The Tutorial - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 25

the first time you die. Problematically, context-relevant instructions
do not take into account whether the player requires instruction. For
example, someone playing a game like Call of Duty who has played
other shooters probably does not need to be told how to reload, but
someone playing it who has never played another shooter does require
that kind of basic instruction. In real life, we would just ask people
their background before providing instruction. Sadly, it is not practi-
cal for a game to do this, so in efficiently designed tutorials, we use
programming hooks to keep track of when players are having trouble.
We will talk more about that later. For now, let's take a look at a few
tutorials appearing in commercially popular games and analyze their
types of teaching, as well as when and how the tutorial assistance is
available to players.
Three Tutorials in the Wild
This section will show you three common examples of video game
tutorials you have no doubt encountered in your life. While there
are all manner of tutorials out there, these three pop up most often.
These are called The Optional Tutorial Level, The Flashcards, and he
Not at All. I am going to take a moment to show you each one with
examples, break them down into their instructional components, and,
callously, tell you exactly why they are not accomplishing what they
set out to do, which is, I hope, teach the player something. From the
previous section, you have read that everything that intends to teach
someone something relies on an instructional design strategy. There
are literally thousands of these, many of which have been studied in
great scientific rigor in the education community. To spare you the
years of reading, I am going to boil them down for you in the fol-
lowing sections. Look at the following three tutorial types and their
closest analogs in the education and psychology communities.
The Optional Tutorial Level
The optional tutorial level is something with which everyone should
be familiar. These are the base creatures against which all tutorials are
judged. The optional tutorial level is often boring, forced, and usually