What we can learn from video game tutorials

[sao]

@IoleRae I think it’s a good idea if there’s buy-in. I would just want to find a way to make sure that people volunteering to buddy up aren’t just uhhhh creepers doing that isolatey thing or whatever.

[hellfrog]

@IoleRae said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

Buddy system? Could a game do some sort of volunteer-basis buddy system?

Hmmm. Maybe, if it was a rotating thing, from a (hopefully vetted) group of candidates, like if you ARE such a candidate, you can check for new players and be a buddy for that session or something, in return for insert whatever incremental reward

I wouldn’t want it to be a permanent thing like YOU are MY buddy. That’s a big commitment and also kind of weird in an anonymous online thing

[IoleRae]

@sao

Oh god, yeah. Hmm. There’s got to be a way to compensate for that, though.

Because the #1 thing that has always helped me with new games, and ESPECIALLY original games? And it’s the feedback we hear from people just starting out on complicated places – having an actual person, connection, contact, direct line that you KNOW wants to help you and get you situated and play with you. That’s more helpful than anything!

But gosh the problems if a creeper gets in there, or somebody who likes to tell THEIR interpretations of theme (rather than, you know, accurate info) gets in there, it could be awful.

[Tat]

@IoleRae Honestly, I think it’s a really big ask of players - and it can go real wrong if either side of the equation is even a little creepy, or even if they just don’t mesh as RPers.

It’s sort of like how you can’t really prearrange a mentor in RL. Mentors tend to happen naturally, because there’s a chemistry that can’t be manufactured.

That said, I do think you can do things to encourage a game culture where that chemistry CAN happen organically, and players (and/or characters) often acquire a ‘mentor’ adhoc.

[IoleRae]

@hellfrog

ROTATING. yes. YEAH! A list of folks when a sprout logs in that could sign up to assist for the session!

[KarmaBum]

@IoleRae said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

FFXIV has mentors and the sprout stuff? Could that be sort of replicated for this environment?

By default, Ares awards additional luck points for scenes played with new characters. So it can definitely be automated, depending on what you want it to do and how good you are at code.

[Tat]

@KarmaBum said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

@IoleRae said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

FFXIV has mentors and the sprout stuff? Could that be sort of replicated for this environment?

By default, Ares awards additional luck points for scenes played with new characters. So it can definitely be automated, depending on what you want it to do and how good you are at code.

I’m curious whether any Ares game runners have found people actually pay attention to this. I never really got the sense that people did, or that it motivated them to play with new people, but it also arrived well into SL’s tenure so it may have just gone under the radar.

[Third Eye]

I’ve been turning over this but mostly just arrive but at at the idea that video games (and MUDs) automate what more pure roleplaying games don’t, and even with the best intentions I don’t think it’s fair to shove tutorializing on the shoulders of staff and players full-time. I did it enough to burn out on it.

What I really wish was transferable into MUSHes is the concept of a ‘Session Zero’ ( https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/601awb/session0_topic_checklist_and_guide/ ) from TT that you can have for scheduling/grouping/tone. And even that’s a lot, really, though as a GM I’ve definitely felt ‘these are the basic expectations’ primers worthwhile enough that I’d like to see them codified.

[KarmaBum]

@Tat said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

I never really got the sense that people did, or that it motivated them to play with new people, but it also arrived well into SL’s tenure so it may have just gone under the radar.

There were a lot of people who would monitor their LP on GH, and keep track to make sure they got the right amount from open vignettes and stuff. So I know people were paying attention to it, but I doubt it had any real impact on them seeking out new PCs.

I like the idea of starter quests on a MUSH. When you’re approved, NPC tells you about the Something Something at the center of town, which sets you up to go meet other PCs and ask questions.

[Third Eye]

@Tat said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

I never really got the sense that people did, or that it motivated them to play with new people, but it also arrived well into SL’s tenure so it may have just gone under the radar.

I actually did this on SL when Luck points because thinner and thinner to earn if you weren’t running non-GM events or writing IC theme info (things I never enjoyed because…I was an ST, I had a job, the game things I did when not doing my job were nice), and I definitely noticed when they became harder to come by just through RP. It wasn’t why I RP’d with new people but it was a nice benny and I noted how tough it was to scrape together a Luck point when it wasn’t viable because CG had been turned off for a certain amount of time.

[Tat]

@Third-Eye said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

I don’t think it’s fair to shove tutorializing on the shoulders of staff and players full-time.

I SUPER agree. I’m personally more interested in ways we can set up the GAME ITSELF to do some of this work - especially automation, but also in terms of documentation, etc. Anything else ends up a pretty heavy load, and it can get real weird with personality mishmashes in my personal opinion.

With that in mind, here are some of my thinky thoughts on specific points from the tutorial video.

Blend the tutorial into the game. Make the player think they’re playing the game, and not the tutorial.

It’s better to have the player DO than READ.

Use fewer words.

I’m big on documentation, but my experience is that players DO NOT READ large chunks of text. Almost none of them. I don’t, either. There are lots and lots of studies on this.

I’ve always been real big on simplifying helpfiles and bullet pointing the SHIT out of things for this reason, but watching this video made me also think about HOW we chunk the information.

Information should be discoverable, at your fingertips at the point of need, but also consumable in chunks. You should not need to wade through it all at the get go, or to read it all to get started.

Some games do a really great job of this in their wiki. They use visual cues like ‘cards’ to lay out information in a way that feels super intuitive, so it feels easy to find what you need. I seem to remember Gray Harbor having a really nice layout for their wiki that let you drill down to different degrees of information. The Network uses tabbed boxes to good effect a lot.

In general, though, we tend to REALLY load up the information per page. Thinking about how to chunk this up can be helpful, I think. Where can we use different pages, tabs, collapsible sections, etc to make getting to what players need at the time they need it easier?

Spread out the teaching of game mechanics. Let players play with their toys before introducing new ones.

Just get the player to do it once.

I do really like creating spaces and events for new players to actually PLAY with the more systemy aspects of the game on a regular basis in low-stakes instances. Run a combat BEFORE they’re in a major plot scene. Have something baked in early on that has them make a request, if requests are important.

Use unobtrusive messaging when possible - don’t break flow.

Use adaptive messaging (only show messages that are relevant to the thing a player is experiencing)

The example in the video is about teaching game mechanics, but I’ve thought about this a lot in terms of theme. Are there certain things we could template and ‘deliver’ to a player at certain points in their game experience?

On SL, we experimented with templated write-ups that went in jobs when we gave someone their first spell - it explained what the first experience and subsequent experiences would be, written in narrative form. I think this had better success than when it was in a wiki page FAQ type thing (though it continued to live there as well), both because it was delivered TO them and because it came at the point that it was relevant.

Are there other milestones that could be largely automated? What if, for example, you got a link to the damage chart the first time you took damage in combat? What if you got a certain theme write-up delivered to you at a week after creation, or 30 days, or after 10 scenes?

What other milestones or information could be automated (pretend this is easy - what would make sense)?

Don’t create noise. Players can only focus on one thing at a time - don’t distract them. Make sure what players are reading matters - it teaches them that the things you write are important.

I think this is REALLY hard in a M* environment. Especially with a new theme, there is SO MUCH going on. The OOC rules and expectations, the system, the staff, the details of the theme. Thinking very carefully about Must Haves to Start feels important.

So does what goes in a forum post or announcement. If these things are wordy and unclear, players learn not to read them.

Use visuals to teach. You should be able to tell what something does by looking at it.

A lot harder to do in M*s, but wiki or web portal integration helps here. We can’t really teaching what something does, but we CAN teach the ‘vibe’ of a game through good design. Glitch’s design is freaking brilliant at getting its vibe across. Keys has some cool rotating images of its setting that change with every refresh, giving players a feel for their location. Crystal Springs also has a website that just SCREAMS its theme. One of the first things I did when building Spirit Lake was to fill up pinterest boards that gave me the FEEL I wanted.

Are there other ways we can use images to communicate some aspect of theme?

Leverage what people already know from their everyday lives.

I actually think about this a lot in terms of what we name things. For example, what does ‘luck’ do and why? What about XP? What can you do with EXPERIENCE points?

It’s also important in building a theme, to me. Even if I’m adding dragons, I should be building on things people know about human nature, about consistent reactions, about fair play, etc.

Everything can be made better by adding dragons.

I mean. Yeah.

[farfalla]

@Tat Arx gives xp for playing with characters in their first two weeks. It is extremely motivating to people, but it’s a mixed blessing - yeah you have people lining up to play with you, but you end up drowning in 90% fluff because people are just checking the box and not actually… giving hooks.

[Snackness]

@farfalla Preach.

And after 2 weeks, no one wants you any more

[farfalla]

@Snackness Declining to validate newbie RS requests for people who didn’t give me anything valuable is one of my small pleasures in life.

[Snackness]

@farfalla whisper Me too.

[Solstice]

So I’ve completely forgotten what video this was, and I think I’m going to fail to pull it up, but I saw a wonderful analysis about specifically the tutorials that are not actually spoken.

The example, I believe, was Mega Man X.

Basically, the idea is that by presenting people with obstacles that are very simple to start, and introducing them to concepts that they’ll see later on in the stage playing out in a non-threatening way for the first time, without even mentioning the mechanics, you can give people an idea of what to expect when the stakes actually matter.

I think this could be translated beautifully into a muck tutorial, where instead of being jettisoned out into an OOC lounge or onto the grid, you’re taken through a character creation process that teaches you the common commands by forcing you to execute them before you can leave the room.

This is especially easy to do with some things like posing or looking at a room or looking at descriptions. If you can find a way to make that fun and engaging the first time through, you can prepare people for all of the commands that are going to come on down the line and hopefully decrease some of the confusion and overwhelmingness for a new player.

Turning the tutorial into a sort of escape-the-room situation would be amazing. Obviously, you can put a skip command in there if someone really truly doesn’t want to do it, such as with an alt, but gosh what a cool experience that would be to help acclimate to a new game.

[eye8urcake]

@Solstice said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

Turning the tutorial into a sort of escape-the-room situation would be amazing. Obviously, you can put a skip command in there if someone really truly doesn’t want to do it, such as with an alt, but gosh what a cool experience that would be to help acclimate to a new game.

I wanted to run people through Mr. Anderson’s life before Neo from his perspective to teach people the basic game mechanics, progression and emote-based combat of the Matrix game stuck in my head. At the end of the tutorial, you’d choose red pill, blue pill, or a machine-to-be-decided and be funneled into the appropriate character generation and lore primer for your chosen faction.

I love it when the tutorial is actually part of the game.

[Roadspike]

As someone who has written tutorials for casual games before, this is a fascinating idea to me. Tutorials for MU*s are sort of difficult because as currently put together, they can’t be immediate sorts of things that players can get into right away.

I agree with @YetiBeard’s notion of a mission statement – I think every game should have one front and center: tell players what they’ll be playing and what they’ll be doing and what they can expect out of the game.

I love the idea of Session Zero that @Third-Eye mentioned, but again, it’s hard to do unless it’s a Waking Up vignette like on The Network. In some searching around a while back I found a very interesting Social Contract that I think could help with some of that, and adapted it for a project Blu and I were working on: https://emptynight.aresmush.com/wiki/policy#social-contract

I think that on an original theme game, having an Overview page that new players get sent to can help, especially if it’s a super-light summary of the setting and the themes of the game, and then leads to a handful of places that they could go next to learn more (a literal handful, I think 5 is plenty).

And I think that intro-combat-scenes are a great thing to do before any new player engages with a “big plot scene,” but again, the problem of timing/immediacy comes up with the format.

I would love to find a way to create a playable intro, like @Faraday has for the combat system on the Ares general website (https://www.aresmush.com/fs3/fs3-3/combat-walkthrough.html) – I think this would be a phenomenal way to bring people into theme, but it would have to be a lot smarter than Fara’s example to respond “appropriately” to anything the player could do.

[Tat]

@Roadspike said in What we can learn from video game tutorials:

I love the idea of Session Zero that @Third-Eye mentioned, but again, it’s hard to do unless it’s a Waking Up vignette like on The Network. In some searching around a while back I found a very interesting Social Contract that I think could help with some of that, and adapted it for a project Blu and I were working on: https://emptynight.aresmush.com/wiki/policy#social-contract

I kind of want a whole thread just on this idea. I think there’s a lot of good stuff here.

Tutorials for MU*s are sort of difficult because as currently put together, they can’t be immediate sorts of things that players can get into right away.

I’m REALLY thinking a lot about whether that’s always true. I think a lot of things COULD be automated as part of a ‘you get this info when you do this thing’. The first time you enter combat? A link to the extensive guide we built in the wiki. The first time you’re KO’d? An emit telling you what you can do.

I think prompted vignettes could be a really neat way to pace theme tidbits, too. Writing one can hook you to the character and the theme. Reading the instructions or other people’s versions can teach you something valuable about the setting. I kind of love the idea of spacing these out over time to teach new things.

[Pavel]

I think a tutorial should be written by someone not involved in making the game. They should absolutely have input, answer questions, etc, but it should come from a player.

Why? They’re someone who is doing the things they’re trying to explain but without the bias or baggage of prior knowledge of how the system works. When one spends months (or even years) working on something, their ability to explain it to others just starting out is diminished by exposure.