“Show, don’t tell:” it is an often repeated design mentality that artists strive to meet. From its ubiquity, however, it is easy to forget what this mindset is and, more importantly, what it means for a given artistic medium. For games, the show, don’t tell philosophy represents purposeful design in which the player is not beat over the head with tutorials or dialogue; rather, the player is organically led through the designer’s intended plan with subtler, more engaging methods. This less formulaic approach is often more difficult than merely explaining to the player what needs to be done and why, yet its successful implementation can profoundly improve the player experience.
Avoid clunkiness
Games are complicated, and it remains even more complicated when defining how to convey such intricacies to the player. An easy way to convey complex controls is the frequently used control picture. This cop-out of an approach tells controls, but can easily overwhelm the player with swaths of information. Each button’s controls are displayed in almost indistinguishably small font, requiring a taxing amount of effort upon the player to read such controls. Designers could increase the font size of such text, but it would be difficult to comfortably fit all of the larger text on the screen. Furthermore, this choice of breaking down each button is occasionally helpful with its individual detail; however, these images do not describe the interaction of buttons. In other words, they describe what happens if the player hits A, not what happens if the player hits A while holding the left stick slightly forward and tilting the right stick in addition to holding the R2. Control charts tell the player what each button does, but they do not easily teach the player how to use those buttons in unison to complete a desired goal. As a result, control pictures are often a clunky design choice that stops the game’s flow and only lazily teaches the player a limited scope of controls.
Incremental demonstration
There are many different ways to more successfully convey a game’s controls. The Mario franchise, for instance, incrementally expands upon its level mechanics to naturally inform the player on how to use them. This design philosophy is built upon a four-part process in which a mechanic is safely introduced, slightly expanded upon, twisted, and culminated in a final challenge. After that process completes, the stage’s mechanic is replaced with a new one for the same process to repeat. Super Mario 3D Land embodies this design approach in its level 7-4. This level shows Mario navigating around a mechanistic clock on moving gears and wheels to justify its mechanic of platforming on moving surfaces. At first, Mario engages a large, circular gear for him to safely jump on. Then, he jumps along a similarly suspended platform: a slowly moving wheel. Afterwhich, he tackles a more difficult platforming section in which gears have portions missing, thereby complicating how the player engages them. Finally, the player surmounts a more challenging amalgamation of these elements to reach the flagpole. From this process, the player learns how to platform around suspended surfaces because level difficulty matches the player’s ever-improving skills. And before the player can become bored with this mechanic, it is rotated for a new one. The game shows the player how to platform with steadily increasing challenge and variety, subsequently keeping gameplay captivating and fresh.
Experimental learning
Because games are always built upon learning their mechanics to complete goals, tutorials are often the best times for effective show, don’t tell design elements. Many games demonstrate highly structured tutorials that tell the player exactly what to do, which buttons to press, and which features to notice. This degree of structure can guide players, but some games largely ignore the directed tutorial. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the player learns how to use core gameplay elements of runes in a completely open manner. Initial shrines bestow the player with varying runes and briefly tell what each rune does. At that point, the game’s direct instruction ends for its indirect instruction to begin. The player is now in a sandbox, an open-ended puzzle. While the player knows that he/she must use a shrine’s given rune to complete said shrine, the exact manner of doing so is unknown. Thus, the player experiments. The player plays with the new rune to look for a solution. Upon solving the given puzzle, the player learns more applications for the rune. As a result, the game shows the player its mechanical possibilities in a thought-provoking, personally-directed way. The player enjoys the freedom of autonomy in this process because he/she solved the puzzle both on his/her own and in his/her own way.
While Breath of the Wild at least meagerly tells the player about its rune mechanics, other games tell the player nothing - and to great results. The physics and chemistry-based Powder Game, for example, tells the player nothing of its deep mechanics; instead, the player must experiment to discover its possibilities. In this game, the player can mix elements to generate unique, logical results. Fire and dynamite produce explosions which tear apart surrounding matter, water diffuses if not collected in a container, and magma melts through surrounding soil. The player quickly understands many of the implications of Powder Game’s elements because they are based in reality. Additionally, the player can expand his/her understanding of game elements by trying new possibilities. By mixing new elements together, surprising results are observed and learned. This learning occurs not with guided dialogue, but with undirected freedom. Showing the results of such elemental interactions to the player is a challenging, yet organic approach that can spawn the creativity that directed tutorials occasionally prevent. After all, direction is helpful, but it can result in functional fixedness, the belief that an object or mechanic is only used for a specified purpose. By not pigeonholing the player into a set action, the openness of experimental learning can empower the player through autonomous creativity.
Subtle guidance
Games can occasionally direct the player with indirect methods. Again in Breath of the Wild’s beginning, the player starts by exiting a constricted tomb to savor an overwhelmingly large open-world. Some menus pop up in this process, but only after the player initiates a behavior on his/her own. For example, the player must climb a ledge to exit the initial tomb. Upon climbing, the game provides information that most walls can be climbed by approaching them. Here, the player learns a game mechanic from his/her actions alone, and was later reinforced that such learning was valid and correct. This is a covert process in which the game affirms, rather teaches, mechanics. It shows, rather than tells, the player how to climb in an explorative method. Once outside the tomb, the player greets the aforementioned world. Navigating its impressive scope could easily confuse the player were it not for the game’s subtle guidance. Not only do dangerously steep cliffs visually direct the player away from moving forward or left, but a slow camera pan to the right features someone to talk to and an enticing structure (Hyrule Temple) to investigate. This simultaneous push-pull subconsciously escorts the player toward the game’s intended locations while still giving the player the satisfaction of autonomy behind their exploration. From these two examples, Breath of the Wild’s first few moments shows the player desired actions without blandly telling him/her what to do.
Hollow Knight implements a similarly subtle guidance system in its exploration. This sprawling Metroidvania game boasts a complex dungeon that the player slowly learns through navigation. To aid this complex process, a map salesman named Conifer can be found deep within each area. But rather than telling the player where to go, the game slyly hints at Conifer’s location with auditory cues. Conifer hums a soft tune, and this music can be heard from a distance to alert the player of his presence. From this indirect hint, the game adopts a hide-and-seek minigame where the player must listen to find Conifer. Hollow Knight could have used a waypoint to signify Conifer’s location, but this auditory cue system is a more realistic and satisfying choice. Yes, it is more difficult to not use a waypoint, but this difficulty translates to worthwhile feelings of success when Conifer is found. These subdued hints are hard to notice while playing, yet they hold powerful effects on organically orchestrating the player’s behavior without directly holding his/her hand.
Final example
The first two games in the Zero Escape series succinctly illustrate the implementation and effects of show, don’t tell. This strange game series spins stories of characters who are tapped in a facility together and must escape alive by solving puzzles before time runs out. In the series’s first game - Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - the protagonist awakes alone in a ship’s underwater cabin. Confused, the protagonist slowly recalls that the last thing he saw was a shadowy figure with a mask in his apartment. This figure used a white gas to anesthetize the protagonist and, believably, kidnap him. Before the protagonist and the player can fully understand the situation, the room’s glass window cracks and shatters, allowing water to rush in and begin filling the room. The need to avoid drowning creates a natural sense of urgency for escape. Dialogue is not necessary to express why the player must solve the room’s puzzles to escape because the visual of gushing water and a flooding room genuinely prompts such behavior. And from such urgency, the situation’s tension shows the protagonist’s perspective to the player for a heart-pounding rush for survival, thereby making puzzle-solving more engrossing and thrilling.
The Zero Escape series’s second game - Virtue’s Last Reward - also starts with a dangerous situation, but conveys its significance in a less effective manner. This time, the new protagonist has once again woken up in a strange location after being drugged and kidnapped. Instead of a ship, this time the protagonist is in an elevator with a stranger. This stranger tells the player that the elevator is not working so no escape is currently possible. To enhance situational pressure, the game’s antagonist then chimes in and tells the protagonist that unless he solves the room’s puzzles in a certain amount of time, the elevator will drop dozens of stories to the his death. This approach generates less tension than the previous example and takes much more time to do so. The first game’s drowning example resulted in a strongly perceived sense of urgency due to its realism; however, the second game’s falling example results in a less strongly perceived sense of urgency because it is heavy-handedly explained, rather than immediately understood. Furthermore, the copious dialogue included to convey the second game’s danger far exceeds the few seconds it took the first game to visually express danger. Both games strived to generate a sense of fear and gravity in their first moments, but the first game’s utilization of show, don’t tell resulted in the authenticity necessary for such feelings.
Conclusion
Games are far more interactive than books. They take player input, cutscenes, controller vibrations, pictures, music, etc. to more immersively generate an intended message. While books are largely trapped to conveying messages through dialogue and text, games can more integratedly and creatively utilize their assets to entertain. Doing so results in a stronger experience because it integrates multiple senses to more richly feel a situation. Yes, games can rely upon text to convey their meanings, but over-relying on text lazily dilutes games’ value. Show, don’t tell demonstrates this idea because it explains how superfluous text can bore or suffocate the player; instead designers can intelligently present their mechanics to show the player a game’s possibilities. This alternative presentation style of show, don’t tell results in games that creatively engage, versitally educate, and thoroughly entertain the player, thereby justifying its use and appreciation.
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