Master's Thesis - Easy to Learn, Hard to Master: Tutorials for Challenging Games

In this thesis we take a closer look at Tutorials in video games and Tutoring in general. A Tutorial can be seen as a closed environment, where we have total control over the challenge and the skill level of the player. We are therefore looking at the role of Tutorials in the Flow theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We define an optimal amount of knowledge, that should be taught by Tutorials, which lies between an explicit minimum and an implicit maximum. The minimum can be taught with a Mandatory Tutorial in the beginning of a game. Additionally we have implemented an adaptive system, which provides Hints to the player depending on the individual performance, such that experienced players still receive valid Tutoring. There are many ways to track the player based on ingame variables and the right visualization of the data has proven to be a reliable tool for self-driven improvements. However the resulting Hints, which can be seen as an additional source of Help, did not adapt to the player as much as it would be desirable, due to several reasons. We have implemented all described Tutorial solutions in the highly challenging game "Afterthought" programmed by me and my Team at Studio Moondowner.

The full Wiki Page can be found here.

Feel free to play the Demo on Steam in order to test the Tutorials.