Wordy tutorials need to end. Why Game Designers should take a "Vow of Silence"
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- Almost all video games tell you how to play them using some amount of text. This is not the way it should be - we need less talk, and more rock boingboing.net/features/morero... Presented at the MIT Media Lab.
00:00 - Preamble: how I see educational games
04:28 - How can a game without words make sure the player knows what to do?
21:19 - Seven reasons that words in video games suck
33:44 - Why I ended up using words in viruspatterns.com, and how to use them as unobtrusively as possible
Addenda:
Reason 7: if you want to use words in the context of a game, you have to name the entities (goomba, portal, shadow-version), but there is a greater sense of ownership if the player can name the objects of the game themselves, in their own head
Reason 8: another way that words encourage bad practice is that if you are making a vow of silence game, you cannot have special case things
Links focussing on specific games:
Castlevania: kotaku.com/5888474/the-perfect...
Mega man: • Sequelitis - Mega Man ...
Portal: www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013...
Super Mario Bros.: auntiepixelante.com/?p=465
Music of the Spheres: • Great level design and...
Braid: • Game City Jonathan Blo...
More articles on level design www.critical-distance.com/2013...
Games:
Braid: braid-game.com/
Four Sided Fantasy: store.steampowered.com/app/337...
Blek: blekgame.com/
Portal: store.steampowered.com/app/400/
Nano Pandas: www.unit9.com/project/nano-pa...
Perspective: games.digipen.edu/games/persp...
Dragonbox Elements: dragonbox.com/products/elements
Music of the Spheres: gamejolt.com/games/music-of-th...
Mega Man, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros., Super Metroid, Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Support this guy: • "It's Just Emulation!"...
Bond Breaker: testtubegames.com/bondbreaker....
Incredipede: www.incredipede.com/buy.html
A Slower Speed of Light: gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower...
I think what you are going for near the end is that while the joy of discovery is lessened with words, adding words to an otherwise wordless game can add context from the real world. In a sense, no joy of discovery is lost, and instead, the joy of discovering something new about the game is replaced by discovering something new about the real world, as long as the words added aren't too many!
Great talk!
Cool talk! Pop-up boxes scare me especially because it's like adding a whole another layer to the game, it can make it seem a lot more intimidating.
Great. Eventually we have someone who study the design of a video game and care about the exact things happen within the game world. I've studied for years in this aspect and really appreciate someone who shares the results.
But I can't agree with you on the wordy tutorials. I conclusion is that, text is very precious and should be used in the placed where they are almost not impossible to be replaced by any other tricks. You showed a lot scenarios where the tutorials work without any text. They are definitely inspiring. But your examples are too limited since most of them are from platform games( you shoot, jump, kill enemies). Idk if I missed something since I watched only a quarter. I'll come back for the left part tomorrow.
Edit:
I watched the first 26 minutes. No offense, you seemed to explained why platform games should contain as less text, to a room of students who probably played only very limited video games. I don't plan to finish the last half.
Again I appreciate your effort to study video games. This area might be noticed in a short future.
I am afraid to say they weren't a room full of students, they were a room full of game design researchers at MIT!
You're right I focussed on platformers a lot. But there are puzzle games too, for example Blek and Portal, and Braid has new mechanics frequently.
There's a small number of games where I'd say it's difficult to give this treatment. For example, games like Rhythm Heaven, where the game constantly has new things with absolutely no relation to previous mechanics. I'd also say it's harder to give this treatment to an RTS than it is for a platformer. But not that much harder.
In terms of FPSs, here's someone else's video about Half Life 2 czcams.com/video/MMggqenxuZc/video.html and I would also say the opening level of Halo does this.
Someone once said to me "you could never teach chess this way". But I think that person was just being unimaginative.
@@hamish_todd Thanks for replying. From maybe feb this year, I tried to help some indea dev on their game rules especially something similar to Factorio. Some are trying conveyor based building system but usually they fail because they don't know how their design impacts to the game. I tried to summirize a bit for them but none of them showed enough interest. After that I decided stop doing so and put my time to something useful for myself.
I think people already know how to make platform-puzzle games and how to play these games already, but these games just doesn't give people enough useful abilities so in the future, people maybe limit their time spent in such games. While factory-game, conveyor games are more helpful in real life at least they teach people how to deal with grid based system which can be found in electronics and vlsi chip design. Also these games doesn't encourage people to kill to counter others. I really recommend researchers in this area to pay more attentions to these factory games and conveyor games. Maybe in these games and in a short future, text is still unavoidable, but do we have better way to minimize text and let people adapt to these games as fast?
Great presentation! Was super educational and I love the links you referenced!
Great presentation. Halfway thru.
The irony of this lecture is that it would actually take about 10 minutes to get across the main talking points, this guy uses countless redundant examples after he has already got the point across, he needs to listen to his own advice.. STOP USING TOO MANY WORDS!!!!
Haha, sorry! I did cut a few!
Here's why I felt the need to have looooads of examples at the beginning: see the part where I asked "has anyone seen this video?" talking about the egoraptor Mega man video? *none of them* had seen it. This is despite them being game designers. So they are game designers who teach everything with stupid wordy tutorials. With an audience like that, you need to explain very clearly that nonverbal teaching is doable.
And then from their point of view, nonverbal teaching is a new skill they'd have to learn, which takes a load of work, so I felt the need to give them all the good reasons to put that work in.
Not to be rude, but he kind of focuses on whatever's on the screen a lot. Other than that, pretty good presentation. Maybe drink a coffee and crack a few jokes, though.
Valid. Being a presenter is hard.
Aye, it wasn't really entertaining enough. Can I ask though, what would you say is wrong with focussing on the screen a lot? Is it just because you can't see it so well in the video?
No, I understand you using the TV as a tool for presentation, most presenters do that now a days. I suppose it's more of a personal thing. When I'm in an audience, I prefer to have the speaker looking right at the audience. At least for most of the presentation.
When the speaker is turned away from the people listening, it sort of feels like there's a disconnection between the two.
I do like this lesson, though. Keep up the good work!
Ah! I know what you mean. Thank you.
No problem, good sir.