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ksv on 07 July 2008
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DMeisterJ said:
RolStoppable said:

The problem is that Malstrom wasn't very clear in this article. About the tutorials he is talking about forced ones, like in Final Fantasy XII which I described in my previous post. TP doesn't force something like that on the player, the tutorial is integrated in the game so that the player learns how to play the game AND proceeds in the game, meaning that completing the early tasks in Ordon feel like accomplishments and worthwile.

You don't get everything thrown at you at once or are explained how to push the analog stick like in FFXII, you are free to explore the first section of the game at your own will. You are learning how to play the game while you are already having fun.

So a tutorial is okay if you're doing other things while in a tutorial?

A tutorial is a tutorial.  He didn't explain himself, he said "Tutorial = Broken".  Now we could try to figure out what he meant, etc, but if he didn't feel the need to make sense of that dumb-ass comment, why should I give him the benefit of the doubt?  Zelda: TP has a tutorial, so therefore, according to Malstrom, the game is broken.  It's not my fault that he decided to not be clear when making the article.  Which brings me back to my first point, which is the article is very well written.  He spends 24 paragraphs contradicting himself (Casuals are not stupid, to, simiplify your game until you don't need a tutorial) and not enough time explaining what he means.  His writing in this article is very poor, and he goes on and on about nothing the whole article, and manages to hurl insults at even Nintendo-developed games.  Thus making his point moot.  I mean, he even got the comment "Next Gen doesn't start until we say so" wrong.  Mark Reindidn't say that, it was Kaz Hirai!  How are you going to quote someone but not get it right?  Then he used GTA IV's 100 million dollar budget to call Rockstar "egomaniacs", when the hundred million was spent on making a huge and detailed environment.

It's a good read if you're sipping the juice, but his whole article, is opinion.

 Why are you so upset? If you can't see the difference between a tutorial and what Zelda:TP does, I can't help you.

There is no contradiction between catering to the intelligent and make your game simple to learn. It's the gameplay itself that should be the challenge, not learning which buttons do what. Simple does not equal stupid. If you can do same thing in two different ways, I would say it's stupid to do it the complicated way.

Your game can still be "hardcore" and not "broken". Nintendo and Blizzard aren't the only ones who get it right. You don't need one button/buttoncombination to jump, one to kick, one to climb, one to dodge, etc, etc, when you are not going to them at the same time or in the same situation. A simple example; look at how Resident Evil 4 uses context-sensitive commands; that's part of how you make good gameplay.