Topic: How gaming has evolved... (Viewer descretion is advised.)

In the video below egoraptor (a very talented animator on Youtube and NewGrounds.com), has brought a very valuable point in plain sight: How developers take away the learning experience of playing video games with pointless tutorials.

I feel like 20% of the experience is taken away when they tell you anything/everything. I just got a new item in Game A and now I'm going to use it. Select the item, go somewhere to use it, and press every button until I figure it out myself. Developers these days go "Mainstream" and tell us everything we could have learned on our own which is what eats away from the experience as a whole.

And, quite frankly, I'm on egoraptor's side of this. Picking up Super Mario Sunshine (for i.e.), was one of the funnest things I've ever done in gaming. A poor example sure, but a lot of the missions, where you had a certain objective, you weren't told how to do or what's to come. (Like in most Mario games, lol). Unless you had a strategy guide you didn't know which of the 8 levels were easier to collect 100 coins for a Shine Sprite. Neither did you know where to spray water to collect all 30 DAMN blue coins in each area. ...which was nice. Or had a secret weapon to pull out to destroy the boss in front of you.

"Improving by learning." Quoted from the video. I miss that. One of the reasons why I loved New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Mario Galaxy 2 was that I skipped the Super Guide and faced the challenge myself and overtime and excessive failure, completed it. Did it ever feel so good. Why? Because I wanted to learn from my mistakes like I did growing up with the NES/SNES. I could relate this to a lot of games but I grew to love classic favorites like Super Mario World and Super Metroid because of the trial and error process.

Number munch... Discuss.

I agree with him on certain points. I think some games such as RTS's or MMO's need tutorials.

ESPECIALLY MMOs, I can't count how many times I've inadvertantly picked up a player who has no idea what the heck they're doing... then there was that time years ago I was one of those players

I didn't become a lord of games in three years by watching tutorials. u_u

Joke aside, tutorials on MMOs? Blasphemy. The point of being a newcomer in an MMO is to gain friends to help you during your experience. It adds to the enjoyment. Like, you just start, you're lost, you're brain-dead... that one player comes up to you from God-knows-where in cyberspace... and you form a sudden bond of happiness, rainbows, love and laughter and shiz.

EDIT: Oh, and I didn't watch the video. It seems too long, and by the looks of it, he's probably gonna sound like he's ranting.

Play Demon's or Dark Souls

In the latter (which is the only I've played) I died about 10 times in the "tutorial level", which although I didn't know it at the time gave you much more help than any of the rest of the game does. As in, it was hardly a tutorial.

Edit: This guy is effing annoying. I can't continue watching this u_u

Would be nice if that video had more than just... Megaman to illustrate its point. RPGs and strats have a lot of effing tutorials as well and in some every time you learn a new skill you get a tutorial on how to do that skill etc. Simple as this, game designers should just allow an option to skip the tutorial if there is one, and go back to it if you feel like you need help or missed something. Fire Emblem actually does this quite nicely.

Well yeah lol. But Demon Souls and Dark Souls are very difficult games so they need some guidance with that. Whereas Batman Arkham City does not. Zez, your a Metal Gear fan. Metal Gear Solid never told you how to grab/choke enemies, how to crawl, sneak up against walls, or told you whose foot prints those were.

He showed Batman Arkham City, Just Cause 2, Castlevania 2, as well as the Mega Mans for examples.

I agree with him that developers have gone mainstream with the tutorials and how they think we're dumb when we can naturally figure out how to do simple things like how to jump.

...the manual does

I know most people don't read those instruction booklet things, but I find them interesting
_{don't know what you mean about the footprints thing though}

Every game comes with a manual. But obviously thats optional. Plus have you read Metal Gear Solid 4's instruction booklet?!

_{Your very first time playing MGS1 the guard will see your footprints in the snow and say "Whose footprints are these?" as he walked towards the direction they were going. And, of course, you were clueless at the time.}

I'm pretty sure that video was powered by meth.

I don't see how this is a big deal.

Did you watch the video? Either way I think it's dumb how we don't get to learn on our own when we play games. Which is... in more ways than one what defines gaming.

Aaaaand it was a great excuse to show this hilarious video.

There's a balance. It's not "all tutorials are bad", but it isn't "spell out everything or they'll try to eat the buttons" either. When you're looking at an average pad these days, some things just aren't obvious. Jumping is going to be one of the main buttons, as is your primary attack. Just as in the old days. They're easy to figure out. Camera and moving, also blatantly obvious. These things do not require a pointer. Other things though need to be judged on whether or not they need some tutorial or hint in the game to explain. It may not be clear in what circumstances it can be used, or its purpose, or effective usage techniques (do I hold the button to do that, or repeatedly tap it, or just tap it once? Do I have to be near a context-sensitive object or do I need to manually target it from a distance? Does this thing auto-lock or what? Etc).

It may not be apparent to the player that a feature exists at all - take refilling the FLUDD in Mario Sunshine (which is a bad example as I'll explain later, but go with it for now). If the game had not explicitly stated that you refill the tank by standing in water and hitting the button that usually sprays away your supply of water, then it would've taken some unnecessary trial-and-error to figure that out. It's rather counter-intuitive when you think about it, and doesn't make a huge deal of physical sense either when you're stood in a knee-deep puddle that the FLUDD doesn't even reach. And had the player discovered the water bottle items before learning to refill using the oceans, they may simply assume that those are the only way to refill.

As I said, that's a bad example due to the abundance of water in Sunshine and the improbability that the player wouldn't jump in it in the early game. But the point is the same - things that aren't immediately clear deserve a pointer in the right direction. And as games grow increasingly complex (not just in number of buttons on the pad, but the game mechanics themselves), pointers are increasingly necessary.

And there's the problem of overwhelming the player. Load up Mega Man and all you have to learn is how to jump and shoot, and it's quite clear immediately what both are for. Load up Batman: Arkham Asylum, and you've all manner of tools at your disposal, and it's going to get frustrating trying to figure out exactly what everything is even for before you start playing properly. Which is gonna turn people off.

I did watch the video. Still don't get it.

@Raylax
Agreed.

@Itsa
Not being able to learn the little things in video games on your own eats away at the overall experience. Like he said, wall jumping in Mega Man X or how if you use the boomerang on Flame Mammoth it cuts off his trunk. Which is cool. But like Raylax said, if it's too complicated to figure out on your own then give us a little tutorial on how to use and what it does.

Holy crap. I just saw that video a couple days ago. Weird.