Tutorials in the Epoch of the Casual Gamer

There are two types of gamers (we've been told), who they couldn't be less alike. One loves challenges and learning through trial error; the other wants to play with little to no chance of failure and learn only by means of cutlery. The dichotomy is not without merit but it does encourage a few pernicious assumptions. For today, I would like to focus on the one that irks me the most: the in-game tutorial. 

To begin, I want to lay out two sets of tropes that will help us with this discussion: interface and conveyance.

Interface tropes are how you interact with a game, primarily the 'controls.' Knowing that the 'X' on PlayStation initiates an action, the WASD keys on a computer let you move around, and on a mouse the left mouse button is a primary attack while the right is secondary. These tropes seem obvious but they're not, there's nothing about these buttons that makes them logical choices for these actions, they are only so by convention. They are symbols, not signs (if you wanna use semiotic verbiage). The more subtle interface tropes are things like menus and buttons: knowing that a main menu's options lead to sub menus, that buttons with left arrows go back to the last menu you were in, while buttons with little houses take you back to the menu you started with. 

Conveyance tropes are harder to conceptualize, they're how you know 'what to do next' and are typically genre specific. For example, in a side-scroller you know you need to go as far to the right as possible to win and that everything you encounter must be either jumped over or destroyed. In a Japanese RPG, you need to talk to everyone you can see until something dramatic happens and then it will probably be time to move to a new location while fighting monsters along the way so you better stock up on some potions now and go sleep at the Inn; also there's sure to be a weapon store, an armor store, a potion store, and a magic store in this town as there is almost every area that doesn't produce random encounters, so you should hit those up as well before you leave or you could find yourself unable to progress much further without some severe grinding and god knows that isn't what you're playing this damn game for!

So there's a lot to know.

And these tropes are what every hardcore gamer knows before they even unseal the plastic wrap of their newest purchase.

And this is what many have pointed to as the most frustrating barrier to new/casual gamers.

And rightly so, because very few people find the experience of having no idea what the hell is going on, fun.

And that's why we need tutorials.

Right?

...right?

NO! Well, sorta. MAYBE! Yes? No? NO! ... it depends?

It depends, I'm going with it depends, it depends on what knowledge of the applicable tropes each gamer brings to the table. That's where this gets interesting, because something big has changed in the last decade or two, something really big, something that some might be tempted to label: a game changer. 

In the not too distant past, a different dichotomy existed, and this one was far more rigid: those who used computers, and those who didn't. There were people who used computers frequently and knew their interfaces, how to interact with them, what to expect from them, and there were those who had never touched one, or used a computer in one context and one context only (which would prohibit them from picking up on any tropes as you can't see a pattern without repetition). Naturally, this mostly held true with video gaming as well, and everyone who decided that they wanted to begin gaming had to confront a learning curve specific to gaming that couldn't be obtained in any other way.

But now, that all has changed. Everyone has a cell phone, a personal computer, a work computer, a smart tv, an electronic thermostat, an electronic car audio display, etc. Well, not everyone hasall of these things, but everyone in our generation must have a basic understanding of electronic interfaces (back buttons, menu navigation, screen swiping, clicking and double clicking) in order to function in out comfy little first world, and they have the knowledge of these interface tropes even if they've never played a video game.

This means that for many games, especially apps, tutorials are unnecessary. IF the game uses standard interface tropes for controls and IF the game is designed well (and by well, I mean it teaches the player how to play the game while they play it with clever level design. If that seems vague or just confusing here's a link to a video that explains it much better than I can). Conveyance tropes are easier to teach through game play, though in some genres these tropes can just be too numerous and unique to the genre to be learned through it (I'm looking at you strategy games). But for many apps, that isn't the case. For example, imagine a game where the core game-play was pressing one of three buttons on the screen in order to avoid obstacles. Without a tutorial, anyone with basic knowledge of interface tropes will instinctively tap on those buttons without being told to, because they know that:

And that's all the player needs to play that game, no tutorial is necessary, and would only detract from their first experience of the game.

At this point, you might be wondering what the big deal is. Why not just put a tutorial in every game just on the off chance that someone might not understand it? Because it robs everyone who plays that game from the experience of figuring it out for themselves. Figuring out how to do something is always far more satisfying than being told how to do something. Doing what you're told to do is work, doing what you decide to do is play. And a tutorial can completely rob a player of the illusion that they are deciding what they decide to do when the game is something simple like many of today's gaming apps. 

I know that tutorials are often a necessary evil, and I believe that every game should work tirelessly to prevent any chance of a player quitting a game on the first level because they felt too lost and confused to move forward. But I also believe that a game is played, and that human play is rooted in exploration and discovery. And so we should always think twice before denying a player a chance to play in their first experience of a new game.