Learning Things - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 53

If we couple the fact that people tend to blame themselves for the
failures they have in a system with the fact that people come to video
games seeking enjoyment, their expectations are being violated by the
system when they are met with consistent failure. This is an error in
the design, and other novices would indeed make the same errors, as
Norman observes. I would like to add my own expertise to the mix,
and illustrate why people often blame themselves for errors. I con-
jecture that it has to do with mastery. The better we believe we are
at something, the more likely we are to defend our certainty in that
thing. Our belief that we are right, or can perform well, is sometimes
called our self-eicacy. In game design, we often touch on this topic
under another name— agency .
Let me bring this back to another educational topic, since by
now you no doubt believe me to be a dyed-in-the-wool behaviorist.
Mario ™ has taught us well by pruning out bad behaviors, avoiding
holes and the like. This is all well and good, but what about when we
have a complex problem, or a problem that requires extrapolation of
earlier learning? We know that in any platformer on the NES ™, we
only have a few buttons to work with. Up to this point in Super Mario
Bros. , we've learned that we can run, jump, use power-ups, and that's
about it. How, then, are we not taken completely by surprise when a
platform falls, a new enemy appears, and so on? Like in education,
repeated use of a task leads to deeper understanding. As a side note,
and just like in education, some players just won't get it, which is
why of course we must always offer learning support in the form of
tutorials where necessary. Back to the example at hand, players are
able to extrapolate their movements on the screen from earlier learn-
ing, providing it was rigorous, through something called knowledge
synthesis , identified in a popular educational construct known as
Bloom's Taxonomy * (see Figure 3.4).
Bloom's taxonomy is a tool that arranges educational objectives in
order of their increasing complexity. Knowledge, Comprehension, and
Application concern basic knowledge. We understand that the control-
ler does something, and we can move the character with the controller
to successful ends (e.g., completing the level). Analysis, Synthesis, and
* Bloom, B. et al. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of
educational goals. New York: Longmans, Green.