Introduction - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 10

skills. After some looking, an industrious game designer is sure to hit
up a local psych department's faculty publications and search “why do
people play games?”
Answers to the Wrong Questions
At some point during their careers, game designers are going to come
to the realization that somewhere, someone probably figured out why
people do the things they do. A quick Googling on this topic will reveal
all kinds of goodies, from Social Learning Theory to Motivational
Psychology primers. The downside to this, however, is rather insidi-
ous. Oftentimes, well-intentioned designers, marketers, and research-
ers inadvertently worsen the problems they are trying to fix by bluntly
applying the wrong research methodologies, assumptions, and testing
methods to their audiences. The result is further befuddlement under
the guise of improvement, worsening the problem.
Burton, Moore, and Magliaro, * for example, teach us that novices
need strict worked examples in order to figure out how to accomplish
new or unfamiliar tasks. However, Papert † and others tell us that peo-
ple learn best by discovering things, making mistakes, and trying on
their own to figure out the challenges in front of them. These things
seem contradictory, so how do we know which kind of teaching we
should employ in our games? The simple answer is it depends . This can
be so complex, in fact, that many of the most cutting-edge game stu-
dios and publishers, like Valve , ‡ use multiple types of research meth-
ods to study their users' play habits in order to get the clearest picture
possible. This kind of data triangulation is not only awesome, but as
a researcher and educator, I would argue absolutely necessary to get
any kind of picture about your players, what they want, and why they
want it.
* Burton, J., Moore, D., & Magliaro, S. (1996). Behaviorism and instructional tech-
nology. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications
and technology . New York: MacMillan.
† Papert, S. (1993). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New
York: Basic Books.
‡ Ambinder, M. (2009). Valve's approach to playtesting: The application of empiri-
cism. Game Developer's Conference, San Francisco, 2009.