In the newbie’s shoes
I think one of the hardest tricks in the world of game design is to put yourself in the shoes of the player. It’s particularly hard when we’re designing games for an audience that isn’t like us — and the audience that is usually least like us is the newbie.
There’s a blog of relatively recent vintage called, appropriately enough, Newbie, that illustrates this. It’s the experiences of a 46-year-old named Tom Miller who is not a gamer. He has trouble with puzzle games, and The Sims 2 utterly defeats him.
I strongly encourage designers to go back to the first post and work their way through the narrative chronologically. It’s a great illustration of how much expertise counts in the games we make today — even the “mass market” ones.
One of the common tactics for helping solve this problem is “tissue testing.” This is the practice of bringing in a group of testers to try out your game while you stand behind them saying nothing, taking notes. What you invariably find is that they approach the game in ways you never imagined. In UO, people couldn’t figure out how to chat, even though it was just typing. Recently, I had occasion to speak to developers of a chat social space, and they told me that in fact, not knowing how to chat was a huge barrier for people, even though they themselves looked at the screen and thought it couldn’t be more obvious.
The reason it’s called “tissue testing,” of course, is that you use these people once, like a tissue, then never use them again. You can only have a first impression, a first learning curve, once.
I had a puzzle game I did once which made use of a somewhat unusual screen layout. Once you understood what was going on, it was easy to understand (and in fact, I ended up very happy with it). But that unusual screen layout was a tough barrier to get past. I pretty much always had to verbally explain it to whoever I was showing the game to. And that’s the kiss of death. It means that something is not obvious or intuitive enough. As soon as the input the game is giving you is “noise” to the user, you lose them. I never did crack the tutorial mode for that game, even though I think it would probably appeal to a lot of folks.
I have this problem frequently with little puzzle games I make, actually, because I am always trying to come up with new mechanics. The problem with new mechanics is that nobody knows how to play them.
Prompted by a recent comment here on the blog, I decided to explore making games based on Karp’s 21 NP-complete problems. The one that I decided to try tackling first was based on set packing. In this game, players draw cards or tiles from a bag, and each card or tile has on it one, two or three colors. The player is trying to build sets where each set has one given color on every card in the set, but has no repeats from any of the other colors. There’s wrinkles in the actual game, of course, such as being able to trade tiles, cashing in sets, and so on.
The problems with the game design right now, though, are partly just of interface. We’ve not yet played a match where someone didn’t misbuild a set. And the reason is in large part because my first test set of pieces consisted of little square bits of card with lists of colors on them, and my second test set is round wooden tiles with colors on them.
What the game really needs is cards, with each color always in the same place so that when you lay them down you can tell at a glance whether you have any repeats in your stack.
I’ve toyed with turning this into an arcade puzzler, but the interface and learning curve issues jump out at you even more. In a board game, people are willing to at least glance at the rules once. A casual puzzle game has maybe five seconds to persuade the user that they know what they are doing. I’ve been turning the idea over in my head, and I think I have come to the conclusion that the real challenge here isn’t whether the game would be fun (I am pretty sure it would be) but whether or not you could actually convey what to do to the user without using a scrap of text.
The one benefit to working with outre game ideas like this, though is that you yourself are perpetually in the role of utter newbie. And that can only help with the problems that someone like Tom Miller faces. The more you can you yourself be lost and clueless when facing your basic game experience, the more likely you are to empathize with the real newbie who comes to it cold, and know how to give them a helping hand.
28 Responses to “In the newbie’s shoes”
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Knowing that this blog has a relatively small audience, I am always tremendously grateful to those who link to it and who send in comments. Sony game designer Raph Koster recently discussed Newbie on his blog
Raph Koster’s post
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I’m of two minds about this. First, yes, we need to help people learn the interface to the game. On the other hand, there are some people that simply will not “get” the interface no matter how hard you try. The chat example is a good one: it seems painfully obvious to us, but others need to be taught.
I think for online games, we can worry too much about the interface. People have their expectations, but the stats we throw around say that most people play online games with people the know offline. So, we have the person that leans over and says, “hit enter and start typing to chat with the guild,” even though we’re not there.
I think there’s some danger here where if we don’t do new things, we fall into a rut with our games. The interface affects how people play the game. At some point you have to make a decision and go with it, even if it ends up alienating your mother; you might have to accept that you’ve made a game for experienced game players and adjust expectations appropriately. Not every game has to strive for the “mass market”, or for the “casual” segment.
In the end, user interface design is a very hard discipline to really grasp and understand. Newbies who haven’t been trained in other games are just the beginning.
My thoughts.
One important difference between the newbie and what we might consider to be an experienced gamer – when something goes wrong for Tom Miller he doesn’t blame the game, he doesn’t mock the interface, he doesn’t yell about how “this game sucks!” – he blames himself.
I thik there are lessons in that blog for those who look for them – first, the seperate tutorial may not be such a great idea and it’s possible the Blizzard among others have totally nailed how that needs to work.
Second, i think we need to provide positive feedback on failure.
I know how weird that sounds, but it’s kind of like Pacman or any other of our historical precedents – you didn’t really know how well you’d done until you died so even dying became a part of the feedback loop and an encouragement to keep going and do better.
(Death on the slot machines – et in Arcadia ego? sorry, that was terrible)
And finally, we need to be able to think about Tom’s issues with interfaces and his reluctance to use manuals, but more importantly, we need to stop making games that feel like algebra tests which you must either pass or fail if we want a bigger audience. Because adults don’t mind failing but they do mind feeling old and stupid.
Putting yourself in the shoes of a newbie can be pretty hard. I have to do it everyday – I work as a tutor, teaching things like Windows and MSOffice and some other programms used for book keeping etc.
Using a PC was just like breathing to me. I just did it and never really thought about it. But that changed at my first day as a tutor.
My first task was to teach a class how to use Windows. It was a mixed group, male and female, of different ages (starting somewhere at 20 years up to 50+). Some had never even touched a computer before. Before I could teach them how to use Windows, I had to show them how to turn the machine on, tell them what “click” or “double click” means…
You really have to take a step back if you want to show someone “how it’s done”. Some things that you take for granted can be extremely complicated for others (That doesn’t mean they can’t learn it, but they have to invest much more time to do so).
I can’t imagine how much harder this must be for game developers, because they have to show and explain people something completely new and make them want to buy/use it.
When I was counselling in UO, one of my more memorable calls was a player who described his problem as:
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhow do I chat?”
Good times. At any rate, it sounds like this barrier to entry is what A Tale in the Desert is designed on. It’s not really a big crafting game; it’s a big puzzle-solving game. New players bemoan the lack of documentation, but that’s what makes it a game. The instructions were originally “Click on everything,” and the player was expected to learn through trial and error.
ATITD has found its niche, but it’s no secret Teppy is trying to expand his audience. It’s amazing how much we take for granted. I started making a fantasy game, and was going to put orcs in there, when I thought “Only fantasy geeks know what orcs are! These should be goblins! Everybody knows goblins!” So I put goblins in there instead of orcs so that non-fantasy geeks would understand what was going on.
Yeah, I’m laughing at that last sentence. o_O
I think it’s also important to remember that different people will be good at different types of things when it comes to gameplay. I know people who can pick up shooters and do well immediately, but present them with a puzzle game and they fail miserably. Their brains just have trouble working that way.
To some extent this can be trained out but it’s easy for people to get frustrated and just give up.
What kills me in games when it comes to UIs are camera controls. In games where I have to constantly fiddle with the camera, I start to get highly annoyed with the UI. Everything else is pretty easy, but those camera controls will get me every time. I usually try to find one setting where I can put the camera and leave it alone because of that.
Anyway, my point (if I have one) is that you should probably just try to design every aspect of your UI to be as intuitive and easy as handle as possible while still being fully featured. At that point, it’s really more dependant on the player, and nothing that you can do would make it perfect for everyone.
i can offer the point of view of a newbie, and non-MMO-gamer, upon first entering the world of MMOs.
back in 2004, SWG was the first MMO i ever played.
it was NOTHING how i imagined it would be. the mechanics conflicted with my expectations.
all these rules and mechanics i had never seen before.
i had no idea what XP, skill-trees, grinding, ect. were. and i had no idea what they had to do with Star Wars.
having been a lifelong Star Wars fan, and player of pretty much only Star Wars video game titles, i imagined that SWG would be sort of like a combination of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and Jedi Knight II (but without the Jedi, since SWG was set in the reign of the Empire). and that each planet would be comprised of something like huge persistently hosted, customized JK II maps.
obviously SWG worked nothing like either of those games. although, Jump to Lightspeed worked similar to XvT, so that was nice when that came out.
this isn’t meant to be a bashing of your work on SWG.
just telling you my first impressions of it.
i completely agree with this statement. and i would say that it supports the idea that these games should strive to be as realistic (interface/mechanics-wise) as possible.
nobody knows how to “play” any mechanics better than the ones we use in real life.
unoriginal post inc.: it’s all about the metaphors. If people have been previously trained on the metaphors you are using (platformer, shooter, puzzler) and the UI (including mouse/keyboard) and culture (get hints on boards, acronyms used in chat) then people will be able to play the game directly. Players of computer games need time to “learn the rules” (objectives, boundaries), but unlike a boardgame or a sport with set boundaries and rule conditions, they also have to learn the continuity of metaphors the designers are depending on them already knowing. WASD is comfortable over point&click if you know it.
I agree that innovation is extremely important, but just because you do new things doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be complex or unapproachable for new gamers. I’ve played nearly every MMO on the market at one point or another, and a game with somewhat non-traditional systems like Anarchy Online was as daunting for me the first time I picked it up as WoW was for my girlfriend the first time she tried it.
My point is that even “experienced gamers” will fumble the first time they encounter a new system, so a well-designed interface should be fairly easy for anyone to use, veteran or newbie alike, because if it’s really innovative it will be somewhat foreign and require a certain level of hand-holding anyway.
You don’t have to strive for mass market, but if your interface is clunky and confusing not even vets will play your game. IMO, the best interfaces are the ones that strive for simplicity and allow the player to become more immersed in what’s important, the game.
The best newbie experience in any MMO has to be World of Warcraft…hands down.
The key here is that they *gradulally*, teach you the game, they dont sit you down for six hours (EVE, NGE SWG) and flood your working memory with information that is not going to make it to long term. That is one of the reasons for its success. You quite litteraly only need to know 2 buttons + WASD (mouse and #2) for the first 6 levels.
This is something that worked VERY well in their RTS’s. If you have ever played Starcraft or Warcraft you know that they increase the number of available units up till the end of the campaign, essentially turning the entire single player element into a tutorial, prepping the player for the possible “endgame” of battle.net multiplayer.
I would assert, that endgame is, where the player is finihed being taught game mechanics, and is ready to refine strategy. A clear path to endgame is why I think so many *newbie* players made it there in WoW, as opposed to EQ or SWG, where many of the even casual core gamers lingered in the intermediate levels/skills.
We should distinguish between teaching interface vs. teaching mechanics – the two are very different things. Generally speaking, learning the interface is a function of the tutorial – how do I move, how do I interact with objects, etc. Learning the mechanics (what makes this sword better than that sword or this armor better than that armor, or how this spell functions vs. that spell) should be a function of the game’s content path.
My favorite newbie experience ever, which games have begun emulating more and more, was Earth and Beyond’s newbie experience, with starter missions that taught you while you played. You learned how to use the different weapons, how to warp along a nav path, and so on. It was very well done and you never really ran into a player who had a lot of trouble with it. But all this really taught you was the interface – and once you had the interface down, they just sent you on various quests/missions to help you learn the finer points by doing it. So the NPC who gave you your missile launcher took a minute to explain the fact that missiles needed ammunition, and so on.
I like these:
Avoiding the first comment and allowing for the second comment seem to be the trick. Id also add that “allowing” for the expansion of the learning curve by allowing UI customization. This provides a feeling of familiarity and mastery.
This to me is where people misinterpret WOW’s interface, specifically by citing WOW and saying: well they have this simple UI, and 4m users, so lets make a simple UI. While forgetting that WOW allows for an advanced learning curve and customization as the player gains mastery.
Thus the differance between EvE and SWG and WOW is where you “load” the complexity. In EvE and SWG the complexity is/was frontloaded to the player, as mastery was attained UI was optimized (likely with significant learning along the way) In WOW complexity was endloaded, or rather complexity was not requred primarily until endgame, and even iterated off of with player customized/externally developed “mods”
So perhaps it just speaks to what gaming consumer you want to “retain” rather than “attract”
It would be interesting to see a long term user test where you measured UI customization against player mastery and progression. In keeping with newer testing models (Web 2.0) you could have multiple testing sets that had slightly different UI features you needed to optimize. Say 3 sets of 5 players (various experiance levels with the game) with 3 slightly different UI’s. You could then measure thier rate of UI self selected customization as they progress and master and throw out those features that were to clunky or didnt work, and see a convergence of what your optimal UI would be. This might help a designer understand the newbie to mastery experiance along various gamer experiance levels (newbie to experianced) while optimizing your UI for maximum appeal? Seems like that might work, but it might be a little intensive.
Cael wrote:
The usability specialists at Microsoft said that occasionally a usability test-subject would leave the usability test crying. They made sure to prefix every test by saying, “This is NOT a test of your skills and abilities.”
I volunteer at a zoo. Zookeepers know loads of information about animal care which isn’t immediately obvious to me. They know zip about computers. I’m always showing them easier/faster ways to use Excel, Word, photo manipulation, etc.; the tricks are obvious to me, but not to them. I tell them that if they thought like a computer programmer, they’d find that all computer programs are easy and intuitive… which is, unfortunately, true.
Random comment about tutorials:
Tutorials are really (a) disguised help files (sometimes in the form of in-game characters), that (b) don’t overwhelm the player with help, and (c) use some AI so that help is only given when the player seems to need help. They often exist in (d) a simplified portion of the game-world, where monsters are easier, etc.
Hmmm.. Sounds like the stupid paperclip in Word! I wonder if an equivalent paper-clip character in a MMORPG would work? Especially if you could gag it and throw it in the river when it got too annoying. 😉
What level of computer proficiency can we assume when designing tutorials for a game? Can we assume that they are at least familiar with standard Windows behavior, given that they were apparently capable of installing and registering for the game? If so, would the best way to start them off be with a nice pretty piece of concept art with the super basic instructions overlaid (no 3D at all)?
For example:
“You are about to embark upon an epic journey as a hero in a new world. Before your adventure begins, we will discuss how to control your avatar in this world, how to interact with other characters, and how to defeat enemies in combat.”
– Player clicks “Okay” (a button familiar to all Windows users).
– The player enters the world for the first time. The narrator and text explain that you use the WASD keys or Arrow keys to move. Makes you move to touch a couple of things.
– Screen goes to concept art and explanation again. Then goes back and there is an NPC nearby. You must navigate over to him, and interact by clicking (explained via Dialog boxes and narration).
– Etc.
It seems like a lot of handholding for a veteran user, but they could get through such a tutorial very quickly (and could optionally skip it). After the player learns how to move about the world, control the camera, and fight, they then begin their journey and every time they encounter something that needs to be explained, a dialog box appears.
Ryan: That sounds similar to what Funcom is doing with Conan. You play alone for the first 19 levels, then join in the multiplayer world when you reach level 20. I think after that, all new characters start at level 20 (though I could be wrong about that part).
It’s interesting that you mention familiarity with Windows. Flyff uses a Start menu just like Windows, and you go through your character’s menus that way. I hate it because I don’t like the Start menu on Windows, so I sure don’t want to use it when I’m playing a game. (Yeah I know, you’re saying take the good bits of Windows and not the suck. That just leapt to my mind.)
Micahel W: The whole concept of “endgame” used to confuse me. Why have an endgame at all? Why can’t the fun be the “startgame” or the “midgame?” Isn’t that a better goal than an “endgame?” But I think you nailed it right there. 🙂
Why don’t you just add a “test” you can take at any time to prove your proficiency and graduate from newbiehood? Doesn’t always work, of course, but it does in a lot of cases. Something like “Do X in Y amount of time”, where X requires that you know a number of required things, would be fine.
Since there is no one size that fits all, why make one size?
I was in a book store with a friend the other day bemoaning the fact that the more books I read, the smaller the scope of books that I enjoy seems to get. Not only that, but the books that I do enjoy are rarely on the bestseller lists.
I see this same trend in all sorts of art forms. Someone who is really into paintings may find themselves seeing ever more obvious reasons to dismiss certain works that I think are just peachy. At the same time, they will tend to enjoy other works that I simply don’t ‘get.’
In other words, there seems to be a newbie/veteran dichotomy in other art forms as well, not just in games. I think it takes freaky genius and perhaps a lot of luck to produce really good literature that also has a chance to be a best-seller.
Likewise for games. In spite of Sid Meier’s years of experience and recognized design genius, Civilization IV can get high ratings in reviews, and yet still be outsold by games like Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Deer Hunter. Perhaps this is because Civ IV is game literature and the masses prefer pulp.
I guess what I amy wondering is this: Is it legitimate to simply admit at some point that your game play may be too complex for newbies, but that’s OK? And can you do so without being an elitist?
–Phin
Ryan: You’ve pretty much described the tutorial in Guild Wars: Factions. It’s a very well designed tutorial, much better than the fairly sketchy one in the original GW. (And the first thing the NPC asks you is whether you want to skip it.)
Re people who can’t figure out chat interfaces, and the much-vaunted “simplicity” of WOW’s interface: WOW was very far from being my first computer game, or even my first MMO, and I had great difficulty figuring out how to use its chat interface. I think my first character was about level 15 before I finally found the trick. (The problem with being unable to figure out how to chat is that you can’t ask anyone for help.)
That may be just me, though. Even though I play a lot of games, it’s not unusual for me to find that something the designers though was obvious has me baffled; maybe I just think a different way to most people. (I figure most people aren’t baffled by these things because I don’t see any questions about them on forums.) A few times I’ve given up on a game because I can’t even get through the tutorial without getting stuck (Civ IV was one of those).
I’ve played through the Oblivion tutorial three times so far, and although I had no trouble reaching the outside world, I’ve yet to figure out how to open my inventory or map.
Most people hate tests… they make them nervous, they feel like they have to accomplish something before they are allowed to play. Not to forget, a computer guided test can easily be manipulated. And most people tend to learn the answer to a question – and not the… knowledge behind it. (I just noticed that I have to polish my english skills, I hope you can understand what I mean 😉 )
The problem is that there can’t be the one tutorial. That doesn’t work. In my courses, the participants have to use a software called “Tutorwin”. It basically simulates the different programs (Windows, Word etc), explains something and then the perticipants have to repeat the explained steps.
Most of the time, it’s useless. They tend to click and type the things they were told to do, but ask them after one lesson what they have learned and all you hear is the sound of crickets…
I think a tutorial is for someone who already knows a bit about what you want to show him, just not everything – it’s more or less for the “aha effect”. Newbies tend to click their way through the tutorial and are still clueless afterwards.
There was a natural progression for many of us regarding gaming – and we the players, and especially the seasoned designers take it for granted.
Chat and commands have evolved heavily from the days of the old text adventures such as Zork.
Go East
Open Mailbox
Get Mail
Read Mail.
This basic functionality carried over into Envy, and Diku Muds, and then to some extent into the vast majority of the mainstream MMO’s, (eq, swg, daoc, eq2, wow, etc.)
We’ve seen the addition of a graphical interface, and real time gameplay, which necessitated the mouse support and left and right click context menus. Certainly nothing complex there for the average windows user.
Chat hasn’t changed much since the days of mudding either. /chat , /say , /group , /guild etc
Again, with more complex ui’s, there are seperate chat windows, various chat colors, loads of customizations that we can play with, but that basic text/communication mechanic is similar to old mechanics from the muds and/or bbs chat boards (major bbs, etc)
While the core mmo gamer of 5-10 years ago had experience in these systems, (or was a more adventurous computer user looking for more interactive gaming – ie, someone willing to learn a steeper curve than minesweeper or solitaire had to offer) that core mmo gamer has become a smaller percentage of the player base. No, we’re not going anywhere, we’re still playing mmo’s daily, but the mainstreaming of mmo’s has brought in a new class of newbie. They aren’t the college aged geeks sitting in a computer lab telnetting on unix machines to a mud. They are the grandmothers of those geeks. They are the children of them. They never played Zork or Wizardry. These ‘new’ mmo gamers might not have ever used win 3.1, or even 98. Maybe not even Mario Brothers or Pokemon.
With this in mind, a new character experience needs to become more in depth, and teach the basics. Give the advanced players the ability to skip thru sections. (or avoid it entirely)
personally, I found the learning curve of FFXI much tougher than swg, or eq2. Most likely thats due to 2 factors – first, ffxi had NO new player tutorial, and secondly, it was clearly developed by a different core group of developers than those behind Daoc, Uo, Eq/2, SWG, etc (who mostly did come from similar backgrounds of gaming history…)
Was just thinking: what of a “button” or paperclip “helper” as mentioned above on the UI for each global function that the user can keep or disable on entry into the world, and perhaps tie a task or quest to each part of the UI, also it would perhaps “fade out” and disappear altogether as the player gains mastery. Just a few thoughts
Going back to the original thought, the consideration should be focused on what comes before UI and other aids, the cognitive process.
Tide talks about metaphors, but the concept of reference points is probably a better perspective. This goes to explain why cards were great for Raph’s game design.
So with so many unique UI or customizable UI designs for various games, there is another addition to the ’tissue test’, the intuitive ‘click test’: observing how people learn by clicking on things to get a feel on how the UI works.
That’s what I remembered doing when I got Warcraft (or was it Human vs. Orcs, I don’t remember). Instead of reading the manual, I just clicked away until I figured out how things worked.
Clicking was my reference point. The RL ‘desktop’ was the reference point for early virtual desktop; the RL ‘window’ was the reference point for, ummm, windows (could have been called pages).
As to Paul’s question, I think that the closer the video game is linked intuitively to some common RL reference point, the better acceptance the game. For example, many people have grown up with game consoles and their UI, so those particular UIs become common RL reference points to build on.
My 2 cents,
Frank
It’s important to note that not everyone learns by just “clicking away.” In particular, the research that Sheri Graner Ray showcased in her excellent book Gender Inclusive Game Design showed that females tend to prefer learning via modeling, as opposed to experimentation. No one tutorial or learning style will fit all.
[…] I just found it refreshing that New Zealand actually asks someone who works with games to analyze these things, instead of handing it off to the CDC (and thus, by implication, assert that video games a disease to be controlled). As Raph recently pointed out, there is a lot of assumed knowledge about video games that you can’t just pick up in a few hours. […]
I want to call out another part of the newbie experience in WoW that most people overlook.
Each newbie character starts in a *small area* where they can kill defenseless animals for the first 4-5 levels (which last less than an hour if they get the hang of it quickly). But this small area is embedded in a low-level zone which players spend at least the first few hours in. There are also player cities near all such zones, giving high-level players reason to run or fly through them every now and then.
This means there are both other newbies *and* experienced players around during the crucial first hours of the newbie experience. It means you can discover things together with the people who start a few hours before (or a few hours after) you did, even if you are in different areas you are still in the same zone and therefore on the same chat channels.
I think a great many WoW players had positive experiences in their first two hours in the game, and that probably had a long-term influence on their attitude towards other WoW players.
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The best animal deer tips may take a bit of time to locate….