Introduction - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 5

This guided experience wasn't always the case, however. It wasn't
long before my mother had no idea how to hook up the Super
Nintendo ™, and would come to me to tinker with the plugs at 8 years
old. I'd give her a handy beating in Mortal Kombat ™ on the Sega
Genesis , and she'd watch me blow through Mega Man X ™ on the
Super Nintendo or Sonic the Hedgehog ™ on Genesis ™ wondering how
I kept track of all the fast-moving objects on the screen. Along the
4 years in the interim, I had moved from complete novice, unaware
of the controls, how to hold the games, or load them into the sys-
tem, how to even turn the machine on, to a complete expert. I had
switched roles, at a very young age, from learner to teacher. I am sure
many of you with children are familiar with this process. In a very
short time, children are able to learn seemingly complex manipula-
tions, like unlocking your iPhone ™ and purchasing 11 copies of Angry
Birds ™ with your corporate credit card, for example.
Rambling aside, I grew up with video games. The important thing
to note here is that somewhere between the novice and expert stages,
learning occurred. Unguided by another human being, my brain
overcame obstacles presented to me by a game system. This is some-
thing we strive for today in game design. We want our games to be
challenging to the players to the degree that they are engaged, but
not difficult to the point that they are frustrated. Even the most hei-
nously difficult of games like Super Meat Boy ™ , I wanna be the guy ™ ,
or the Contra ™ series prey on our sense of accomplishment. Because
they are extremely difficult, we feel wholeheartedly triumphant when
we are able to hone our skills to the degree that we overcome the
obstacles that the game designers have presented to us as players. One
could argue, however, that a game like Contra is simply “too hard.” To
that person I present a paradox. As many of us in the games industry
are well aware, literally thousands of game prototypes are developed
every year, and only a very small number of them end up as completed,
published games. It only makes sense that many of these games are
discarded as being either “too hard” or “too easy.” One could imagine
a laser-dodging game that is virtually impossible that quickly frus-
trates the player, or an “I win button” type game that provides no
challenge. It stands to reason, then, that most of the games deemed
“publishable” and, more importantly, many of the games enjoyed and
commercially successful would fall on some midpoint of difficulty (see