Tutorials in games
In a lot of games you find a tutorial, so when you play it for the first time you usually go through some lessons how things work in the game. Which is a good thing if it doesn´t take too long and if it´s not boring, unfortunately that´s not always how it goes. Sometimes you have to go through annoying lessons that you don´t really need. It´s nice if people want to tell you how things work but do you really need to spend 15 minutes on that? Better yet, why don´t you just put a little guide in the box with the game and put the controls in there. That way people can decide if they want to learn the controls or just dive in the game.
Do games still have a little guide book in the case? It´s actually getting rare to find that these days, some games do have them but other games just leave them out. They prefer to bore you in the game with a tutorial. Then you really have to wonder if it wasn´t better if they just printed that on paper and added that with the game. Sure it´s a bit more work for them but less frustrations for us (gamers). I actually read that little guide book, just to see if there is anything I need to know and what the game is about before I actually play it. In the old days you would have an intro, character description, control guide, tips and tricks. Now if they add something in the case it´s usually nothing interesting, maybe some are bothered to add some controls in it but mostly it´s just legal boring stuff. Maybe I´m just old fashioned and things have just changed, but I like having some information about the game in a book. Sure you can buy a strategy guide but that usually costs a lot extra, besides I can´t help myself read more than I should and so I kind of spoil the game for myself. My point is that this little guide book was a good tutorial, you can read how things work and when you´re done you can play the game. But if you don´t want to be bothered by that you can just play the game and if you don´t understand how something works, you can still get the little guide book and see how it works.
So all tutorials are lame in a game? No some games actually give you a choice, if you want to do the tutorial or not. Usually this is a game from a game series, like Gears of War 2 gave you the option to train Carmine (which means do the tutorial) and the other option is to go straight into battle. Which is perfect because then you decide what you want, of course the achievement to do the tutorial did kind of make it interesting to do it anyway. But the point is that you can choose, nobody likes to be forced to do something they don´t really want to do. Because playing a game is about having fun, not being bored or annoyed by something. Some games can also make a tutorial less boring, by making it a part of the story instead of some type of training simulation. The little pop ups that tell you what you should do aren´t that annoying, in Mass Effect they actually do that pretty good. It´s a short tutorial that helps you figure things out and then it´s gone.
The risk of skipping a tutorial is that you might not understand how something works, now this doesn´t have to be a problem unless it´s something you need to know to advance in the game. So always skipping text might bite you in the ass later in the game, I´ve been there when you skipped boring text. This isn´t a problem until you need to do something and you have no idea how to do it, usually pressing all the buttons gets you closer to figure it out but it´s wasted time and also quite annoying. The worst thing is if it´s a button combination, because that takes even longer to figure out! Other times it´s something you should know, how to beat a certain enemy and because you decided you skipped the tutorial you don´t always understand how it needs to be done. This doesn´t have to be bad, as long as you have fun trying to figure out how to beat that enemy. But when you keep dying because you´re doing something wrong in the game, that´s when you kind of wished that you payed a bit more attention when the game was explaining something to you. So a word of advice, no matter how lame the text might seem it´s often a good idea to read because sooner or later that information might actually be useful!
Do games still have a little guide book in the case? It´s actually getting rare to find that these days, some games do have them but other games just leave them out. They prefer to bore you in the game with a tutorial. Then you really have to wonder if it wasn´t better if they just printed that on paper and added that with the game. Sure it´s a bit more work for them but less frustrations for us (gamers). I actually read that little guide book, just to see if there is anything I need to know and what the game is about before I actually play it. In the old days you would have an intro, character description, control guide, tips and tricks. Now if they add something in the case it´s usually nothing interesting, maybe some are bothered to add some controls in it but mostly it´s just legal boring stuff. Maybe I´m just old fashioned and things have just changed, but I like having some information about the game in a book. Sure you can buy a strategy guide but that usually costs a lot extra, besides I can´t help myself read more than I should and so I kind of spoil the game for myself. My point is that this little guide book was a good tutorial, you can read how things work and when you´re done you can play the game. But if you don´t want to be bothered by that you can just play the game and if you don´t understand how something works, you can still get the little guide book and see how it works.
So all tutorials are lame in a game? No some games actually give you a choice, if you want to do the tutorial or not. Usually this is a game from a game series, like Gears of War 2 gave you the option to train Carmine (which means do the tutorial) and the other option is to go straight into battle. Which is perfect because then you decide what you want, of course the achievement to do the tutorial did kind of make it interesting to do it anyway. But the point is that you can choose, nobody likes to be forced to do something they don´t really want to do. Because playing a game is about having fun, not being bored or annoyed by something. Some games can also make a tutorial less boring, by making it a part of the story instead of some type of training simulation. The little pop ups that tell you what you should do aren´t that annoying, in Mass Effect they actually do that pretty good. It´s a short tutorial that helps you figure things out and then it´s gone.
The risk of skipping a tutorial is that you might not understand how something works, now this doesn´t have to be a problem unless it´s something you need to know to advance in the game. So always skipping text might bite you in the ass later in the game, I´ve been there when you skipped boring text. This isn´t a problem until you need to do something and you have no idea how to do it, usually pressing all the buttons gets you closer to figure it out but it´s wasted time and also quite annoying. The worst thing is if it´s a button combination, because that takes even longer to figure out! Other times it´s something you should know, how to beat a certain enemy and because you decided you skipped the tutorial you don´t always understand how it needs to be done. This doesn´t have to be bad, as long as you have fun trying to figure out how to beat that enemy. But when you keep dying because you´re doing something wrong in the game, that´s when you kind of wished that you payed a bit more attention when the game was explaining something to you. So a word of advice, no matter how lame the text might seem it´s often a good idea to read because sooner or later that information might actually be useful!
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