Attempting to model real ity may be one way to give play ers an advan tage going into your game-world; through their own life expe ri ences, play ers will know to some extent what to expect of your gameworld. How ever, even with the most real -is tic game, play ers need time to learn how to play your game, and th-is learn ing expe ri ence is often a cru cial time in a player’s over all expe ri ence with your game.
The first few min utes a player spends with your game will often make the dif fer ence between whether she wants to con tinue play ing it or not. When ever a player tells a friend about your game, she will often remem ber those first few min utes and say,
“Well, it was a lit tle weird to get used to” or, pref er a bly, “It was great. I jumped right into the game and found all this cool stuff.”
In the past, many com puter games relied on man u als to teach play ers how to play them. With some titles play ers lit er ally had almost no chance of suc cess in the game with out first read ing a large chunk of the man ual. Today many games try to get away from this reli ance on the player’s read ing abil ity, real iz ing that often the last thing a player wants to do when he has just pur chased a new game is to sit down and read an exten sive instruc tional man ual. Players def i nitely have a strong desire to just pick up the con trol ler and start play ing the game. Now that so many games allow the player to do just that, the impor tance of allow ing the player to
“jump right in” has increased. If your game is too dif fi cult to get a han dle on within the first min ute, the player is likely to put it down and try some thing else.
This does not mean that your game has to be dumbed down or sim pli fied, merely that you must intro duce the com plex ity of your game-world through the gameplay instead of through the man ual. For exam ple, at first your game should start out requir ing the player to per form only the sim plest of actions. Say you are cre at ing a third-person over-the-shoulder action/adven ture game akin to Tomb Raider. It makes the most sense to first teach the player how to move the player around cor rectly on the ground. Then, after the player has had a chance to become accus tomed to the hor i zon tal move ment con trols, you might intro duce a sec tion where the player has to jump to cross a can yon or climb up a cliff. After enough of that, you might want to intro duce some sim ple com bat chal lenges, where the player will learn how to use his char ac ter’s weap ons.
It is impor tant that dur ing the intro duc tion of these con trols the player is in a safe envi ron ment that engen ders learn ing. If the player already has to worry about dying at every step and the game is gen er ally unfor giv ing of the player’s mis takes, chances are good that the player will become frus trated quickly. Half-Life did this par tic u larly well, with an intro duc tion to the game that pro vided a safe yet inter est -ing envi ron ment and allowed the player to become accus tomed to the con trols with out imme di ately threat en ing him. Prince of Per sia was another game that was par tic u larly good at intro duc ing chal lenges to the player in a way that taught the player through exam ple instead of by pun ish ing him. For instance, when the player first encoun ters a break-away floor in Prince of Per sia fall ing through it is
non-lethal. Sim i larly, spikes are intro duced in such a way that the player is very likely to notice them and to be able to sur vive them. Sub se quent encoun ters with spikes will not be so for giv ing, but by then the player has learned of the threat they
Prince of Per sia care fully taught the player what to expect of traps such as col laps ing floors and sharp spikes.
pose to his game-world char ac ter, and if he is clever he will be able to sur vive them.
Rewards
Dur ing this learn ing period in the game, it is impor tant to reward the player for even the sim plest of accom plish ments. This makes the player feel that, indeed, he is on the right track with the game and encour ages him to keep play ing. It is true that play ers do not want their games to be too sim ple and too unchallenging, but pun ish -ing them for blun ders from the very start of the game is not the right way to pro duce this chal lenge. The key is to give the player suc cess early on, to draw him into the game, to make him think that he knows what the game is all about, that he is better than it. “Ha ha, this game is easy, I rule!” he may say. And then, when the game becomes sud denly more chal leng ing, the player will already have been drawn into the game and will be much more likely to see the chal lenge as a rea son able one, one that he can surely over come. After all, this game is easy, right?
Recently, many com plex games have started intro duc ing the player to the gam -ing world through a tuto rial level which exists out side of the game-world proper.
The player can access this tuto rial world through the main menu as an alter na tive to start ing a “real” game. These tuto rial lev els are gen er ally a good idea and are cer -tainly an improve ment over teach ing the player about the game in the man ual. The tuto rial lev els do one of the things that com put ers do best: pro vide an inter ac tive learn ing expe ri ence. The one prob lem with tuto rial lev els is that they are sel dom much fun to play, and as a result many play ers will skip them and head straight for the actual game. There is a feel ing among play ers that the tuto rial level is not part of the “real” game, and many play ers want to start play ing this “real” game as soon as pos si ble. If the designer includes a tuto rial level because he wants to make his game dif fi cult from the very begin ning and avoid teach ing the player how to play through the gameplay, play ers who skip the tuto rial will become frus trated. Tuto rial lev els are good for play ers who want that sort of edu ca tional pre lude to the game, but they must not replace mak ing the begin ning of the game itself easy to play.
Again, Half-Life pro vided a tuto rial level that taught play ers about the game-world, but the tuto rial worked in con junc tion with the begin ning of the actual game itself, which was quite easy to play and had a friendly learn ing curve. Of course, mak ing the tuto rial level as enter tain ing as pos si ble goes a long way toward encour ag ing play ers to actu ally play it.
Often these tuto rial lev els include instruc tions which explain what keys or but -tons the player is sup posed to press in order to achieve cer tain effects. Often
voice-overs with accom pa ny ing on-screen text tell the player to “Press the spacebar to fire your pri mary weapon” or “Press and hold down the blue X for a super jump.” Some games go so far as to actu ally tell the player dur ing gameplay what
the con trols are, such as Crash Ban di coot. These detailed expla na tions of what the player is required to do in order to be suc cess ful can be quite a boon to mak ing a com plex game eas ier to pick up. Even beyond that, how ever, games like Spyro The Dragon and The Leg end of Zelda: Oca rina of Time go so far as to have actual game char ac ters tell the player char ac ter what the con trols for the game are. “Spyro, press and hold the blue but ton in order to glide,” the friendly elder dragon says in the for -mer game. I think this goes too far and totally shat ters the player’s sus pen sion of dis be lief. The in-game char ac ters should not know any thing about the player and cer tainly noth ing about a PlayStation con trol ler. How ever, I do think it is help ful to remind play ers of the game’s con trols while they are play ing, through more
removed GUI dis plays and non-game char ac ter voice-overs. Many mod ern games include such sophis ti cated con trols that they are likely to alien ate non–hard-core gamers, and remind ing nov ice play ers of what they need to do in order to per form a cer tain move is a good idea.
I would say that, in ret ro spect, all of my games have been too dif fi cult, and cer -tainly too hard for the player to get into. Dam age Incor po rated may have done the best job at intro duc ing the player to the game-world through easy early lev els. One game that erred in the oppo site direc tion is Odys sey, my turn-based RPG. In it the player starts off ship wrecked on an island, with out any weap ons or pos ses sions of any kind. I wanted the player to, imme di ately, be fright ened and need to find a safe place to hide in a nearby cave. I achieved this by hav ing a few mon sters start charg -ing in the player’s direc tion a few turns after the player arrives on the beach. The player has no chance of defeat ing these crea tures on his own, and needs to enter the nearby cave to sur vive. Ori ginally, I had the cave hid den in the woods, mak ing it
Con sole titles such as The Leg end of Zelda:
Oca rina of Time are good at teach ing the player how to con trol the game.
hard for the player to find and thereby mak ing the game even more unfor giv ing.
For tu nately, my playtesters con vinced me that the intro duc tion was too hard, and I moved the cave out into the open where the player could eas ily see it. How ever, the prob lem remained that, before the player even has a chance to become famil iar with the con trols, she is assaulted by strange mon sters, with no real idea of what she is sup posed to do about it. I often won der how many play ers were fright ened away by this overly chal leng ing intro duc tion and never played the rest of the game as a result.