[MUD-Dev] Convincing Players to Read Documentation

[KevinL]

>>> "Jon Morrow" wrote
> The question is, "How do we convince players to read the documentation?"
> Honestly, I don't know.  I make references to my help system several times
> throughout our guided tutorials in hopes of players following through them.
> But I don't feel this is sufficient.  Does anyone have other ideas?

>From a player point of view (having bought just about every new game to come 
on the market in the past 6 months, just for kicks ;), the only things that 
get me reading the documentation are:

1) Good back-story - and then I'll usually read only the back-story.  For 
example, I'll read any "snippet of fiction" stuff in a manual, I'll read the 
comments (eg. Elminster and Volo taking snipes at each other through BG2 
manual), that'll sometimes lead to reading some of the rest, but in truth it's 
a search for flavour and texture (and humour ;)

2) Confusion.  Games are noticeably converging - the controls for Deus Ex are 
not dissimilar enough from the controls for, say, Half Life (or Vampire), that
I have to get the manual out to read up - I take pot shots at what should work,
I do the tutorial, I pay attention to the NPC's (which, lets face it, you're
dead if you don't do in Deus Ex anyway ;).  The only reason I go to the manual
is if the game has made radically different decisions on controls to other
games (example: I had to dig through the manual for Dark Reign 2, because it's 
camera controls basically suck).

So, if you want to put fiction in, I'll read it - but not too much, the first 
library in Baldur's Gate 2 almost killed me ;)  If you want to make the 
controls for the game obscure, I'll read the manual - but probably swear all 
the time I'm reading it.  Otherwise, no chance - I'm in the game to play, not 
read, and most games on the market atm are encouraging that.

>From an admin point of view, I find the above depressing.  But it makes sense 
- if you've got world background you want to present, or comments about the 
way to behave etc., you should probably write them up in fiction or snippets 
of some sort that add flavour - maybe use the NPC's a bit more heavily for that
stuff.  Otherwise, lets face it, we _should_ probably be pushing toward not
requiring people to read docco, rather than pushing toward more docco.  

I'm guessing the commercial mob (Raph and co) have a lot to say on this, as 
there's a definite trend in the way _all_ games are presenting their docco and 
tutorials, it must be something that gets a fair bit of study...

KevinL
(BTW - Deus Ex for first person, Ground Control for RTS, BG2 is giving Torment 
a run for it's money for "roleplay" for me atm, and Age of Wonders for
turn-based strategy - that's my picks for games atm ;)




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