Tutorials That Don't Talk Down To You - Context Sensitive Design - Extra Credits

Everyone hates it when a game pops up a screen to tell you to do every little thing. When they interrupt the action to inform you of things that seem incredibly obvious. The problem is, what is intuitive to you might not be intuitive to someone else. But as designers, while we do actually have to let the players know how to do everything, we can do it in more creative ways. Thanks so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Click the link in the description below to see just how perfect Squarespace is for your next online idea. One idea that separates a beginning designer from one with a little more experience is knowing that they're not designing things on a screen. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out. They're actually designing an experience for the person in front of the screen. And this idea is at the heart of how we make a tutorial informative rather than overbearing, helpful rather than condescending. Because the key to doing so lies in context-sensitive information. Now, what do we mean by

context-sensitive information? Information that only appears under specific circumstances, and if those conditions aren't met, never appears at all. Let me give you an example. Imagine level 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers. Remember that Goomba that walks towards you right in the beginning of the game? I always like to call him Philip. Anyway, imagine if that Goomba killed you. And the next time you approached it, the game would flash the words press B to jump over your head. Players who already knew how to play the game or who had already figured out the jump button would never see this message. But players who maybe had never played a video game before or didn't immediately get what to do would get the information they needed to keep playing the game. Now, imagine this done on a mass scale for basically everything you need to teach in your game. Now, the tutorial is custom-tailored for each player. And that's awesome. Each player only sees exactly what they need to see and never feel talked down to by being shown the rest. Two different players may have totally different tutorial experiences.

Some might not even need to see any tutorial messages at all. But each gets the information that will let them understand whatever they might not intuitively know. So, why aren't all tutorials built this way? Well, the short answer is because it's difficult. To do this well requires really understanding your player, thinking about how the player plays the game and not just about the game itself. And to do so poorly potentially can be disastrous. It can mean people missing out on vital pieces of information they need to play. But the truth is, it's not so difficult that we shouldn't be doing it. It just involves a lot of observing your player. Because to do this well fundamentally means understanding what the player is thinking by the actions they take in the game. If you're building a shooter and the player doesn't throw a grenade in the first 15 minutes of play, it probably means they don't know how and you should show them. If they keep running into a low wall, you need to teach them how to jump. If they stay crouched while walking around for 30 seconds straight, it probably means they

accidentally push the crouch button and you need to teach them how to get up. The more complex the behavior, the more you're going to have to observe how your player plays in order to understand exactly when they need to be prompted. But it can be done for almost any mechanic. Systems on the other hand are a little bit harder. If you're making an RPG and you need to teach the player that every point they put into strength will up their damage with melee weapons by three points, well, that's just something you're probably going to have to tell everyone the first time they level up. Though James has seen some interesting experiments even on the system side where teams try to assess players play style during play test and use that to give players the information they need when they need it. But if you're going to use context-sensitive information to teach the players how to play your game, you're also going to have to design your levels to help you. If you look back at that Mario 1-1 example again, the beginning of that level is set up to allow the designer to be 100% sure the player knows the basic mechanics of the game before they set up any real challenges with them. We

actually did a whole episode on this, but the TLDR is the Goomba forces the player to jump and the different heights of the pipes requires the player to understand the different kinds of jumps to get past them. And when you're building your levels, you should do this, too. If your initial level or area has challenges in it that test the player's skill with each of the basic mechanics of your game, it's very easy to create context-sensitive tutorials because each time they encounter one of these challenges, if they struggle with it, as a designer, you'll know what information they need. The more you can isolate the mechanic you're testing while still making your challenges engaging, the more effective this will be. Context-sensitive tutorials also come with the advantage that they can be displayed again if it seems like the player is struggling. Maybe you give them a bit more time before you pop something else up again, but for instance, if you're like me and you've ever put down a complex game for 6 months only to return to it and be a bit baffled, I would love for a game to check on my time away and maybe pop back up some of those context-sensitive tutorials to get me back up to speed.

Which reminds me, no matter what type of tutorial you're building, it should be repeatable. There's no reason not to let your players access your tutorial again in 99% of games and there's nothing worse than being all excited to come back to a game you've set down only to find there's some vital piece of information you forgot that you have no way other than restarting or going to the internet to get again. So, take the time and know your player, not just your game, so you can create a tutorial that no one feels bad about playing through. Why haven't the credits come in yet? Oh, no, did I forget how to end episodes? Ah, that's right. Thank you, Zoey. See you next week, everyone. Yeah, nailed it. Once again, thanks so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Not only do they make it easy for our team at Extra Credits to share updates and have a clean and professional-looking website, but I've been using Squarespace for my personal online endeavors for years. And because

I truly know nothing about web design, their awesome templates have helped my ideas look way cooler than they actually are for a while now. Plus, I can attest to their great 24/7 customer support as well. A few years ago, I was going in for an interview and I needed to embed a piece of content to my site. I had no idea how to do it, and once I contacted them, we figured it out in like 10 minutes. And with domain transfers, online storefronts, and their all-in-one platform, which looks slick no matter where you view your content, there's no better place to make your next online dream a reality than Squarespace.