Casual/new people do though
Tutorials have been experimented with in a wild fashion the last several years or so. Skullgirls really set the bar when it came to how to do a welcoming, but substantial tutorial right, followed by a few other releases like Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2. But according to rock star Tekken producer Katsuhro Harada, people don’t use them.
Speaking to PCGamesN, Harada explained that according to Bandai Namco’s data, Tekken players don’t use the tutorial, so they opted to ignore it for Tekken 7. Harada explains, “You hear a lot of people say this game is great because it has a tutorial but when we look at the data, not many people play these tutorial modes. This is the same when you buy something new, you take it home and you don’t read the manual. It’s a positive for your product if you can say you have a tutorial but when you take a closer look you notice that people aren’t really playing it.”
Instead, Harada wanted people to learn naturally through the campaign, which, having played it, I can confirm provides explicit tutorial-ey type instructions. To me, this makes a lot of sense…for Harada, a producer of a fairly hardcore series. If they have data that the vast majority of their playerbase don’t use tutorials, so be it — incorporating them in a new or more organic way is cool.
But they still definitely have a place in gaming in general — as I know quite a few people who loved repeating Skullgirls‘ tutorial to learn about the art of fighting, and have become more competitive players as a result of that low key, low stakes approach.
Tekken has dropped tutorials because players don’t use them [PCGamesN]
