The Silent Tutorial

Isn't that a great quote right there? That quote encapsulates exactly why many people, myself included, think of the Super Mario Bros games on the 8-bit NES as examples of the best game design you can find in the industry. Good, intuitive level design is able to teach its players how to play a game, without actually telling them to do so. The levels demand little baby steps in our understanding of how a game works, and the level design embraces this fact.

A game developer by the name of Radek Koncewicz, creative lead of Incubator Games, posted this article about how the video game Super Mario Bros. 3 teaches its players everything there is to know about playing, without ever dipping into using a tutorial. This is just a wonderful article that sheds light on the invisible parts of game design that are just so subtle and intangible that we don't even realize what's going on.

If you think about it though, a player does subconsciously need to figure out how to interface with a game; how the physics of speed and momentum work, the things that will and will not hurt you, the way you overcome obstacles, etc. Many games use a tutorial, where the developers will put up messages onto the screen, telling you how to do specific things in the game world. A textbook example would be in a first person shooter where your character is forced to go through a training exercise in a safe location first before going out on his first mission. It's a convenient way for a developer to keep you rooted into the game's fictional world, and let you know how to play the game while they're at it. I did always find it strange to hear characters inside a game world comment on which buttons you should press though; it feels awkward.

"Go on and press the SQUARE button, and you'll reload your weapon!". Imagine if someone told you that in real life; goofy is one way to put it. The experience of having an in-game character tell you what buttons to press is clunky, and takes you out of the experience.

In Super Mario Bros. 3, there is no such goofy tutorial; there is only Mario, and his small set of skills. The way Mario interacts with his world is a playground set up before you, with small hints littered throughout that hint at what you can try to do, just to see if it works. What happens when you jump a second time on that turtle shell? What happens when you run really fast with the raccoon tail powerup, and then jump? Go and try it out! The game even shows you where you can do it, and provides you a safe place to teach yourself simple skills, but without ever saying a single word.

Prior to sitting down to write this article, I tried to think of a few other games that approached this level of intuitive design, and the truth is that very few games are able to tap into the subconscious desire to explore, but make certain to keep out the pain associated with learning what NOT to do.

LittleBigPlanet is one of those titles that just begs to be touched and toyed with; it invites you into its paper mache and cardboard cutout world with a string of fluffy, fuzzy yarn, and it pokes you just enough that you want to go and figure out ways to tinker on your own terms. Virtually everything about LittleBigPlanet (Along with its recently-released sequel) makes the player feel comfortable and in control. It helps that the charming, soothingly British voice of Stephen Fry accompanies most things that your little Sackboy does, cheerily commenting on how to get from point A to point B. In the end though, even the wonderful narration by Mr. Fry is still just another (albeit very good!) way to deliver a tutorial. The game is still going out of its way to tell you how to play it, and that's just something that gamers these days have become accustomed to seeing and hearing when they first dive into that hot new release.

Maybe the biggest reason we can't seem to escape the tutorial is because video games these days have just become so much more complex. If you think about what the landscape of the industry was like when Super Mario Bros. 3 released, it was an entirely different animal at the time. Controllers consisted of a D-pad and two buttons (Not including Start and Select), and were extremely simple to grasp. One button always seemed to let the player jump, and the second button was used for pretty much everything else. The D-pad let you move your avatar around the game's world, and the rest was up to you, armed with the instruction manual that came bundled with the game. Simple, right? Up, down, left, right, B, A, Start, Select. That was it.

Today, just the sight of a PlayStation 3 controller is enough to intimidate newcomers; it just looks so complicated! You have Up, Down, Left, Right, Triangle, X, Square, O, Start, Select, the Home button, L1, L2, L3, R1, R2, R3, and two analog sticks. For the longest time, I didn't even realize that the L3 and R3 buttons existed, because they're hidden; you have to click in the analog sticks to actually press them. How is ANY game supposed to convey which buttons you press and which ones you don't, without explicitly telling you so?

Let's hope this freaky controller isn't an image of the future, although to many people looking at the controllers of today, this image isn't far off the mark of how things are today!

Bearing this in mind, I thought long and hard, and can only think of a single game that has managed the feat of being able to wordlessly convey how it is played...well...almost. That game...is Flower, a downloadable game for the PlayStation 3.

The game itself never tells you how to play it; you just interact with it. The only hint of how to play the game comes from the splash screen on the PS3's Xross Media Bar, where you go to actually boot up the game. It says "Tilt the controller to move, press any button to blow the wind.". That's it; short and simple. It doesn't lie either, as literally all you do to play this game is just move the controller around as if you were driving a car made of air, and every button on the controller does the exact same thing; make you move faster.

The goal of the game is beautiful and relaxing, as all you need to do is blow the breeze over a series of budding flowers to make them grow, and to collect one of the new flower's pedals into your ever-expanding collection of multicolored pedals, all held aloft by the breeze that you control. The game never tells you what to do with all these pedals, or why you collect them, or how you complete a level. You just keep doing what feels right; what the game makes you feel is right without ever telling you so. Each flower you collect is accompanied by a pleasant chime, and the happy sight of a flower blooming. You want to collect more, and more, and more...and you soon learn that in order to bring the game's world back to life, you have to keep blossoming more and more flowers. Before long, without the game so much as telling you a single word of how you finish the first level, you've done it. The game never exactly taught you anything, and only ever relied on subtle visual cues for what is the correct way to go about finishing a level. It helps too that there is no penalty whatsoever for simply experimenting, and letting the game soothe and relax you.

To better convey how this works exactly, just watch this video. Note that at no point is there *anything* on the screen that tells you what to do; you simply feel things out and DO it. Beautiful and relaxing, isn't it?



Now don't get me wrong here; I have nothing against tutorials in video games. They can be helpful, especially with the complexity of most of today's console games, and they can really add color and variety to an experience. They can be a great introduction to a game world, they can be smart and well-integrated even. There's not really anything inherently wrong with a tutorial, and to be perfectly frank, it's a very good thing that tutorials actually exist.

There are few things more frustrating than a game that NEEDS a tutorial...and yet doesn't have one.

I'm looking right at you, A Boy and His Blob. Oh yeah.

Take a look at that screenshot. That is from A Boy and His Blob, on the NES. It's a great game, a classic that many people have learned to love, and it was even able to spawn a new version just recently on Wii...and yet it is one of the most frustrating things I've ever played!

This game gives you NO information whatsoever. Why are you this kid, and why is there a gelatinous snowman following you around? Oh yeah, that's the blob! Of course! ...But why does it say that you have so many licorice jellybeans? I have no idea.

Look at this from the point of view of a little kid in the 1980's, who has very little experience with video games outside of Super Mario Bros, who is not used to the concept of resource management in a video game. Would this little kid inherently know that there are a bunch of different kinds of jellybeans, and that each jellybean does something different when you feed it to your blob? Would he know that one kind of jellybean turns the blob into a ladder, while another turns the blob into a hole in the ground that your boy can safely fall through to a platform below? No, no, no, and no.

I know this, because I was that little boy in the 1980's. I rented this game from our local video store, and it didn't come with the instruction manual; it was just the cartridge and me, and a weekend wide open to having fun with a boy and a blob. I turned on the game, I moved to the right like I would do in any other game I've ever played, and then come up to a brick wall. I spent two days trying to get beyond that wall, but it never happened. There were no clues, there were no hints or subtle nudges in one direction or another; it was a solid brick wall of bad game design that made no sense to a little kid.

I hear that A Boy and His Blob is actually a pretty good game...but I can never get the bad taste of that experience out of my mouth, even when I tried to go back and give it a go myself just recently. I still cannot fully get the grasp of how to do what needs to be done to advance in the game, because of the nature of the gameplay. There is only one correct way to get through many situations in that game, and yet there are 12 different kinds of beans, each with a different effect. Doesn't sound much for today's gamer, sure, but it was a huge number of things to juggle for a 4 year old in the 80's.

I have no problem with trial and error gameplay; it's a way to teach us what works and what doesn't. What I do have a problem with is when a game flat out prevents progress simply because it can't be bothered to explain its own goofy rule system to the people who bother playing it!

A good example of trial and error gameplay that really has stood the test of time, is Metroid on the NES. It's one tough game, an intense and unforgiving experience that tosses you right into things and forces the player to make sense of how to survive in its strange, alien landscapes...and yet it works. One button jumps, one button shoots, the D-pad moves your character, Samus, around the game world. Outside of that, good luck using those simple tools to explore!

The only brick wall dead end kind of experience in Metroid is related to the game's difficulty, but that isn't an obtuse concept to understand. All the player needs to do is adapt their own play style to figure out how to get beyond a tough enemy, or a really hard boss. No matter what you do in Metroid, you use the same small skillset to do whatever needs to be done. The game doesn't demand that you all of a sudden develop a completely new way of playing a game without even somehow letting you know that you need to do so, and it doesn't expect unfair things of its players. And no, reading the manual doesn't count.

Seems to be a real running trait in Nintendo-developed games that gameplay flows naturally, and that the player is only encouraged to do what seems and feels right. That feeling is nurtured through level design, and the player is unwittingly coaxed into delving further and further into the experience.

Take Zelda, for instance. This screen right here is the very first thing you see as the game begins. Knowing nothing else about this game, what can you gather from this single image?

1.) You can see that there is a character in the middle of the screen, and that this is you. Noticing your character, you can also tell that your character is equipped with a shield. Maybe it could block projectiles?

2.) You can see all that green stuff all over the screen, and just the texture and look of it suggests that all that stuff is impassable; you can't walk through it.

3.) Now you see that there are three different paths available to you to take; they're clearings that will let you go to other areas. Suddenly, you think "Oooh, what could be out there?? What's on the next screen??"

4.) The only thing stopping you from exploring those areas is that black square in the upper left portion of the screen; you are drawn to it, and want to find out what it is! When you touch the black square, the screen changes, and you realize you just went inside a new room.

5.) Holy crap! A sword! Cool! But the man is saying that it's dangerous to go alone...so there are enemies? And you hit them with the sword when you get it? But how do you use the sword?

6.) Walking over to the sword, you automatically grab it, and in the top portion of the screen where it has two blank spaces labeled B and A, the sword will appear where it says A. So that's how you use the sword! Press A!

7.) The only way out of the room is the way you came in, and it leads you right back out to where you started. Noticing those three paths you can take, you're ready to take one of them, and see where it leads you, armed with a sword and ready to explore!

See how intuitive level design can tutor you, without even telling you what to do? The developers at Nintendo created a series of things to draw your eye, and like a trail of visual bread crumbs, they encourage you to learn the basics of the game just by following the trail, even if you don't realize you're doing exactly what they wanted you to do.

So maybe video games have gotten so complex in recent years that self-explanatory tutorials like this are a rarity, but couldn't that be a good excuse for new players to start with the golden oldies that we started out with when we were children, ourselves? We learned how to game with these cherished old gems. They've held their value and their fun factor through the years, and they can bring new gamers into the fold, so that they can join in on the fun with the rest of us!

There's something special and pure about these older gems, something that no amount of flashy modern graphics and action could ever hope to reproduce, and the new found complexity of these new-generation games is partially to blame for this.

So go on out there and play an old-school NES game today! Have fun without all the fluff, and appreciate the fact that there are games out there you don't need to spend an hour and a half learning to control before you can have fun with them. And if you know someone who can't get into the whole thing because of the controls, then suggest they start where we all did; with the good ol' basics that will never die.