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[Glic2000]

I hate tutorials.  I hate playing them and I hate making them for my own games.  They're usually boring to play and boring to make. 

I think the worst tutorials are the ones that frequently pause the game, or contain too much text.  That really breaks the pacing for me. 

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I actually miss the days of paper manuals and reference cards.  You install the game.  You start playing the game.  And whenever you hit something in the game you don't understand, you look it up in the manual. I don't see the problem with that. 

I like the idea of the entire game being...well, the GAME.  I don't like it when the first 20% or 30% of a game feels like a tutorial.  I find myself thinking, "Well, am I playing the REAL game yet?  Or am I still in 'tutorial mode'?"

[vinheim3]

^ This. Games like "The Indie Game Legend" and "La Mulana" played perfectly with a manual so why create a tutorial? Some games, like Braid, don't need a tutorial, you figure out that world's special mechanic through experimentation in the first room (except the ring, but I think that used a new button anyway).

If the player needs to go through a learning curve because of the difficulty of the game, make it like Portal, short, sweet, no hand-holding or text, paired with puzzles; and not like Kingdom Hearts 2, long, boring, stated the obvious or easy, not even interesting they made you go through crap mini-games.

Also just the feel of having a game manual makes it feel more professional.

[C.A. Sinner]

Old games: title screen -> game

New games: title screen -> lengthy intro cutscene -> tutorial -> more cutscenes -> game

[im9today]

real life has a manual called the bible and it worked pretty well for jeus hope this helps

[Strife]

I'm generally of the opinion that, in most cases, a well designed game shouldn't need a tutorial at all. A well designed game should be able to teach the player how to play the game through discovery within the first few minutes of the game. Obviously this isn't ideal in every single case, but I still think game developers should strive to follow this belief as much as possible.

This is pretty much how I feel on the subject. I would much rather toss the player into the action as soon as possible and have them figure things out through the subtle hints that I give in the stage design. If you place a high wall near the beginning of the first level that can't be overcome with a basic jump, the player will realize that they must have some sort of special skill that will allow them to jump over high walls, be it a double jump or a climbing ability.

Ideally, I think it's a good idea for a game with no tutorial to subtly require the player to learn and use each of their basic actions at least once during the first few levels/stages. If you wanted to be on the safe side, you could also track how long the player is taking to clear a certain part of the stage and provide on-screen text if they struggle long enough.

[zovirl]

I like how braid and realm of the mad god handle it. Instructions embedded in the level so the tutorial doesn't interrupt the play, and takes only as long as a simple level.

[randomnine]

If you hate your tutorials, put the work in and make a good one.

Teaching people through play is a fundamental skill for a game designer. It takes a lot of work, a structured approach, genuine design skill and a bunch of playtesting, but it can be done.

Portal 2 teaches new skills all the way through. The closest it gets to explicit instruction is a handful of button prompts at the start telling you what the keys are, and even these are couched in tight, perfectly-judged comic narrative.

It isn't so much about teaching people things as giving them opportunities to discover them.

Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft could absolutely teach people everything they need to know without boring tutorials, a manual or anything like that. DF falls at the first hurdle by not even offering basic affordances; the interface is so unintuitive you need a tutorial just to figure out what the hell is happening and how you do anything. The first step would be giving it a graphical, mouse-driven interface. All the tools available should be presented visually. Then I'd adopt the "advisor" system from Civ, with social, economic and military advisors recommending various courses of action you could take (or totally ignore) to get your dwarves happier, richer, or better defended. A handful of short goal-oriented challenge scenarios would both show players what's possible in terms of fortress construction and drive them to learn necessary skills. Achievements would drive discovery, encourage people to explore the systems available and hint at hidden depths. A searchable in-game manual/codex hotlinked across the interface would precisely explain the rules for those who wanted to know. None of this would alter or simplify the game in the slightest and there wouldn't be a tutorial in sight.

Enabling people to access even the complexity and depth of DF in an interesting way is a challenge but it's not impossible. DF doesn't fundamentally need to have a steep learning curve; it's that way because the developer has other priorities (and perhaps rightly so).

Minecraft starts off well - you're given tools which suggest you should cut down trees and dig into rock. It falters because crafting isn't explained and crafting recipes are extremely difficult to discover without tabbing out to a wiki. The only thing it really needs is an in-game index of the things you can craft, telling you things you can craft with the resources you have and hinting at valuable resources you haven't found yet to get you digging. Everything else is easy enough to discover.

[tesselode]

I think more people should design their games like Super Mario Bros. There are some very informative articles that analyze the level design in SMB, and you see how the developers managed to teach the game with no written instructions to people who had never played a platform game before. The general pattern seems to be that the developers predicted how people would react to situations to basically trick them into discovering new mechanics.

[McMutton]

I'm planning on making all of my tutorials consist of a paper clip appearing out of nowhere with a, "It looks like you're trying to do [insert task here]. Would you like some help?"

[rivon]

Oh god

I think that it's a bad idea...

[C.A. Sinner]

[letsap]

I feel like a paper clip character would really stick with you, somebody really noteworthy, a real twist, somebody with undeniable mettle, a real plot twist, the kind of guy you can trust to keep it together, a real office supplier, somebody who's undeniably flexible, the strongest link the chain, a true rubber band man with paper thin interests. I salute the idea. Three pips and a hurrah, thrice over.

[Gimym TILBERT]

The problem of turorial is generally the input method and the abstraction it induce.

Find the jump button:





AND before it was:




Okay you may know the answer through sheer literacy of gaming, but now you bought a new keyboard:



Worst you play a qwerty game on an azerty one. 

[vinheim3]

I feel like a paper clip character would really stick with you, somebody really noteworthy, a real twist, somebody with undeniable mettle, a real plot twist, the kind of guy you can trust to keep it together, a real office supplier, somebody who's undeniably flexible, the strongest link the chain, a true rubber band man with paper thin interests. I salute the idea. Three pips and a hurrah, thrice over.

This, or think of a game where a sidekick comes off as annoying at first, but u get through shit together and he dies at some point, and main hero beats the crap out of everything he encounters.. but replace the sidekick with the paperclip guy

[C.A. Sinner]

tatl from majora's mask