Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
you once and for all: I am in no way defending tutorial levels as you
currently understand them. You're right to assume they suck. They're
terrible, awful things. he outcome of this topic is to help you learn
to teach your players how to understand the objectives and goals of
your game, and accomplish them, in as natural, non-invasive, helpful,
transparent, and ultimately fun a manner as possible.
Why Bother?
This is a legitimate question. As I stated previously, we've been given
a silver platter of gamers who are already willing to buy the newest
incarnation of our franchise at the drop of a hat, so indeed its a simple
question of efficiency. Why would I put extra time into learning how
my players think, and accommodating their learning needs in a game
project that is already over-budget, over-time, and getting bloated
with features? I can't fault you for this question, but let me offer you
this insight from the games industry.
In the past 5 years alone, massive companies such as Electronic
Arts , BioWare , and Epic Games ™ have had major executive over-
hauls, well-known game designers such as Tim Schaffer and Cliff
Blesinzski have gone “indie,” enormous companies like Zynga ™ are
reporting losses and closing doors, and the most inescapable fact of
all, the core audience for current games is aging. Try as we may, none
of us can outrun the inescapable grasp of time, and it is up to us to
either mold a new generation of gamers to our craft or fall into obscu-
rity. I'm here to propose that we can do this through basic teach-
ing. In an excellent video called Sequelitis ™, well-known Youtuber
Egoraptor shows us how older games teach players by slowly and
mechanically introducing them to new game play mechanics. He is
actually discussing well-established theories of teaching and learn-
ing (see Figure 1.5). Let's take a look at how older games like Contra
taught players to engage with the system in novel ways.
Look at Figure  1.5 and think about it for a moment. We'll talk
more about this in Chapter 3, but the learning method in old games
was very clear, and very behavioral, a term you will learn more about.
When players do something we don't want, like stepping in range
of a bullet, touching a bad guy, or falling down a hole, we punish
them. Similarly, when they do something we do want them to do, like
Search WWH ::




Custom Search