Friday, January 2, 2009
Making Non-Casual Games Accessible to Newbies
Here is an op-ed video discussing why there is a barrier for "newbies" to play non-casual games. This is something I have believed in for some time, and am glad someone decided to put it down since I haven't yet. Try not to get hung up on the details (e.g. he is not really talking about one particular feature of one particular game), and the bigger idea should come through.
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I think he has a good point in that often new players feel intimidated by controls. I'm not sure he's correct that the learning process is that affected by failure, except when you're learning smaller, more discrete skills. Things like basic locomotion and game functionality are usually taught very early, and with very little downtime.
ReplyDeletePart of it is that games are usually much more difficult to pick up mid-game. That probably could be done more simply. The other part is that we as developers need to provide tutorial sessions that are fun and engaging from the get-go. A lot of time the "learning to play" parts don't have a lot of fun associated with them, and that's not engaging. A good example of making it engaging while teaching would be God of War 2, where Kratos starts off with phenomenal god-like powers, and over the course of the first level loses them. It gives the player a chance to be uber, while learning to play. The player gets to learn to do the cool stuff, while doing the cool stuff.
I think that the major offenders to this has been the MMORPGs of yore. It just isn't cool to be told 'kill 10 bunnies and I will give you some copper coins'. That doesn't seem cool or awesome at all.