How can interactive storytelling improve your game tutorial?

A game consists of a part of entertainment. And entertainment itself is made up of keeping people engaged, immersed, and interested. When the player feels like a part of the story besides a mere spectator of a built up plot, it immerses them into a dive deep experience into the game, and it's a hook for wanting them to play for more than just a couple of hours occasionaly. I, as a Creative Writer and someone that through my company is trying to develop a game I wrote, think that the method of interactive storytelling is brilliant and one that I am sure to futurely incorporate.

It helps turning a punlic theme like a story - personal, by touching (a screen, a mouse etc.) and choosing. Take even a visual novel, where you sometimes just tap to read more text, yet the story only moves (forward) if you move.

A first impression of a game is incredibly important. A bad first impression can immediately kill interest even when a player first engages with the game with loads of hype and excitement. And for most, if not all new players, a tutorial is the first impression offered by a game. Perhaps there is an opening cinematic that provides an earlier impression, but the tutorial will be the first "interactive" impression with the game. So introducing any elements to enhance the tutorial can be paramount. Adding interactive story telling elements to the tutorial will make the players feel like the game has 'already begun'. Their choices matter already! Even when they are still learning, they are already playing the game!

Think what you will of the game, but Nikke showed that a tutorial to a game can be an immersive experience that players remember for the rest of their lives. Nikke's tutorial is a great case study on how to make an immersive start to a game and teach your player not only the game mechanics, but also the theme of the game and the story.

Trata-se de explorar e desenvolver uma narrativa mediante a interação com os utilizadores, que assim influenciam a progressão da história e acabam por gerarem um efeito de apropriação.

In Tactile, I worked on both story-based games and puzzle games without any story. While tutorials can be effective in a game without a story, a well-integrated story layer gives context to what a player does. Moreover, it will help to bring up the associative sequence if they leave the game and return after a few days, so it's easier to get back in the flow.

People love stories, plain and simple. They are an essential tool in both our survival and entertainment toolkits. By incorporating a story into your tutorial, you make it ten times more entertaining and, therefore, easier to digest. It's the difference between reading and learning from a textbook with someone instructing you on how to do something and reading a novel about someone accomplishing something. And I think we all know which of those we would prefer.

Games are getting more and more immersive every day. A tutorial by Heart and Soul is one of the elements that remind players they are playing a game, and by using storytelling and story elements in the tutorial, immersiveness will increase and help the players get more immersed in the game's world.

Interactive storytelling puts the learner in the driver's seat to experience and solve the situation for themselves. A bonus is empowering the learner to solve a problem and be ready for real-world situations to get it right. A bonus of incorporating gamification could be to level up, get badges, or simply help fellow students.

Looking to grow your player base beyond a trial or a 5 minute Game Pass/PS Now/Insert-cloud-here session? Captivate your customer in the first few moments of the game. If your game has a difficulty curve, introduce it through a scaled format, unlike games like Cuphead which introduced concepts for intermediate gamers immediately upon starting. Understand that if your game is to become mainstream, it needs to be accessible by many, and mastered by few!

In different types of games you will have different types of interactive tutorials. Because we are talking about the tutorial stage, before the player allowed to start playing, we must focus on the techniques we have in our tool belt. During tutorials you cannot confuse the player with different choices and many stories. You must give a linear storytelling with "point and wait" for player reaction.

Para utilizar storytelling interativo em seu tutorial de jogo, contextualize a narrativa nas mecânicas do jogo, apresente personagens relevantes, incorpore escolhas do jogador, forneça instruções dentro da história, adote uma progressão gradual, integre feedback na narrativa e reforce com elementos visuais e sonoros. Testes iterativos ajudam a otimizar a experiência, criando um tutorial imersivo e eficaz.

Don't overthink it, as too complex of a story will distract players and pull the main focus away from the mechanics you are teaching. The story should serve as a context for what you are teaching in the tutorial. For example, when I was working on Blocky Cars, we had to explain to the player how to get out of the car and to pick up objects. So we wrote a short sequence of events where a player was driving down the road and then ran out of gas not far away from a gas station. Players were taught to get out of the car - to do what? - to get some gas. And they went to the station - to do what? - to pick up a tank and come back to continue the journey.

Some games do this better than others. Some walk you through how to do something while not giving you much room to maneuver or make mistakes. Some offer the agency and do all some level of making mistakes. A point-counterpoint example is this. Final Fantasy VIII's tutorials, which, while detailed and in-depth, were kind of bad. They took over and didn't even allow you to test out different configurations during the tutorial. The tutorial lacks player agency and control. The Assassin's Creed games though, through their tutorials have the tutorials integrated into the story. So, while there are pop ups, the actual learning in the tutorial is given agency and control, having you learn the game by doing WHILE offering a little explanation.

The interactive storytelling in the tutorial should mirror how its used in the rest of the game. Branching dialog is simple and easy, but if (for example) your game tracks reputation to change NPC behavior, provide a trivial example of that in the tutorial. You want players to feel comfortable with the story system before their choices start to really matter.

A storytelling tutorial can be as short as a few sentences or long as cutscenes throughout the game. In RPG games the design allows immersive interactive tutorials that the player will enjoy, and not skip. The possibility to skip the tutorial is always there, but in newstream games is incorporated into the game itself and the player wont feel that is leaving the gaming environment and its action moments. In sports games the tutorials are more control oriented and are crucial for new players. For example new controllers and game pads are included into the tutorial and are most of the time replayed with the click of an information icon. In other genres like strategy games, the player has to solve difficult.. (continued)

A narrativa interativa em tutoriais de jogos proporciona uma experiência envolvente. Exemplos incluem contextualização nas mecânicas, personagens relevantes, escolhas do jogador, instruções integradas à história, progressão gradual, feedback na narrativa, uso de elementos visuais e sonoros, e testes iterativos para otimização. Esses elementos combinados tornam o tutorial parte integrante e agradável da experiência de jogo.

In Blossom Tales 2, players learn the basics by playing mini-games to collect coins during the Minotaur Moon Festival. Once they have five coins, they can enter a tournament to experience their first taste of combat and the 'Call to Adventure' that begins Lily's journey. It's nothing new, but we found it to be a fun and rewarding way to introduce gameplay mechanics without feeling tutorial-y!

The beginning of Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good example. Besides offering branching dialog trees, it introduces the reputation system, and allows a minor change in which mission you play depending on whether you decide to help the scouts or let them die.

Most importantly, the tutorial story should be FUN. If you don't want players to skip the story parts of your game, write vivid characters and short, punchy dialog. Avoid big info dumps. Allow people to feel like they're shaping their in-game persona. Are they playing a brutal thug, or a heroic, do-gooder? Interactive storytelling is really about facilitating role-play. In the tutorial, a player should be able to express their character's personality right away to try it on and see if it feels natural.

In my experience, interactive storytelling can be an antagonistic cognitive process to certain types of learning. Is it the best time to meet your roommate when you're elbows deep in an Ikea manual because your furniture doesn't look like the pictures? Use the right tools for the right tasks. Interactive narratives are a great way to deliver information, just not all information, and not always.

Tutorial design has become more challenging in recent times as statistics reveal that many players tend to skip it and dive right into the main game. Beyond simply narrating the overall story and presenting specific situations and characters (which falls under the realm of interactive storytelling), the tutorial can be viewed as a sort of level 0. The outcomes of this initial stage influence the starting statuses of players, delving into the domain of gameplay design.

In-game tutorials often serve as more of an initial guide or ‘map’ to familiarize players with the game environment and mechanics. However, as my experience shows, they may not always effectively teach players everything they need to remember, especially in complex and challenging games. Players are likely to recall specific features, like an inventory system, only when they feel the need to use it. This highlights the importance of designing intuitive and revisitable tutorials and considering other ways to reinforce learning throughout the game, especially for intricate mechanics. Keeping player engagement and memory capabilities in mind is crucial for a successful tutorial design.

Even without the storytelling, a tutorial should be interactive. Following a forced step-by-step drill is not interactive. Like a conversation, i speak you follow is not talking. Tutorial should give players the "why" or "desired outcome" with a some "mechanic" demostration/explaination. They "play" freely by thinking and doing. For a classic example, put a shiny coin on top of a tall box that requires a jump and a nearby sign "press A to jump".