I’ve been playing a lot of old (20+ years) games lately and I definitely have a greater appreciation now for the way they did things back then. I like the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider (and many others) approach of having a separate tutorial level. The game assumes that, when you start the game proper, you have a basic idea of what’s going on and the first foundational story beats of the game can occur alongside interesting and lightly challenging gameplay. Having a separate tutorial is also nice for re-acquainting yourself with the game after an absence, rather than the usual style these days where the best you get is an in-game manual telling you what the controls are but not giving you another opportunity to practice them. Lara’s Home for the PS1 Tomb Raider is great, it’s just a big space to run around in and practice whatever you want to practice.
It’s very strange in general how video games often seem to struggle with an engaging tutorial, but it’s never been a mystery how to make one, just make it optional and let the player go at their own pace, giving them opportunities to do things instead of homework.
I suspect, though I have no data to support this right now, that focus testing of games revealed that players were skipping tutorials and getting frustrated about things that the tutorial explained, so the solution was to make the tutorial mandatory.
Any game where it has a stupidly long unskippable intro or tutorial.
I’ve been playing a lot of old (20+ years) games lately and I definitely have a greater appreciation now for the way they did things back then. I like the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider (and many others) approach of having a separate tutorial level. The game assumes that, when you start the game proper, you have a basic idea of what’s going on and the first foundational story beats of the game can occur alongside interesting and lightly challenging gameplay. Having a separate tutorial is also nice for re-acquainting yourself with the game after an absence, rather than the usual style these days where the best you get is an in-game manual telling you what the controls are but not giving you another opportunity to practice them. Lara’s Home for the PS1 Tomb Raider is great, it’s just a big space to run around in and practice whatever you want to practice.
It’s very strange in general how video games often seem to struggle with an engaging tutorial, but it’s never been a mystery how to make one, just make it optional and let the player go at their own pace, giving them opportunities to do things instead of homework.
I suspect, though I have no data to support this right now, that focus testing of games revealed that players were skipping tutorials and getting frustrated about things that the tutorial explained, so the solution was to make the tutorial mandatory.