just-in-Time Tactics to Reward Continued Play
As we have talked about, you can reinforce and remove behaviors with
responses that are positive or negative. To this point, we've talked
about these only in the context of culling or encouraging behaviors
that correspond to game mechanics, but one further thing we can do
with behavioral teaching methods is encourage people to keep play-
ing. If we consider that playing itself is a behavior to be reinforced, we
can use certain methods to make sure this happens. How might we do