Game onboarding
I cannot give enough praise for any game that can provide training to get the player up to speed with it’s environment, controls, and mechanics seamlessly with minimal, or no, direct instruction.
In the past I was mostly unaware of why games would have a tendency to feel slow and stuttered throughout the beginning levels. It wasn’t until I started to notice the fluidness of secretive onboarding that I truly respected how artful this can be to naturally teach the player without countless on-screen textual guides.
Simple controls explained simply
Super Meat Boy’s first levels are perfectly simplified designs targeted to teach the fundamental movement controls progressively without feeling overly “tutorialised”. The directional, jumping, speed jumping and wall climbing controls are all neatly presented in levels that do not depart from the (insanely) complex challenges that await.
Now understandably, games that involve many more controls can be a problem. I found my patience challenged recently with Little Big Planet 3’s introduction as the screen was endlessly inundated with onboarding text popups and button cues. Controls that extend past the primary “thumb” action button of a controller understandably have some level of necessary training, but I couldn’t help feel this could have been done in a much more clever way. Additionally, LBP3 is child’s play compared to the complexity of the worlds and controls of any modern FPS or strategy game, and often resort to loading screen controller mappings and drawn-out tutorials.
A broken system
Indirect controls, present in all console, arcade (and even board and card) games, require training. The player doesn’t know that “B” equals “jump”, except for past genre experiences. Gamers are aware of these commonalities and controller norms, which can speed up an inefficient system, but certainly doesn’t fix it. Nor does it welcome change.
Take Skate for example, a successful skateboarding game that (kick-)flipped the classic arcade controls of Mr. Hawk on it’s head and made the genre it’s own, but at the same time had to present lengthy instructions on how to un-train and re-train players on a completely different control scheme, correcting the result of negative transfer.
Do what I do
In the current phase of premium VR, players of the HTC Vive wield two 6dof controllers to interact with the world. While the controller itself has a number of buttons, this is considerably less complex than the current state of console controllers (except for maybe that “grip” button, as much as I still respect it’s use).
For this reason, my excitement for VR experiences is as much about the controls as it is the immersion. VR is elegantly killing the controller.
So why is this better? For one, the buttons for VR controllers are used far less often than the actual movement of the controllers. This means that interactions are entirely intuitive. We now have millimetre-precise direct controls! I want to touch that thing in the environment? I literally extend my arm out to touch it. Better yet, my definitely-not gamer partner will perform the exact same action without any training!
While I am eager to see the replacement of these controllers with true, precise hand, finger and gesture recognition, developers are also finding intuitive ways to overlay tooltips and labels directly onto the controllers (or a slightly modified visual representation of the controllers) in the VR space. This is a concession to get by for now, but still adds greatly to how quickly a user can skill up.
Beyond controls
Onboarding is also necessary for the game world itself. Much like Super Meat Boy’s control training, the Portal series’ game mechanic training represents a level of quality developers should strive for. Throughout the story-based progression, players are greeted with new puzzle mechanics so naturally that the questions of “what is this thing?” and “how do I use this thing?” are equally short and excitement-driven. I take my hat off to Valve for effectively training a player in all things Aperture Science, and making them enjoy it in the process!
Enjoyable training is likely where my love/hate relationship for The Witness originates. Jonathan Blow’s 2016 complex line-puzzle-on-steroids is a unique beast. Unlike almost all puzzle games, The Witness has a non-linear flow, but does include linear progressive onboarding. Every single puzzle builds upon a previous mechanic, some have argued this is to it’s detriment because the fulfilment of progress and “concluding the training” in never truly reached. In retrospect, knowing this vital law of the game does mean that the ongoing onboarding could be considered a game mechanic in itself, as frustrating as it could be at times.
…Jetpack onboarding?
This post is a precursor to the onboarding implementation for the development of Jetpack City. In an upcoming post I hope to present the solutions that worked for me.
Meanwhile, consider watching further onboarding examples with Game Maker’s Toolkit’s Mario Level Design and Sequelitis on Mega Man X.
