I've been wondering about this for a long time, ever since I tried to get my dad to play a round of Halo C.E. with me a while ago. I noticed that he had a lot of trouble getting used to the controller, like any non-gamer would. It has been discussed in Extra Credits and Extra Consideration recently how "gamers" have adopted these skills throughout their lives so we find it frustrating when we see someone who's never held a controller before in their lives unable to grasp simple concepts like navigating a hallway, circle-strafing or precision-platforming.
What I came up with first was to have someone make a DLC game that is nothing but a tutorial on how to control various types of games in an easy, step-by-step manner which explains the mechanics by giving you very simple tasks to complete, like making your way through a maze without looking up or down (only left and right to turn) before moving onto more complex motions, like jumping onto a narrow platform or hitting a target.
Some games already have this to some extent, we've all seen the intros in some FPS's where they ask you to look up, look down, look left, and look right. But that's all they do, they just assume that's all you need to know and send you on your way.
Although the DLC would be a good way to get newer gamers into using the controller and being confident enough with the system to be able to enjoy a vast array of games, the person would still have some trouble since it's not something they're used to doing in daily life and their brains still might not get the association between something on a screen and something they're holding in their hands, so I've thought of something else that might help introduce people to the standard FPS, not for the gameplay or the list of games under that umbrella, but simply because of what the FP stands for in FPS.
This is where "game-fu" (I suck at naming things) comes in.
What the idea is, essentially, is to give people a fairer understanding of how a push of a thumb stick or button relates to how your avatar would react in an first person game. You'd give someone a controller (preferably wireless, just to avoid them tripping themselves up on the wire) and then you show them how the sticks work by physically acting out what your avatar would do depending on what thumb stick you move or button you press. When you push the left stick forward, you walk forward, push it back and walk back, either side and you do a little side-step in that direction. Get them to copy this and repeat it until they have a little bit of an understanding of it. Then you move onto turning, push the left stick in all the "main four" directions (ignoring diagonal for now, we need to keep things simple) and acting out the motions of looking around using the right thumb stick so their brains can start to associate the act of pushing a thumb stick to the specific action that comes from pushing it in a certain way.
The idea is, pretty much, to get their brains to figure things out for itself and find the association between thumb stick and movement. Eventually after getting to know how each thumb stick movement corresponds with each action in a physical way, it should be able to translate that to the virtual realms of the game itself because the basic skills are there. Other buttons would be redundant in this kind of exercise, as button layouts can vary and navigation seems to be the main problem people have with the button-style controllers. Once they get the basics of navigation down, the rest should follow.
The main idea is not to teach people how to play a game outright, but, instead, just give them the basic idea of how action A = result B. They won't be experts right off the bat, but I bet if you put in a group of non-gamers into a game cold turkey (let's say Portal, for example) and let them figure it out for a day, and have another group of non-gamers in another room going through the exercises, I'm willing to bet that if you put the two groups together, the group who did the exercises will be marginally better even if they've been given the same amount of time to learn the skill.
Sure, you'll look a complete idiot doing the exercises, obviously it's not something you'll do in public, but this sort of thing could make things easier for new gamers to get into the hobby, and I'm sure that's something we'd like to see as it'll bring new audiences and widen the variety of games out there when the demographic broadens to a little more than "20-something white male".
So, please let me know, is this a stupid idea or do you think that (if you could get them to agree to doing something so ridiculous) it could help people learn how to use a controller?
What I came up with first was to have someone make a DLC game that is nothing but a tutorial on how to control various types of games in an easy, step-by-step manner which explains the mechanics by giving you very simple tasks to complete, like making your way through a maze without looking up or down (only left and right to turn) before moving onto more complex motions, like jumping onto a narrow platform or hitting a target.
Some games already have this to some extent, we've all seen the intros in some FPS's where they ask you to look up, look down, look left, and look right. But that's all they do, they just assume that's all you need to know and send you on your way.
Although the DLC would be a good way to get newer gamers into using the controller and being confident enough with the system to be able to enjoy a vast array of games, the person would still have some trouble since it's not something they're used to doing in daily life and their brains still might not get the association between something on a screen and something they're holding in their hands, so I've thought of something else that might help introduce people to the standard FPS, not for the gameplay or the list of games under that umbrella, but simply because of what the FP stands for in FPS.
This is where "game-fu" (I suck at naming things) comes in.
What the idea is, essentially, is to give people a fairer understanding of how a push of a thumb stick or button relates to how your avatar would react in an first person game. You'd give someone a controller (preferably wireless, just to avoid them tripping themselves up on the wire) and then you show them how the sticks work by physically acting out what your avatar would do depending on what thumb stick you move or button you press. When you push the left stick forward, you walk forward, push it back and walk back, either side and you do a little side-step in that direction. Get them to copy this and repeat it until they have a little bit of an understanding of it. Then you move onto turning, push the left stick in all the "main four" directions (ignoring diagonal for now, we need to keep things simple) and acting out the motions of looking around using the right thumb stick so their brains can start to associate the act of pushing a thumb stick to the specific action that comes from pushing it in a certain way.
The idea is, pretty much, to get their brains to figure things out for itself and find the association between thumb stick and movement. Eventually after getting to know how each thumb stick movement corresponds with each action in a physical way, it should be able to translate that to the virtual realms of the game itself because the basic skills are there. Other buttons would be redundant in this kind of exercise, as button layouts can vary and navigation seems to be the main problem people have with the button-style controllers. Once they get the basics of navigation down, the rest should follow.
The main idea is not to teach people how to play a game outright, but, instead, just give them the basic idea of how action A = result B. They won't be experts right off the bat, but I bet if you put in a group of non-gamers into a game cold turkey (let's say Portal, for example) and let them figure it out for a day, and have another group of non-gamers in another room going through the exercises, I'm willing to bet that if you put the two groups together, the group who did the exercises will be marginally better even if they've been given the same amount of time to learn the skill.
Sure, you'll look a complete idiot doing the exercises, obviously it's not something you'll do in public, but this sort of thing could make things easier for new gamers to get into the hobby, and I'm sure that's something we'd like to see as it'll bring new audiences and widen the variety of games out there when the demographic broadens to a little more than "20-something white male".
So, please let me know, is this a stupid idea or do you think that (if you could get them to agree to doing something so ridiculous) it could help people learn how to use a controller?
