game dev realizes 20 years after becoming a dev that people actually hate tutorials
>>729255318>“Back when I was developing mobile games,” Itchie wrote, “I once noticed a high player dropout rate, and suspecting that players were getting stuck during the tutorial, I decided to add extra explanations. However, after closely examining logs, I realized that players were barely reading the instructions in the first place. The reason for the high dropout wasn’t because people didn’t understand, it was because they were made to wait too long without getting to touch the controls.” Upon realizing this, Itchie revised the game’s instructions and shortened the tutorial section by 30 seconds, which led to a visible improvement in player retention. the eureka moment:>“It was an example of a failure caused by the developer making assumptions about players’ comprehension instead of measuring it,” he recalled.
>>729255318Tutorials exist because of the death of the manual. And don't give me this shit about digital, the 3DS all included a digital manual in every copy that could be booted from the main menu. I honestly think we can dig deeper than "no manual in the box because of digital", because I think its related to Gen Z being the most illiterate and functionality illiterate generation. When you play a modern AAA game you can expect the initial 1-3 hours to be humiliating ritual tutorials with Marvel writing. Metroid Prime 4 is an example of that trend affecting Nintendo. Tears of the Kingdom tutorial annoyed the shit out of me compared to Breath of the Wild. They nailed it with Breath then retreated with TOTK. They were afraid of leaving anyone behind which affected the story, a lot of NPCs have selective amnesia about Link's actions in BoTW because they are afraid of someone buying a sequel not understanding what happened in the first game. The problem is making your game accessible to everyone. Then it's a game for no one.
>>729255318BOTW had a brilliant tutorial retarded negro
>>729255580Also I wanna add we had solutions to no "manual available" with the tutorial being a standalone option in the main menu (MANY early 2000 games had this like Deus Ex). The 3DS had the option to boot the digital manual at any time. PS1 and PS2 Classics on the PS3 digital store allowed you to access the PDF scans of a manual. GOG has scans of the manual. It's fucking dogshit what happened to manuals being replaced with on-boarding humiliation ritual mandatory tutorials.This might explain why people have amassed backlogs, they buy the games and forget about it for a while. But when they wanna launch the game they're afraid of the initial hours being so bad because of the humiliation ritual tutorials.
>>729255318The tutorial should be a menu option in the title screen, and tutorials in most games could just be an image that explains what each button/key does.
Tutorials can be fine when implemented correctly. Umihara Kawase has tutorials - a handful of 5 second animations that display the use case of a basic mechanic, then an early stage designed to let the player express each use case, and that's it. Like 2 minutes in total to teach the fundamentals and then it's up to you to figure out the rest.
>>729255580As a kid, I loved reading a game manual on my way from the store with a new game.
>>729255580>Gen Z being the most illiterate and functionality illiterate generationthis
A game shouldn't need a tutorial. If it needs a tutorial, you fucked up.
>>729255920Yeah I have great memories of the car rides after buying a new game at the mall. Reading the PS2 and GameCube booklets hyped you for playing the game before you even put it in. I blame illiteracy for Gen Z. I'll keep harping about it but you'll be surprised just how genuinely bad the general population has gotten at reading comprehension. Most zoomers cannot, fucking, read.
>>729255318Get rid of the stupid fucking saturated fog everywhere you stupid fucking dumbfucks Can't see shit constantly fucking blinded by white specular fog
>>729255403i often read stuff like this and think to myself, what a fucking idiot. how did he not intuitively understand the problemprobably bc i'm a genius
tutorials are also 99% of the time completely worthless, if I get stuck I'll just look up a guide, but a tutorial has never helped me understand anything
>>729256012Sad part, I feel myself falling to do that too. I practically don't read books anymore, just listen to audiobooks.
Tutorials should only exist when the game introduces a completely original mechanic or a skill with a weird button combo, otherwise its completely retarded. Some games I play has some esoteric mechanic and I never use it until I someone mentions it later. Thats the sort of shit you should have a tutorial for
>>729255403>>729255318makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that most muttmericans are functionally illiterate
>>729255318>>729255403So they're gonna make games worse for everyone to pander to the adhd-riddled mobile market. Just another reason why Japanese video games are in such a terrible place and some random french devs are making a better jrpg than they've done in decades.
>>729255403>>729256064its the kind of thing that is obvious if you actually play games a lot and engage with themno one wants to fkin deal with long ass tutorials that keep trying to tell you shit when u are just trying to do X thing.So many games don't even let u change the damn settings until you finish the tutorial and u gotta deal with wonky video settings or being super loud, its absurd. mobile games are super bad at this as well to add to his example of just not understanding.just let me play the damn fucking game first to see if I even like it or not, then you explain to me all the details once I have some questions that I want answered about how certain things work.
>>729256228I was watching a Gen Z streamer who was playing a game and they were having trouble reading words. I felt really bad for their parents and their teachers. Reading and articulating yourself are dying skills. Functionality illiterate means you can get away with sloppy reading and writing skills to barely get by, but anything like government/doctor paperwork or books/visual novels are completely out of of reach. I'm not gonna lie to you I used the school sparknotes abridged during high school, but I was still able to read college level books when I was graduated.
>>729255318>third game in a series>get repeat tutorials from the first two gamesA new game in a series should only get tutorials for new shit introduces.Only exceptions are when the subsequent game is a complete departure from the previous ones, IE Fallout 3.
>>729255403how do i opt out of all this telemetry botnet shit?
Tutorials are needed for people who fail the 4chan captcha a lot
>>729256703So Indians and Jews?
Games have such similar design language and concepts nowadays that you really shouldn't be onboarding your player under the assumption they've never played a video game before.
>>729255318The only kind of tutorial I'll tolerate is having tooltips that show up on the side of the screen during the first level and tell me which buttons to press in a given situation.
>>729256601Banjo Tooie was pretty neat about this.You had your entire kit from the first game and the starting area had some places where you could get a refresher on those abilities, but if you knew what you were doing you could just ignore them all.
>>729256405>So they're gonna make games worse for everyone to pander to the adhd-riddled mobile market.Well yeah. I don't have any nieces or nephews but I betcha if any anons here had Gen Alpha siblings they'll tell you how if a game gets too hard for them they'll drop it and go back to their tablet/smartphones for mobile tier slop and YouTube/TikTok videos. Hitting a wall for a youngster these days means you failed a game designer for modern game industry. The abundance of entertainment options is a problem that needs tackling. Let's say you were a kid in the 1980/90s/early 2000s. If you missed your favorite show you aren't getting a rerun for a while. If you mom bought you a game you didn't like and you were poor you had to suck it up because it was the weekend and your favorite shows/friends weren't available. Your options as a youth predating the modern internet were limited. Now late Gen Z and Gen Alpha can just ditch it if they're bored/frustrated and move on to the next instant gratification ADHD brainrot. It's a giant public health crisis affecting wealthy and 3rd world nations. Video game industry is tackling this by making their games more Hollywood like to maintain interest. A game that is afraid of challenging players would be shutdown at pitch room meetings with publishers faster than me turning down a woman who has tattoos.
>>729256550I'm almost positive this retard admitted he has ADHD and admitted he was off his meds when he was playing Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. Found it it was Majora's Mask https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEh3AsQ3WXg
There's no need for tutorials that stop the game at all. Just have a semi-transparent prompt on the side of the screen telling me what basic shit does and I'll glance at it to see if it's something I didn't notice on my own and just keep playing and ignore it if it's retarded shit like "move the left stick to walk"I don't understand the point of those abrasive tutorials that stop you until you do something incredibly basic like jumping once. No one who is THIS bad at games and too stupid to read the optional tutorial on thei own without being forced to do the thing has any hope of finishing any game worth playing in the first place.
>>729256276Ironically, a game that needed a better tutorial was Resident Evil 6 since it not only has a ton of mechanical interactions that aren't intuitive (lying supine speeds up your stamina recovery, to name one) but God forbid you jump into it having never played RE4/5 and try to play it like the older games. Picking up RE6 completely blind is a lightless, godless experience.
>>729257225RE6 is fucking crazy lol. A lot of hidden mechanics aren't explained AT ALL in any of the campaigns. Lying down speeds your stamina recovery being a big one. There's also ways to shake the herb faster, instant combine tricks, and melee combos that you wanna use in RE6 Mercenaries mode. I got so bad the community had to make PDFs sharing all the advance techniques in the game. I still don't get Capcom's rationale in having all this complexity and not telling the players about it, you normally don't have to engage with most of them in the campaign unless you know the tricks. RE6 Mercenaries is a great mode in a flawed horror game.
>>729256930Didn't Spyro do this as well?You started 2 with the upgrades you finished the first one with, and so forth?
>>729255920same
>>729256760and women
>>729255403I'm starting to think that Japanese game devs don't actually play video games.Who the fuck has ever been stuck at a tutorial explaining basic fucking shit that can be gleaned by playing the fucking game for 10 seconds and thought "man, I wanted to play this game, but I just can't figure it out since this 30 minute tutorial just doesn't go into enough detail, guess I'll have to stop playing?"
Halo's tutorials are the perfect length>Look four directions>Tutorial done, go play the gamePeople aren't retards. You don't need half an hour of tutorial levels before the real gameMake early levels easier, make later levels harderMobile games are horrendous for tutorials because they take 20 minutes of forced menu interaction where you MUST use every highlighted thing with constant menu popups and pauses in the moment to spew words. Given he's from a mobile game background it makes sense that he struggled with this, they're the worst in the industry
Tutorials are an automatic failure of game design.
I think tutorials can be fun if they're given their own little level and theming to exist in.
>>729255580blah blah blah, it's because it's more immersive to learn in real time playing the game dipshit
the best tutorial is none. the second best if you absolutely must is a tooltip saying you have a new tutorial to read at your leisure.
>>729258650>People aren't retards. You don't need half an hour of tutorial levels before the real gameThat was then and this is now. I dread replaying the early hours of FFX because of those fucking tutorials but it lets off at some point. So the issues were there just not as widespread as today. Most game developers today make games with the mindset of(a) Gen Z and Gen Alpha have ADHD and illiteracy (b) if a game is too difficult for the above group they'll stop playing/refundThat's why they're so much bitching about games not having checkpoints these days as a "negative". I'm not one of those people who wants every game to be FromSoftware roll slop with FORGIVE ME ZANZIBART PHASE 3, but at some point you have to let people experience failure to get better. People need that motivation to get through a game and some devs give up because of publishers demands (Metroid Prime 4 being one of those) or because they're too stubborn like ATLUS making the initial hours of their games brutal slogs before it opens up. SMT5 is the only exception to the rule that lets you play the game right away without interruptions after the first half hour that establishes world building.>>729258928And if you have an audience that has patience problems they will dump and refund the game. Why do you think Steam games have been trying to combat the early 2 hours refund rule? Making the early game as slow as agonizing as possible with the humiliation ritual of modern game tutorials.
>>729255318i like a tutorial that tells me something i can't just immediately figure out myself from having played a video game before or by just pressing all the buttons once. if your game makes me sit through a mandatory tutorial about how to walk and move the camera you can fuck off, especially if it's got a big skill tree full of shit like "has a medium chance to stun!"
>>729256064it sounds simple as a player but if you were a dev youd probably get invested in getting people to learn all the systems of your game, hopefully ensuring they have a great experience, and putting the blinders on.
>>729258591>game devs don't actually play video gameshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZqmWB0wXo
remember when every game used to have a gay little locked room where someone would be in your ear like "use the control stick to move">move using control stick 0/5 timesman im glad we got past that
>>729258591>>729255403devs haven't played games in 20 years. If they do play games it's always mobile/casual AAA shit.Another reason to play indie vidya
>>729258928fr. playing tony hawk pro skater 2 back in the day you just pick a level and it puts you there and you have no idea what to do. but its fun cause you just intuitively press the buttons on your controller and discover shit. new games have a popup saying "press triangle to grind on a rail" fuck you bitch let me learn that shit myself.
>>729259106>And if you have an audience that has patience problems they will dump and refundfuck 'em, like it matters 1% of the population has ADHD
>>729259205Jesus fucking christ, somehow I'm not surprised that the guy behind GoW is a knuckledragging retard.
>>729259205God of War developers admitted in a GameDeveloper'sConference segment that they watched DSPGaming when designing their games. David Jaffe's fuckup in Metroid Dread and DSPGaming paved the way for Metroid Prime 4. https://youtu.be/CWBJk7gY-eA?t=15 literal game devs talking about watching DSPGaming playing their game and how they designed it for retards like him.
>>729256601I played the xenoblade chronicles 3 dlc a few months back. it's been years since I played it, but it did exactly that, which in all honesty was a little annoying because it didn't include any of the prior knowledge stuff in the full tutorial reminder list thing so I had zero recollection of how half the game worked, and it wouldn't tell me how. pretty good game though, didn't overstay its welcome (by much).
>>729255318Every game has a tutorial, it's just a matter of how well it disguises it.
>>729255961DSP maxing
>>729258591>game devs don't actually play video gamesDesigning video games and playing them are two entirely different skill sets. You can do both, but it's very possible to be talented at one but not the other. I doubt every shmup fan that routinely 1cc's games can actually design and implement patterns of their own, or that everyone that can perfect clear character action games can design and implement their own enemy AI patterns. Completely different skill sets.
>>729259516You don't need to be good at games to understand why extremely overbearing and verbose tutorials turn off most players.And don't give me that "b-but the kids" shit, there's enough market research out there for these AAA devs to know that most gamers are in their late 20s/early 30s at this point.
>>729255580Even back when manuals were a thing, games still had tutorials.And nobody read manuals anyway.
>no mandatory tutorial>people with low iq/fucked up attention spans refuse to do the optional tutorial, read a manual, or figure it out themselves then drop the game because it's too confusing and they don't know how to play>less word of mouth>less sales>game might even fail entirely and be a financial failure, net loss of millions of dollars>tutorial>prevents people with low iq/fucked up attention spans from dropping the game>everyone else lets out a frustrated sigh but continues playing anyway>game gets better word of mouth>sales successThat's just how it is nowadays.
>>729255403I remember how I was insanely hyped about Okami but the tutorial dragged on for HOURS, making me lose interest before even starting the game properly. Everything had to be explained like I was a lobotomy patient. And it was slow as fuck, to make matters worse.
>>729260074Text speed is abysmal in some games. Ocarina of Time gets me mad when I can't punch through the owl or other NPCs speaking. Seriously people don't bitch enough about the Zelda owl compared to Navi.
>>729259341fuck you, it should tell you the controls so you don't faff around like a retard
>>729259432Not even a minute into this horseshit. My immediate thought it "fuck the marker, what's further downstream?". When I play games, I identify the "correct path" and intentionally go there last. I look for shit off the beaten path.
>>729260290
>>729260353first videogame?
>>729259616Not true and I suspect you weren't alive back then. A lot of 1990s and early 2000s games were suspected of colluding with the PrimaGuide/strategy guide industry to sell copies by obfuscating game content. Not to mention trying to fight used games/rentals by putting important information in the manuals. Metal Gear Solid 1 is full of annoying tutorials that interrupt you, but it also has vital information in the case and manual for your information. The problem is worse now because instead of combating used games/rentals they're designing tutorials to prevent you from hitting the under <2hours Steam refund mark and preventing people from quitting games from difficulty aka Zoomers and Gen Alpha.
>>729260290Status of ass: BLASTED
>>729260542Fun fact he alternatives between the order of>No>Yesto>Yes>NoAnd "Did you get all that? and "Would you like to hear that again". That motherfucker was devious, I don't know how he escaped the criticism while Navi took the fall. The current discourse is yellow paint.
>>729260724He was in Link's Awakening too. Literally the "enjoying the game? let me slow this down for you FUCKER". Every time I think about replaying Link's Awakening I dread meeting Kaopara Faggorot the owl.
Only a matter of time before this happens to Nintendo toohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKMD4t2Dbl8
>>729261025Metroid Prime 4 is literally this.
>>729261096not really
>>729259956Disguise the tutorial in a captcha styled puzzleIf you can solve the first room without any problem you keep playing without interruptionIf you fail to put the square block in the square hole the game now knows you're retarded and forces tutorials on you while painting everything yellow and activating Witcher vision
>>729261025>we'll talk more later>*keeps talking*
>modern players hate losing and will blame a game and not their own inexperience>players hate anything that smells like a tutorial and will expect the dev to somehow teach them while they're barely making an effort to learn from their mistakeshow do you resolve this?
>>729259106You don't have an actual argument just pure seethe. You want to reject the premise of the thread when it comes to shitting on young people but then you turn around and agree with it so you can also shit on the games that logically contradict the shit you were JUST spewing.
>>729261291Play NES and SNES era games if you want to learn how to design games without tutorials.
>>729261372I don't think modern players would survive nes games
>>729255318jap game tutorials are often terrible and overwhelmingly repressive
>>729261372Those games had a twenty-page mandatory book included with every copy, anon
>>729255318Competent devs will just make tutorials part of the game without the player explicitly realising that they're being taught something. The first few minutes of Ravenholm in Half Life 2 are basically a tutorial, even though nothing is written anywhere and you dont have some dickhead talking in your earhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imjMHTRmSBA
>>729261368t. illiterate zoomer
