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.

Ar(t)chitecture

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*
Architecture and art. Art and architecture. First of all, I don't have anything against either. When I was in high school, I wanted to become an architect, and even if I don't get some of it, I can appreciate art.

But that doesn't mean that these two go together especially well!

Why I'm writing this

I think I need to go into details here. The reason I'm ranting about this now is that, a few days ago, I saw an article in our local newspaper. It was about an architecture prize for either the whole country or just our state, I don't know any more.
The point is that it had a category for public buildings, which I was curious about since the newest additions to our university's campus are the second reason for this rant. While the architects for these things were nominated, they didn't win.

First thought: Phew, there's some common sense left in this world.
Second thought: Why the hell were they nominated in the first place?

Art vs Architecture

While they go together, that doesn't mean they should. Thing is that art and buildings are... kind of different. And if this were You Don't Know Jack, I'd be playing DisOrDat with you now.

For one, there's the main purpose for both. Art is there to be, in one way or the other, experienced. That could mean looking at it, smelling it, licking it... I don't know, art is weird. Buildings, on the other hand, are mainly there to be used. People live in them, work in them, visit them... they should be, in some way, practical.

I'm not saying that these two don't go together, but, and that's a big but, you have to have your priorities set straight. I'm perfectly okay with buildings that are also art. What I don't ever want to see is art that is also a building.

Case study: These accursed university buildings

I'm not going to use names, but those who are familiar with this unholy trinity of design are going to know anyways.

These buildings aren't practical. I feel like the architect(s) in question didn't think about the fact that, yes, there are going to be people who are going to work in these buildings. Each has their own oh so specific flaws, which I will list in the order they pop up in my head now:

• Colors: I know, white walls are boring. Gray walls are boring too. You know what isn't boring? Green. Green like this! A list of things that are green in this building: The walls. The doors. The floor, even though they had mercy on us and put some gray fibers in there. The toilets. Yes, you read that right. The whole toilet room (except for the bowls, most likely because they couldn't find any that weren't white) is in this damn green tone.
  The good thing is that people complained and the architect(s) listened. The second building got white walls. Too bad that the rest was still yellow! And yes, there was more complaining.
  So the third building got its main color changed from orange to a really unhealthy shade of brown. And beige for the most part. Congratulations, it only took you three buildings to start using a decent color scheme! Oh, and guess which one of these three colors was used for the toilets...
• Layout: You know you're doing it wrong when you look at an M. C. Escher painting and think "I want to build that." For reference:
  

  

  Hey, it's perfectly reasonable design!

  This point actually managed to get worse over the course of three buildings. The first one, which I will call the green house from now on, has a reasonable layout. It's got four floors wherever you look, the stairs, while aligned in this fancy non-rectangular way that screams "look at me, I'm art," are actually gathered in one part of the building, and they had the foresight to put some tables in there for students who are waiting for their lectures. Or typing rants. The second one, yellow house, starts out with having the ground floor split in two, with one entrance on each side. The stairs kind of look like the architect(s) forgot about them and just put them in wherever there was space left and we get some glorious things like three elevators, not all of whom reach all the floors. When I last tried to describe my way to get to a specific part of a specific floor to someone, that person lost me after the first time I had to use an elevator because there were no stairs. I think that the most reasonable part of this building is the emergency exits.
  As for part three, (I'm so tempted to just call it shit house), I haven't looked into this one that much, but I'm sure there's some madness in it too. But mostly there's holes in the floor where space for additional tables could have been.
• Impractical artsy things: The layout at large is bad enough, but there are so many things that would have been better if they had gone for practical use instead of being artsy. Like the aforementioned holes in the floor. Because yeah, whenever there's space that's not needed for closets or fuse boxes or the occasional bridge, there's holes. And, for additional artsiness, there's neon tubes hanging from the ceiling on wires. So yeah, if you have vertigo, these are not your buildings. Oh, and yellow as well as brown house have elevators encased in glass, which leads to a nice "aah, hole in the floor" effect. Would it be that bad to just simulate railings with sandblasted glass? And again, if you have vertigo, these are not your buildings. Not to mention that these holes are huge wastes of space.
  Talking about huge wastes of space: Someone really loved slanted things. If a wall doesn't need to contain a door, chances are it's not straight. And again, I get that straight things are boring. But walls that have, like a 30° angle, are just dumb. They cut down the usable space of a room and most of the time, you can't even place shelves at them. And let's not even talk about the random slanted pillars in some of the rooms. I mean, I'm no engineer, but I don't think they're carrying anything. Again, giant waste of space.
  And then there's stuff that just raises my eyebrows, like the freight elevator in the yellow house. You know, a big potentially people-squishing platform. It the danger zone marked with a tiny yellow house yellow line on the ground. Well, it must be legit because they got through with it, but still, what? I mean, I'd be okay with it if it was in an area you don't really come to as an ordinary student, but it's directly on the way to the toilets and one of the elevators for that floor. You can't do stuff like that, it's kind of stupid!

tl;dr: These buildings suck, and if this design won a competition, I'd like to see the others. And to architects out there: I don't care if your art gets rejected by everyone, but that's not an excuse to put artsiness before practical use when you're designing a f'ing building!