Annoying Gaming Cliches: Forced Training Modes

This is my first poor attempt at reading something I wrote. Not the best, and the way I get audio files is still laughable.

In some ways this is a response to video from user Elbryan42 who recently blogged his 15 biggest pet peeves. Check out his video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQEKQnGdVgs&feature=plcp

If you have never come across his playthroughs of games, you should know that his throw-away runs are better than my best runs in games, so do him the honor of subscribing.

I decided to show footage of Tomb Raider II for this vid, to show a game where completing the training is almost required to understand the game, and get the hang of the controls. I forgot to make a note about how older, more complex 3D games, like TR, or even Half Life never forced you into training, but left it as optional.

Here is a transcript of what is being said:

Training modes, since the advent of 3D gaming they have been around in one form or another. The problem is, they used to be optional. Nowadays, there are a number of developers who have decided to take optional out of the equation, and have decided to force these modes onto unsuspecting gamers.

Did you ever have a teacher in high school that would talk to you like an idiot, because the rest of the class was full of idiots? Essentially, that is what developers are doing to gamers. Just because some of the people who are playing, may be new to gaming, or may only game casually, they decided to treat all of us as if gaming was something we discovered yesterday.

I would just like to know, WHO THINKS THIS IS GOOD DESIGN? Does it really improve the game at all when you take a mode, that used to have a separate option on the title screen in games, meaning it was optional, and then force gamers to go through a tedious training mode, sometimes after you already let them play through the first level of the game. Are gamers so stupid that they cannot figure out how to press buttons to find out what they do? Press "A" to jump. Really? Because I never would have thought to press a button if you had not told me to.

Forced training modes are tedious enough, however, what I like to call simon-says training modes are the absolute worst examples of training modes, and the best example of bad game design there are. "Press "A" to jump." "Oops, you punched, failed. Let's start again. Press "A" to jump." Oops,You tried moving, FAILED. How dare you try to do anything else but what I have commanded you to do."

One very good example of the worst kind of forced training mode that has stuck in my head is in Spiderman 3. I borrowed the game from a friend a few years back, and by the time I got done with the training mode, I was already done with the game. You even get scolded by Bruce Campbell for trying to press buttons to skip through the talking. I finished the training, mode, stopped playing the game, and gave it back to my friend. I want to play a game, not be forced to jump through hoops before I ever get to play the actual game. By the time I am done with these modes, I have usually lost complete interest in a game, and just move on to the next one. If you can burn me out of a game before I ever actually play the game, then you've got talent, or lack there of.

Gears of War was a huge game, and the great thing about Gears is that it gives the player the option to forgo training. Mirror's Edge starts out in a training mode, but by pausing the game, you have the choice to skip the training. These are great examples that other developers should be following. Why, especially if you have already played through the game multiple times, are developers still forcing this horrible design idea on us? When did it become, in developer's minds, a good idea to make an optional mode mandatory? This is what bad design looks like, and forced training modes need to be taken out of games. If fighting games, who are one of the few game genres that I see the need for an in-depth training mode due to their complexity, and for the good ones, depth of play, do not force a training mode on you, then what makes developers think their game, who's gameplay is already watered down for mainstream appeal needs one?

In the end, forced training modes need to be taken out of gaming for good. Either make them a separate option in games, or use hint messages that can be turned off to tell us what the buttons do. And by hint messages, I mean ones that pop up on screen during the gameplay, not ones that pause the gameplay to tell you something.

But for the sake of argument, and the possibility of there being one person out there who thinks that forcing training on gamers is a good design choice, I would love to hear from you. How does one justify it as anything but bad design? Let me know.