In-Game Tutorials

After a while, just rambling about things I have an opinion got boring. I'll now also ramble about things with the intent to teach you something! ...hey, where did all of you go?

Why Tutorials?

There's so many things you can get wrong when you put tutorials into your game. Actually, this kind of segues into my last post. I covered the Kitchen Sink Design aspect of that game pretty well, but there were other things it did wrong. One of them was the tutorials. Oh god, the tutorials. They were everywhere, mandatory and didn't teach me anything I wouldn't have been able to figure out on my own.

Tutorial Fallacies

This is going to be another post where I list things. These things might sound incredibly matter-of-factually to you, but they're way too present in games.

Press WASD to walk
Exactly what it says on the tin. For some reason, games decide to explain to you how the most basic controls work. Okay, the worst offenders here are RPG Maker games. Come on. We all know that we use space to confirm, Esc to cancel and the arrow keys to walk. "But what about the people who're not familiar with the engine?" If you wanted to ask this now, I'm glaring at you through the internet. Hard. People aren't stupid. If you have a game with keyboard controls, what are you going to try first? Either WASD or the arrow keys. Even Esc/Space (or Enter) are kind of self-explaining, since all over the operating system itself, these are used to confirm or cancel things. So, again, these are the things that are going to come to mind first, and even if not, the player can try around and find the action key on their own. People aren't stupid!

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this tutorial!
This one is more of a placement fallacy than a content fallacy. Sure, you might have some ultra-awesome game mechanics to show to the player. So you hand them out at the beginning. All of them. And expect the player to get all that and remember it until it's actually brought up. Spoiler: Most won't, because at the moment of the tutorial, that information is completely irrelevant. The human brain is wired to ignore things that are irrelevant and not necessary for survival (of the player character). Bring the information up when it's necessary and when the element is actually first used.

Remember the time I pushed that crate? It was totally awesome!
So you have your gameplay element the player won't easily grasp without a tutorial, you introduce it at the time it's first used, and then this happens:

Bob and George stand in front of a bunch of crates.
Bob: "Hey, look! Crates!"
George: "I can push them, you know? Because I'm strong."
Bob: "Cool! But can you pull them?"
George: "No." *sad*
Bob: "But I can, because I'm... reverse strong. Yeah!"

So our characters, in the middle of the action, paused in front of a bunch of crates to discuss their crate-pulling abilities. While in-universe tutorials are awesome, you have to be careful. If this came up as part of a cutscene, it would be okay. But if it comes up during gameplay, a piece of dialogue like this stops the game dead in its tracks so that the characters can explain their abilities. Again: People aren't stupid! If you need to explain it because you're using a key that hasn't been used before, give the player a blurb that says tells them what key it is. Don't stop the gameplay for something like this.

But What Should I do Then?

The tutorial fallacies I brought up are most often removed by removing the tutorial itself. But sometimes, you may want a tutorial to explain a mechanic that might be unconventional. See the nonstandard key example. Sometimes you need to explain.

In-Universe vs. The Blurb
In general, there's two categories of tutorials. Those that are explained by the characters and those that aren't. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the most important things about in-universe tutorials is that the characters know about things. So either you need to wrap the mechanics into a nice flavor or you break the fourth wall and risk having a guy with a purdy hat fall onto your head.
Fourth-Wall-Breakers I remember are, for example, the kid in Link's Awakening that told you how to save. It then proclaimed that it didn't know what saving was because it was only a kid. Also, an example that takes it further, is the toad in the beginning of Super Mario RPG that warns a goomba that Mario knows about timed hits. Even further goes Mario party, where, in one part, Bowser Jr., while explaining the rules for a game, clarifies that A is, in fact, the green button.
But for everyone of these, there's at least a ton where it's not as amusing/self-aware/generally well-done. I suggest to stay consistent with the way things are explained. You don't need an in-game explanation for every button you press. But if your character's health is literally measured in hit points,  you'd better tell me how that works, and you'd better have a good explanation.

MAKE IT STAHP!!1
Tutorials for outstanding features that really need to be explained are, for many players, only needed for the first time. Every time after that, especially if the controls and inner workings are memorable (very good thing), it's only annoying. For these kinds of tutorials, unless they're really woven into the game, as explained above, you should have an option to turn them off. A good example for that was the (sadly canceled) German RPG Maker game Velsarbor. While you started with an overpowered character that just plowed through the enemies like a warm knife through butter, the real gameplay started with two ordinary dudes. From then on, you had explanations for whenever a new gameplay element was introduced. These infoblurbs could be turned off, so those who, after the first two or so blurbs, noticed that they'd get it anyways, wouldn't be bothered by it any more. Those who needed the tutorials could keep them.

Now bring me an idiot
The best way to find out if your tutorials work well is to have them tested by different people. The important thing is that you get people of various skill levels. An experienced gamer will react differently to someone who doesn't regularly play games of the genre. I refer to tests with the latter kind of person as idiot tests. These tests are done to make sure that the most ignorant person would understand your tutorial and act on it. Also, just because it's called idiot test that doesn't mean that the tester shouldn't try playing the game. For random button-mashing, see Fuzzing.

The Bottom Line

Tutorials are not necessarily evil, but they need a lot of thought. They should be appropriate for both beginners and experienced players, and should not be annoying to either one. There's many ways to incorporate them in the game universe, but this isn't always necessary and often difficult to pull off. But the bottom line to said bottom line is:

People aren't stupid!

Encourage the players to try things out on their own and you'll find that you might not need as many tutorials as you thought you would. Now, click inside the textbox underneath this article, type in your opinion on this article and click the publish button. In case you're viewing this on the main page, click the article title first.