How to teach a player to understand your application, not nullifying the work of artists, not offending programmers and not considering players mentally retarded
Then they told me in the courtyard that it was unfashionable to say “free-to-play”. If you make a game in which the concept of monetization “everything is free, but for some things I would advise you to pay,” then call it “freemium”.
Continuing the fashionable educational program, I will say that they are still doing unfashionable - tutorials (from the English tutorial - the textbook) - how the developers explain to the player what he can do in the application. Fortunately, social and mobile games are not limited solely to the three-in-a-row mechanics, so the user is not always clear what he needs to do to achieve nirvana. And now most tutorials do not fulfill their role.
- This is what the player sees immediately after the loading screens, introductory video and other non-player elements;
- As a result, a bad tutorial is a direct path to a high percentage of audience loss. In other words, most of the people who started the game will leave without understanding what they wanted from them;
- If people are able to catch the obvious rules (the beds should be planted with tomatoes, the freezing beam is ineffective against ice crocodiles), and the tutorial is bad, that is, the risk that most of the content will pass by the players. And this, on the one hand, extra labor costs, and on the other - the whole balance, complexity curve and monetization policy collapses. For example, a player does not understand where he should buy soldiers, he is forced to kill enemies, spending golden magic rubies - and as a result, offendedly throws the game with "snickers who have demanded money right from the entrance."
')
Now, about what tutorials the modern game development science knows:
By the way, I studied the tutorials of the top five games in Facebook and Facebook tops to find out the types of tutorials used here and there. Below is a closer look at the listed approaches.
What: the complete absence of intelligible training of the player. As an example, you can take the very first X-COM: they give you a suitcase of money, a hangar, a team of thugs and they say: well, then go on and on as you please. You have to reach the rest by pressing the buttons of a misunderstood destination. From modern social / mobile games, nothing comes to mind. It is not surprising: no one has heard of such games, even in Fruit Ninja, you are persistently demonstrating the expected gesture.
Fortunately for players, this method has outlived itself on top-5 VKontakte and Facebook. There should be a picture of the absence of a tutorial.
Pros:
- saving development time: writing a tutorial that adequately responds to a player’s attempts to do what he wants does not hang the game and really helps to figure it out, may take a programmer’s work in tandem with a game designer for a month;
- the thinking of programmers is not overshadowed by the constant violation of the PLO. Previously, the building was like a building, the window was like a window, and now public methods stick up everywhere, and maybe even global variables are wound up that need to be considered everywhere and everywhere (IsTutorialLaunched, for example);
- artists see the game as painted. Neither do you get knocked out arrows, nor scattering sparks, nor blackouts of the screen, about which no one thought when art was designed;
- those players who will understand the game on their own, really understand what they are doing.
Minuses:
- players leave without understanding what developers give them;
- Are some other minuses needed? Well, even those players who figure it out, will play completely differently from what gamedevelopers hoped for.
Conclusion:
This approach can only be advised by your sworn enemy or the developer of an extremely simple game. All games from top-10 on VKontakte and Facebook have some tutorial, although most of them are three-in-a-row. Can you make something even simpler?
What: the team understands that to completely remain silent after launching the game will not work. The target audience does not understand what to click to win. And then the main producer illuminates:
- Listen, Vasya, and after all we can give out in that window something other than “Hello, World!”? Vasya scratches his head and agrees. The following week, the team suffers from graphomania, and Vasya arranges triggers causing a hundred modal windows. They must simultaneously tell about the Universe of the Game, reveal the subtle mental organization of the team and, yes, train the player.
As an economical, but inefficient way, it is used in one application out of five in the top VKontakte. On Facebook, there is no such thing; budgets allow you to give something better.
Pros:
- minimal time investment, and at least some training is;
- programmers do not mind: the dialog window is quite a regular situation, it can be foreseen almost always;
- the game designer-graphoman believes that his hour has now struck, and here he will give out deep experiences of the space marines klakontsa!
Minuses:
- the more text, the greater the likelihood that you will miss. Refer not to that on "you", use the masculine where the woman plays. Screw a silly joke that will not be understood by the majority of the audience;
- if you do not do a text quest - it will not be read. Generally they will not;
- based on the point above - wasting time;
- A bunch of annoyed players from the constant closure of windows that prevent them from doing what they came for - games. Accordingly, you can achieve the opposite effect in relation to what you wanted to achieve - and after the introduction of the tutorial, people will leave even more.
Conclusion:
You have already understood that training players is important - so take the time to do something for their convenience, not yours.
What: can already be considered a player's training. Game Designer pushed the thought: “Masha from 8B will not understand where to press”, the coder gritted his teeth and agreed. After some time, an arrow flies across the screen, which tells the player what to press. Only two troubles: if you draw an arrow in the style and colors of the game, it will merge with what is happening on the screen. And if it is bright red, jumping and with a yellow glow, how will you look into the eyes of the artist? Tom, who spent two weeks to draw a character-narrator, starting from only two colors that organically rhyme the color of jewelry and eyes?
There is one more problem - even if the arrow jumps, the players ignore it! Shake everything they want, scoundrels. And this cannot be allowed: the logic is that after these words the player must open the warehouse and find a box of salad there, but not go to the port where they have to steal this box from him! Therefore, we block the entire screen, except for the cherished button that the player will press sooner or later.
Here's how to make your player know exactly what you want from him:
Pros:
- it can really help if the arrow is clearly visible in a bright world;
- the appearance of the game does not deteriorate, except
Minuses:
- it will take a lot of time;
- if the player did not notice the arrow, then he will perceive the screen not responding to pressing as a bug. And naturally throw the game;
- the player is much worse aware of what he is doing than with independent attempts to understand the game. In fact, you already lead him by the hand, and by the end of the tutorial he can forget what you taught him;
- this, and any tutorial, can be perceived by the player as an insult to the level “I am not a fool, I would have figured it out myself, but you are here as with a small one, and you also spend time!”.
Conclusion:
It can really work if you do not abuse the technique.
Tip: try to make the tutorial off, it will reduce the number of disorders in independent players.
What: the previous version brought to the absolute. The player presses the wrong place and decides that the game is frozen? Close all black mask! We leave only the slot for the small button that needs to be pressed. So what if a player from five to fifteen minutes will not see all the beauty that artists have painted for him and programmers wrote? But nowhere will not turn off the rails, and even dare to look at anything but the necessary things!
Of the five in the top of VKontakte, four somehow use this approach. In Facebook in the first five applications there is no such thing - higher budgets, and, accordingly, quality.
Everything is approximately the same as in the image, it is dark, but you will not miss places where you can click:
Pros:
- full control over the actions of the player;
- no one decides that the game broke, if at every moment of time everything he sees is a hole in the black image, one button in the hole and an arrow, which with all its animation tries to advise pressing the button.
Minuses:
- for a long time - approximately the same time costs as for just the hands;
- visually it is terrible: the player is met by a darkened likeness of what it could be;
- the tutorial does not do the main thing - does not teach. Yes, you can grow business indicators, a larger percentage will reach the end of the tutorial. But, thanks to the visual solution, some players will not be able to reproduce the single action that they did, in fact, on autopilot.
Conclusion:
By choosing this approach, you will scare away the players. What should be bright will appear faded, and light - darkened. In addition, you deprive a person of choice - he is not just forced to press precisely those buttons and elements that the game designer has planned, he is directly stated that he should not expect anything else.
What: the only correct approach to which large teams abroad have arrived: three out of five in the top on Facebook. On VKontakte, I haven’t met this yet, but there is no reason to doubt that sooner or later we will come to this.
The idea is that all active objects that are waiting for clicking on them have a special, tutorial animation. The beds are dancing, waiting for their portions of water, the candies grow their hands and waving to the user - and everything is built in organically, while at the expense of the atypical behavior of the elements, it will be difficult for the player not to notice the necessary items.
These droplets love to twitch in three, as if hinting that they are not averse to lining up:
Pros:
- the player learns;
- the player may not even understand what they are teaching;
- the maximum natural process.
Minuses:
- the maximum cost of time and, as a result, of finance: can afford only large publishing houses.
Conclusion:
If you are a producer from Zingi / King, then this option is for you! Although, wait ... I’ve seen that from you.
For all others, only if you are very sure that you are in trouble. It may seem that this advice is in the style of "If you do not have bread, then eat cakes." No, there is still a budget trick, it is lower.
What: a combination of a pointing arrow, circling a circle / pentagram, a golden glow and, importantly, rays from the cursor leading to the desired object. It is desirable to leave the player freedom of action, creating a soft tutorial. Then the player will simultaneously know what to do at any moment, according to the developers, but will not be obliged to obey him.
If you don’t have enough element highlighting, arrows above it, we’ll also draw animation from the cursor:
Pros:
- does not disfigure the game as an embrasure;
- the player remembers the location of the elements and the connections between them, i.e. learns;
- not lost on the screen, as a simple arrow;
- gives the player a sense of choice (imaginary or not - depends on the implementation);
- not as long in implementation as the animation of all the necessary objects.
Minuses:
- long, on a par with “embrasure” or “arrow”;
- unusual for the player;
- can scare away if it is unnecessarily intrusive;
- due to the lack of a cursor on mobile devices - not applicable to them.
Conclusion:
This approach absorbed the best of budget tutorials for social games and minimized the worst.
I would like to emphasize that some approaches can easily flow into each other. For example, a hard tutorial with a locked screen in the first two quests of the game can be replaced by an unobtrusive arrow “well, I would advise you to click here, but you are your own master,” and then disappear completely to appear only at the request of the player.
The author asks the developers to take a look at how tutorials are made from large companies with large budgets - it is highly unlikely that this will allow us to lose far fewer users at the beginning of the game without degrading the quality of player training.
And stop using the embrasures. It's horrible.
Continuing the fashionable educational program, I will say that they are still doing unfashionable - tutorials (from the English tutorial - the textbook) - how the developers explain to the player what he can do in the application. Fortunately, social and mobile games are not limited solely to the three-in-a-row mechanics, so the user is not always clear what he needs to do to achieve nirvana. And now most tutorials do not fulfill their role.
Wait, why is tutorial important?
- This is what the player sees immediately after the loading screens, introductory video and other non-player elements;
- As a result, a bad tutorial is a direct path to a high percentage of audience loss. In other words, most of the people who started the game will leave without understanding what they wanted from them;
- If people are able to catch the obvious rules (the beds should be planted with tomatoes, the freezing beam is ineffective against ice crocodiles), and the tutorial is bad, that is, the risk that most of the content will pass by the players. And this, on the one hand, extra labor costs, and on the other - the whole balance, complexity curve and monetization policy collapses. For example, a player does not understand where he should buy soldiers, he is forced to kill enemies, spending golden magic rubies - and as a result, offendedly throws the game with "snickers who have demanded money right from the entrance."
')
Now, about what tutorials the modern game development science knows:
Types of tutorials:
- "Themselves will understand"
- “We are able to give out a message box”
- "Locked screen and the mystery of the lost arrow"
- “Black embrasure of terrifying despair”
- “We can add another animation to all objects”
- "Guide beam"
By the way, I studied the tutorials of the top five games in Facebook and Facebook tops to find out the types of tutorials used here and there. Below is a closer look at the listed approaches.
Themselves will understand
What: the complete absence of intelligible training of the player. As an example, you can take the very first X-COM: they give you a suitcase of money, a hangar, a team of thugs and they say: well, then go on and on as you please. You have to reach the rest by pressing the buttons of a misunderstood destination. From modern social / mobile games, nothing comes to mind. It is not surprising: no one has heard of such games, even in Fruit Ninja, you are persistently demonstrating the expected gesture.
Fortunately for players, this method has outlived itself on top-5 VKontakte and Facebook. There should be a picture of the absence of a tutorial.
Pros:
- saving development time: writing a tutorial that adequately responds to a player’s attempts to do what he wants does not hang the game and really helps to figure it out, may take a programmer’s work in tandem with a game designer for a month;
- the thinking of programmers is not overshadowed by the constant violation of the PLO. Previously, the building was like a building, the window was like a window, and now public methods stick up everywhere, and maybe even global variables are wound up that need to be considered everywhere and everywhere (IsTutorialLaunched, for example);
- artists see the game as painted. Neither do you get knocked out arrows, nor scattering sparks, nor blackouts of the screen, about which no one thought when art was designed;
- those players who will understand the game on their own, really understand what they are doing.
Minuses:
- players leave without understanding what developers give them;
- Are some other minuses needed? Well, even those players who figure it out, will play completely differently from what gamedevelopers hoped for.
Conclusion:
This approach can only be advised by your sworn enemy or the developer of an extremely simple game. All games from top-10 on VKontakte and Facebook have some tutorial, although most of them are three-in-a-row. Can you make something even simpler?
We are able to show the message box
What: the team understands that to completely remain silent after launching the game will not work. The target audience does not understand what to click to win. And then the main producer illuminates:
- Listen, Vasya, and after all we can give out in that window something other than “Hello, World!”? Vasya scratches his head and agrees. The following week, the team suffers from graphomania, and Vasya arranges triggers causing a hundred modal windows. They must simultaneously tell about the Universe of the Game, reveal the subtle mental organization of the team and, yes, train the player.
As an economical, but inefficient way, it is used in one application out of five in the top VKontakte. On Facebook, there is no such thing; budgets allow you to give something better.
Pros:
- minimal time investment, and at least some training is;
- programmers do not mind: the dialog window is quite a regular situation, it can be foreseen almost always;
- the game designer-graphoman believes that his hour has now struck, and here he will give out deep experiences of the space marines klakontsa!
Minuses:
- the more text, the greater the likelihood that you will miss. Refer not to that on "you", use the masculine where the woman plays. Screw a silly joke that will not be understood by the majority of the audience;
- if you do not do a text quest - it will not be read. Generally they will not;
- based on the point above - wasting time;
- A bunch of annoyed players from the constant closure of windows that prevent them from doing what they came for - games. Accordingly, you can achieve the opposite effect in relation to what you wanted to achieve - and after the introduction of the tutorial, people will leave even more.
Conclusion:
You have already understood that training players is important - so take the time to do something for their convenience, not yours.
Locked screen and the mystery of the lost arrow
What: can already be considered a player's training. Game Designer pushed the thought: “Masha from 8B will not understand where to press”, the coder gritted his teeth and agreed. After some time, an arrow flies across the screen, which tells the player what to press. Only two troubles: if you draw an arrow in the style and colors of the game, it will merge with what is happening on the screen. And if it is bright red, jumping and with a yellow glow, how will you look into the eyes of the artist? Tom, who spent two weeks to draw a character-narrator, starting from only two colors that organically rhyme the color of jewelry and eyes?
There is one more problem - even if the arrow jumps, the players ignore it! Shake everything they want, scoundrels. And this cannot be allowed: the logic is that after these words the player must open the warehouse and find a box of salad there, but not go to the port where they have to steal this box from him! Therefore, we block the entire screen, except for the cherished button that the player will press sooner or later.
Here's how to make your player know exactly what you want from him:
Pros:
- it can really help if the arrow is clearly visible in a bright world;
- the appearance of the game does not deteriorate, except
Minuses:
- it will take a lot of time;
- if the player did not notice the arrow, then he will perceive the screen not responding to pressing as a bug. And naturally throw the game;
- the player is much worse aware of what he is doing than with independent attempts to understand the game. In fact, you already lead him by the hand, and by the end of the tutorial he can forget what you taught him;
- this, and any tutorial, can be perceived by the player as an insult to the level “I am not a fool, I would have figured it out myself, but you are here as with a small one, and you also spend time!”.
Conclusion:
It can really work if you do not abuse the technique.
Tip: try to make the tutorial off, it will reduce the number of disorders in independent players.
Black embrasure of terrifying despair
What: the previous version brought to the absolute. The player presses the wrong place and decides that the game is frozen? Close all black mask! We leave only the slot for the small button that needs to be pressed. So what if a player from five to fifteen minutes will not see all the beauty that artists have painted for him and programmers wrote? But nowhere will not turn off the rails, and even dare to look at anything but the necessary things!
Of the five in the top of VKontakte, four somehow use this approach. In Facebook in the first five applications there is no such thing - higher budgets, and, accordingly, quality.
Everything is approximately the same as in the image, it is dark, but you will not miss places where you can click:
Pros:
- full control over the actions of the player;
- no one decides that the game broke, if at every moment of time everything he sees is a hole in the black image, one button in the hole and an arrow, which with all its animation tries to advise pressing the button.
Minuses:
- for a long time - approximately the same time costs as for just the hands;
- visually it is terrible: the player is met by a darkened likeness of what it could be;
- the tutorial does not do the main thing - does not teach. Yes, you can grow business indicators, a larger percentage will reach the end of the tutorial. But, thanks to the visual solution, some players will not be able to reproduce the single action that they did, in fact, on autopilot.
Conclusion:
By choosing this approach, you will scare away the players. What should be bright will appear faded, and light - darkened. In addition, you deprive a person of choice - he is not just forced to press precisely those buttons and elements that the game designer has planned, he is directly stated that he should not expect anything else.
We can add another animation to all objects.
What: the only correct approach to which large teams abroad have arrived: three out of five in the top on Facebook. On VKontakte, I haven’t met this yet, but there is no reason to doubt that sooner or later we will come to this.
The idea is that all active objects that are waiting for clicking on them have a special, tutorial animation. The beds are dancing, waiting for their portions of water, the candies grow their hands and waving to the user - and everything is built in organically, while at the expense of the atypical behavior of the elements, it will be difficult for the player not to notice the necessary items.
These droplets love to twitch in three, as if hinting that they are not averse to lining up:
Pros:
- the player learns;
- the player may not even understand what they are teaching;
- the maximum natural process.
Minuses:
- the maximum cost of time and, as a result, of finance: can afford only large publishing houses.
Conclusion:
If you are a producer from Zingi / King, then this option is for you! Although, wait ... I’ve seen that from you.
For all others, only if you are very sure that you are in trouble. It may seem that this advice is in the style of "If you do not have bread, then eat cakes." No, there is still a budget trick, it is lower.
Guide beam
What: a combination of a pointing arrow, circling a circle / pentagram, a golden glow and, importantly, rays from the cursor leading to the desired object. It is desirable to leave the player freedom of action, creating a soft tutorial. Then the player will simultaneously know what to do at any moment, according to the developers, but will not be obliged to obey him.
If you don’t have enough element highlighting, arrows above it, we’ll also draw animation from the cursor:
Pros:
- does not disfigure the game as an embrasure;
- the player remembers the location of the elements and the connections between them, i.e. learns;
- not lost on the screen, as a simple arrow;
- gives the player a sense of choice (imaginary or not - depends on the implementation);
- not as long in implementation as the animation of all the necessary objects.
Minuses:
- long, on a par with “embrasure” or “arrow”;
- unusual for the player;
- can scare away if it is unnecessarily intrusive;
- due to the lack of a cursor on mobile devices - not applicable to them.
Conclusion:
This approach absorbed the best of budget tutorials for social games and minimized the worst.
General conclusion
I would like to emphasize that some approaches can easily flow into each other. For example, a hard tutorial with a locked screen in the first two quests of the game can be replaced by an unobtrusive arrow “well, I would advise you to click here, but you are your own master,” and then disappear completely to appear only at the request of the player.
The author asks the developers to take a look at how tutorials are made from large companies with large budgets - it is highly unlikely that this will allow us to lose far fewer users at the beginning of the game without degrading the quality of player training.
And stop using the embrasures. It's horrible.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/225651/
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