Ignacy would like to talk a little bit about tutorials.

We – as an industry – struggle. To grow, we must expand. To expand we must find new customers, new gamers who will join our hobby. Finding them is the easier part, actually.

The hardest? Help them play the game.

***

You buy TV, you plug it in, and you are ready to watch NBA.
You buy iron, you plug it in, and you can iron your shirts.
You buy car, you start the engine, and you can drive.
You buy the board game, you must read the rulebook. If you are lucky, an hour later you are ready to play.

See the difference?
Yep. Everybody sees the difference.

Board games are not “Open and use”

***

Everybody in our industry understands the importance of the problem. We know that average human being on this planet is not used to having to read manual to use something. Especially, if we talk about entertainment. You buy stuff and you want to be entertained, not to read books and manuals, as in school.

Some publishers, including myself, decided to go video games industry route and tried the tutorial solution. Friedmann Friese just released Fast Forward series, my closest friend Michał Oracz did This War of Mine, Jamey Stegmaier did Charterstone. We all try to get as close as possible to “Open and use” format.

I’d like to discuss with you this route because it is pretty bumpy road to say at least.

***

I remember first opinions on Seafall, last year. I was searching the Internet like crazy for opinions because I was eager to see what people say and there was a ton of tweets and FB posts that were saying the same thing over and over: “The game starts slow. The tutorial is boooring.”

‘Aren’t tutorials in general boring? Why so surprised?’ I wondered seeing that feedback.

I also remember first opinions on First Martians, this summer. Try a guess, I was searching the Internet like crazy for opinions and there was a ton of people saying: ‘The first mission is boring. All game long you build stuff.’

‘This is the tutorial mission! It teaches you how to build stuff! That’s why you build over and over!’ I was screaming at the screen, but well, some players made their opinion and never tried the full game.

I write about these two examples of failures in delivering a tutorial experience in board games because this Monday I played Charterstone for the first time. Charterstone is built as a tutorial game. It is a legacy game and when you play there are more and more rules added every game. The whole game is created as a tutorial.

We played 4 players variant.

I liked the first game.
Marek liked the first game as well.
The third player said he was very disappointed and he expected Charterstone to be much better game. He said he might give it another try but is very skeptical.
The fourth player said the game was boring as hell and he will never play it again.

I was looking at them and I literally wanted to strangle them.

‘You f… morons!’ I started ‘This was a tutorial game. You just learned the game. We have two workers, we have buildings, we have special characters we can gain, this is a damn tutorial.’ I shouted at them – subconsciously blaming them also for all complaints on First Martians and Seafall tutorials.

‘The game is boring’ I heard back. ‘Not gonna play again.’

I couldn’t believe it. This was ridiculous.

***

If you asked me a year ago, I would be a strong advocate on tutorials idea in board games and the strong believer that this is the future of our hobby. Today, seeing how impatient the gamer is, knowing they have a dozen of games on the shelf and they must be entertained immediately or will reach out for the next game, I began to have a doubts.

I myself don’t play video games tutorials and always move to the full game from the beginning. Why would I expect others to play my tutorials?

***

I think either, we as designers and publishers will educate gamers about the tutorials, either we’ll explain them well what are they and why are they in the game, either we learn and educate ourselves how to make amazing, freaking amazing tutorials, or we will have to abandon the path.

This very Monday amazing Charterstone got two disappointed geeks in Poland only because Jamey wanted to help them play the game in the smoothest way possible.

This is the ridiculous effect of our industry great efforts.

Originally posted on BTTS blog on BGG site: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/70601/problem-tutorials