Tutorial design in games: effective use of game elements in teaching of the player

Abstract

Tutorials in video games are widely regarded with reluctance, both by game designers and players alike. To understand why that’s the case and seek a way to solve this problem I examined a book by Matthew M. White called Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games and several online videos discussing the subject. The book by White offers significant insight into the psychology of human learning and lists several principles based on those findings that can help in tutorial design. The online video materials on the other hand offer a look into practical suggestions from game designers without academic background to compare to those principles. Both sides conclude that tutorial design must be an integral part of the game in the form of its core mechanics, feedback loop and visual design. After those findings, in order to put the research into practical application, I described a hypothetical fighting game which I called “Fists of Arbunix ‘’ along with its first level.