Driver: How Not To Design A Video Game Tutorial

 Ideally, video game tutorials should explain how to play the game and provide a safe, controlled environment in which to do them. For a real-world example, recall how you might have taken your first driving lessons in the safety of a parking lot, with an instructor in the passenger seat, ready to give you guidance on working the car and slam down on the passenger side brake if necessary.

Now imagine what would happen the driving instructor immediately gave you the driver's test without explaining terms such as "K-turn" or "parallel parking," and expected you to meet his requirements in a short time period. That is Driver's tutorial in a nutshell, and the reason why many gamers were unable to continue with the game.

The tutorial has you driving a car in a parking garage and ordered to complete a laundry list of maneuvers in about a minute. To illustrate what I'm talking about, you can see a video of the tutorial here. Let's start with the list of tasks, none of which are explained to the player

• Burnout: Quickly spinning your car's wheels, causing the tires to heat up and smoke.
• Handbrake: Apart from applying the handbrake, I think the player did this by braking while reversing.
• Slalom: Weave between obstacles like the pattern a slalom skier uses to ski through the gates. The concept can be guessed, but in practice, it's rather vague.
• 180: A 180 degree turn, meaning you do a sharp turn and end up going the opposite of where you were facing(e.g. start going north, end up going south).
• 360: A 360 degree turn, meaning you go around in a circle and end up going the same way as you were before.
• Reverse 180: The same as a 180, but with the car in reverse.
• Speed: Quickly accelerate forward as much as you can.
• Brake Test: Apply the brakes and come to a complete stop.
• Lap: Do a lap around the garage.

These tasks range from relatively obvious (Speed, Brake Test)  to rather obscure (Slalom, Burnout), but there's no excuse for not providing a brief description of what you're supposed to do.

This would be bad enough if the game simply threw you into the tutorial and expected you to stumble around until you accidentally figured out what was necessary, but you don't even have the luxury of time. As I mentioned above, you have about a minute to complete all the objectives. The player in the video didn't waste any time, but was only able to finish with seconds to spare. Many other players weren't nearly as lucky.

The worst part about this poorly designed tutorial is that it's mandatory. You'll have to get through this level to play the rest of the game, and if you can't manage to fulfill the objectives, you're out of luck. Even if you do know what to do or are replaying the game, you'll still have to play through the level again. In most games, tutorials are optional, whether as a separate game mode one can select from the main menu, or skippable sequences during gameplay. As such, players who have played before or prefer to learn as they go can skip them, and jump right into the game.

Driver's tutorial is a failure in virtually every regard, expecting the players to perform under pressure while teaching them next to nothing. Its only purpose is a barrier to the rest of the game, one that frustrated many players and caused them to give up, so the game would have been better off allowing the players to start after the tutorial and learn the game on their own.