Rage-Quit - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 65

tutorial pop-up about swimming. The downside to this is that it doesn't
bother to see if the player is having trouble swimming before intro-
ducing the help. In this way, if the player already knows how to swim,
the tutorial negatively affects player valence, and increases arousal. If
you were to tell the same carpenter from the previous example how to
use a hammer, she would be insulted, in fact, irritated, which is a high
arousal, low valence emotion. Why, then, does a system that is fully
capable of detecting whether players are having trouble not promote
optimal learning by offering tutorials at a time when they are needed?
My argument would be that tutorials are a form of education, which
is something people pursue years of study in performing. Therefore,
tutorials are poorly understood. The designers know that they need to
teach players somehow, but they are not sure how to go about it. The
result is good intentions that sometimes damage learning.
Let's digest World of Warcraft for a moment. It is a very complex
game to just sit down and play. Consequently, the mechanics need
to be broken down bit-by-bit in order to correctly instruct the player,
but how do we best do this? If players already know how to play, we
are going to bore or insult them with tutorial break-ins; on the other
hand, if they don't know how to play, we are going to frustrate them
with complexity. The most frequent answer is to bury the option to
disable the tutorials somewhere in the menu, but I would argue there
is a much better way that helps players of all skill levels. This is where
the explanations and discussions in this chapter come full circle. In
education, two teaching methods that have been well studied give
instructions at just the right time and remove instructions as they are
no longer needed. These are known as just- in- time instruction * and
instructional scaffolding,† , † both of which are part of a larger teaching
and instructional method known as cognitive apprenticeship . ‡
* Gee (2003) refers to just-in-time instruction in games, and a theory-heavy citation
is Kester, L. et al. (2001). Just-in-time information presentation and the acquisition
of complex cognitive skills. Computers in Human Behavior , 17(4).
† Tsai, F. H. et al. (2013). The importance and use of targeted content knowledge with
scaffolding aid in educational simulation games. Interactive Learning Environments ,
21(2).
‡ Chang, W. C. et al. (2013). Game-based history ubiquitous learning environment
through cognitive apprenticeship. Information Technology Convergence , 253.