Learning Things - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 38

How People Learn Stuff
In order to understand how to make good tutorials for your play-
ers, you should probably have some idea of how people learn things.
Unfortunately, it is not as straightforward as a simple “how.” There are
a huge number of theories on how people assimilate new information
into their minds. For the sake of argument and completion, I am going
to show you a few of the most popular and well-supported theories * in
an attempt to give you a holistic understanding of the human mind, and
we'll get right to trying to understand them here in the text. I will show
you some in-game examples, as well as some figures and diagrams to
help you understand the more complex bits. Don't worry, it's painless.
Let's first talk about types of intelligence. † In psychology, we often
refer to crystallized and luid intelligence. Crystallized knowledge,
or intelligence, is like long-term memory. Everything you have ever
learned about a game, about the world, and about your favorite food is
written into long-term memory and stored in schema. One's capacity
to access and use this information is sometimes called crystallized or
crystalline intelligence. On the other hand, fluid intelligence is com-
posed of our logic, reasoning, and calculation skills. In games, we
use both of these systems of intelligence, much like we do in our real
lives. Unfortunately, current tutorials usually just address the crystal-
lized knowledge directly, without having us perform any fluid tasks to
make the long-term memory alterations needed to actually learn. In
fact, the entire topic of learning is a complicated one that escapes most
people. Teachers and educators are professionals who have honed the
ability to help people to learn over many years; expecting to do this
out of hand is kind of like expecting to open someone's chest and fix
their pulmonary artery disease with a butter knife and no training. To
that end, what is learning? ‡
* There are a huge number of explanations of the structures of the mind. The ones I will
go over are the most popular or the most scientifically well documented and studied.
† A popular topic, but originally from Cattell, R. B. (1971). Abilities: Their structure,
growth, and action . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
‡ An enormous question. Since this topic is insanely beyond the scope of this topic,
I'd recommend you start reading up on learning theories and follow the citation
breadcrumbs back to classical literature from Vygotsky, Dewey, Bruner, and Skinner
if this question interests you. The further reading section of the Appendix also lists
a huge amount of classical education literature for your perusal.