Creating Enjoyable Tutorials Using Flow

Tutorials are an often necessary part of playing a game, but there’s no doubt that when you have a lot of mechanics to teach that require a lot of time to learn, the player’s experience with learning them is often not very fun. The challenge with tutorials is making the experience fun while simultaneously educating the player. 

Single-player tutorials are usually easier to turn into fun experiences. The player expects to play against A.I. opponents in an experience that will last several hours, so the designer has seemingly all the time in the world to slowly train them as the tutorial is integrated in the experience. In a multiplayer experience however, players expect to play against other opponents instead of A.I ones, so the tutorial is a separate entity where every minute spent in a training match instead of a live match is time taken away from the player’s potential enjoyment.


                               

Flow Diagram

Displayed above is a representation of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow graph, which shows that the requirements for being in the flow area is for a player to have the skills that correspond to the level of challenge they face. Having too little skill will stress them out while having too much will make the experience boring. Each number represents a stage during the natural progression of a player for an average multiplayer game.
 

1. The player just started playing the game. Their skill is probably low, so the challenge they set for themselves is probably low as well. Rather than attempt to win a match, they’ll first task themselves with learning some new moves and attacking a few enemies. Because the low challenge corresponds to their low skill, they enter flow. As they learn more about the game and the challenges with mastering it, they see that their skill is not yet ready for that challenge and then exit flow.
 
2. At some point the player realizes they have no idea how to play and goes through the tutorial so that their skill will better match their challenges. The experience isn’t usually very fun, so they just end up being bored and wondering when they’ll get to play with other people. Until they get to experience the full game with others, there will be an unavoidable feeling of boredom.
           
3. Regardless of how much information the player receives before their first match, they will still be a brand new player in a match with others that likely have played more matches—even if only a few more. When your player is unfamiliar with map layouts and optimal tactics while being judged by those who are, there will be an unavoidable feeling of anxiety.
 
4. After a few matches the player will lose a lot of their initial anxiety as they start to get better. When their abilities improve and they are better able to confront the challenges presented from other players, they will start to experience flow again.
 

Between anxiety and boredom, boredom is seen as the more detrimental experience to a game because the optimal experience is often intended to be exhilarating fun. Anxiety can be seen as unavoidable because most players are nervous during their first match, so boredom appears to be the easier problem to tackle. To reduce the boredom that tutorials are blamed with creating, many tutorials are designed to be a short as possible with loading screen tips bearing responsibility for any lessons they didn't cover; this carries the risk however of not conveying enough information to the player and consequently increasing their anxiety when they play because they were not properly prepared. Adding to their anxiety is not only their lack of skills, but the community of gamers that are ready to judge them for it.

                 

Anxiety Joke

League of Legends Tutorial