Hand-Holding vs Discovery: What Changed in Games?
Do Game Studios trust their players nowadays?
First Character: **Dressed up in fancy clothes** Hew hew hewww. Welcome to the New Ivy League Class of Pokemon A to Z. We’re going to do a 2 hour exposition of how to play our game
Other Character: Wait what? The games used to just throw me in the back of the truck and tell me to figure out what to do?
First Character: Oh uuh… that’s way too much. We’ll just tell you how to play it. So here’s this and this…don’t forget about this because.- oh! This too! Don’t forget this…
Other Character: Confused and scared
Lately, I’ve been playing the original 1986 Legend of Zelda game. I keep coming back to it every day and I don’t know why! I spawn in, they don’t tell me a thing, there’s these spider guys, I don’t know what the buttons do, idk where anything on the map is - BUT I found out how to upgrade my sword! I upgraded my shield! I even beat 3 boss fights. How did I do all of this without a single piece of text giving me instructions on how to play? Why do I keep wanting to come back to play more? Why am I depressed? And what is going on in today’s industry?
Last month I started my journey as a Game Developer, I’ll go more in-detail on that in another video. But as a Game Developer, I’ve been wanting to play a variety of different games to get inspired by different game mechanics and stories. I’ve always played competitive multiplayer games like League, Marvel Rivals, and Battlefield 6. Recently I wanted to try playing Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain. I’ve heard how fun the MGS games are and I thought I should give it a try. While playing, I was met with an almost an hour long introduction. The game gave me little to no agency, all these flashy cinematics that ended up getting me motion sick, and I felt more as a spectator instead of a big boy gamer. I’m sure the game itself is AMAZING and fun! But I wish I can move to the gameplay faster or make the tutorial more aligned with the main gameplay loop. When I play games with long tutorials I feel like I’m a fat little baby that can’t be trusted to take off the training wheels until I eat my broccoli salad or whatever.
Now, granted, I understand some games have complex mechanics that would need some explaining in order for players to truly enjoy their game. I had this experience when playing Moonlighter. It’s an indie game where you’re a shopkeeper by day and an adventurer at night. They had a whole tutorial on how the shopping system worked and how some of the combat works. It taught me what I needed and left alone to my own devices to make my own discoveries. But I loved how it was brief and they let you interact with the game as you learned. Even better, they left some things a mystery! They give you hints on how to progress in the game, the game design guided you to
the shops and check out better gear
Some caves had specific loot that would sell more than others
Be careful on how you manage your inventory
Something about this game made me want to dedicate almost 40 hours in this game, but what was it?
Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation. The National Library of Medicine has a couple articles talking about “what motivates us intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation”. I found this article talked about how the human mind loves exploration. In their study, the scientists were trying to find out if the human mind prefers They found during their study that, “Regions of left and right frontopolar cortex (lFP, rFP) showing significantly increased activation on exploratory compared with exploitative trials” source. Granted, the tests were hard to get definitive proof on what motivates us due to how entangled exploitative and exploratory results can be - but my hunch is that it is up to the person and their personal interests that drive the motivation. That it takes the person the right amount of switching between exploratory and exploitative to keep them wanting to come back to their game
