Inception's Usability Problem
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Inception's Usability Problem
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Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#2"In-game tutorials are both hugely important and difficult to pull off, and today's game-designers have gotten pretty clever about putting them together."
Disagree heavily. Many of the most complicated games from the past had no tutorials, but people were still able to figure them out. Figuring out was part of the fun in fact. Most people I know simply ignore tutorials.
And I can't blame them, because developers tend to be horrible at putting tutorials together. Most tutorials today start with the most basic things imaginable- moving your character and moving the camera. These things don't change from game to game. Only a very small number of modern games have tutorials worth playing.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#3I think Nolan struck a decent balance between ambiguity and exposition. The moments that were heavy with "tutorials" were still fun because of the visual effects, like when they were folding Paris. The OP forgets that the Matrix had plenty of exposition too. Not to mention, Nolan waits until the movie is well on its way before he starts to explain the rules of his universe. I think inceptions concepts are more complicated than the Matrix's, anyways.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#4[deleted]
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#5"In-game tutorials are both hugely important and difficult to pull off, and today's game-designers have gotten pretty clever about putting them together." Disagree heavily. Many of the most complicated games from the past had no tutorials, but people were still able to figure them out. Figuring out was part of the fun in fact. Most people I know simply ignore tutorials. And I can't blame them, because developers tend…
Most new games I see have cleverly disguised the tutorial as the first few levels (probably because everyone skips them).
Instead of explicitly introducing concepts, concepts are introduced in-game one by one. There's a gentle ramp-up, and the goal is to have the player unaware that they're playing a tutorial.
It's very tricky to get the right balance between teaching and action in the first few levels.
Examples of games where the tutorial is the first few levels (off the top of my head): Halo, Portal, Half Life 2
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#6"In-game tutorials are both hugely important and difficult to pull off, and today's game-designers have gotten pretty clever about putting them together." Disagree heavily. Many of the most complicated games from the past had no tutorials, but people were still able to figure them out. Figuring out was part of the fun in fact. Most people I know simply ignore tutorials. And I can't blame them, because developers tend…
I hardly ever play tutorials - mostly because they are really boring.
However, I do have an 11 year old son - I usually learn games by having him explain to me the bare minimum of controller commands and learning as I go after that.
If an 11 year old can't explain in 30 seconds enough to get me started in a game then I probably will get bored and go back to playing Halo 3 online.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#7I'm pushing a lot of film criticisms onto my mind's stack of 'possibly groundless convictions' these days. I keep seeing complaints that
a) a good film needs you to 'care' about the characters who must have 'emotional depth' through 'development'
b) a good film should not be pre-occupied with 'exposition' or 'explaining' what is happening
but... says who? They sound like half-baked ideas that arm-chair movie critics have internalized and regurgitate at the slightest opportunity.
I was so much more interested in watching Nolan introduce more elegant but mind-bending ideas about the mechanics of recursive dreaming and then manifesting them with spectacular action scenes, than I was interested in the missing 'character development' milieu like watching the protagonist play with his kids, have a normal domestic argument with his wife, become a workaholic etc. etc.
The characters explained their plans and problems because it made sense for them to do so (ie. it never felt contrived for the audience's sake), and the explanations in themselves were entertaining. Deeper thematic ideas were still tackled, like the central point of how the protagonist needed to untangle himself from his subconscious regrets/guilt before he was ready to have a real life with his children, just not in the usual sappy ways that we've seen thousands of times before. And I refuse to accept that the film was confusing -- yes there were a couple of details that we discussed on the way home from the cinema but satisfactory explanations were forthcoming. All films have details like that, with Inception they're more fun to figure out.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#8Actually I would say the opposite. The film wastes no time talking about how the dream-sharing technology works, there's no Star Trek style technobabble. The audience is simply presented with a world in which this technology is taken for granted, and straight on with the story.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#9This was exactly how I felt when I left the cinema. Although it was a good film, I felt the execution of the idea felt sloppy. It had promise to be truly amazing, but often purposely became confusing in the aim of seeming to be clever.
I think in Inception they took things too far, multiple dream levels, weird limbo states, etc. They could've just built a far simpler movie and it would've flowed a lot better.
It's comparable to software. Often the most enjoyable user experience is one with very few features executed extremely well. Compared to a piece of software with every single feature or idea plugged in, executed fairly sloppily.
Inception was lucky it had a great core concept, cast and good effects to hold up for the on going confusion throughout the film.
The comparison I feel is Matrix compared to Existence, where 'Existence' in this scenario is Inception.
Re: Inception's Usability Problem
#10"For me, Nolan's dreamjacking caper was the film-going equivalent of sitting through a videogame that is all tutorial and no play."
Are you kidding me? This movies is packed with all sorts of action, character development and general goings on! For a video game the action stops and you have to jump or counter 3 or 4 times to continue. At what point in Inception does the plot stop moving for more than 3 seconds? There is always something going on.
Even when Ellen Paige is getting a tutorial in architecture (yeah, a tutorial in the movie) there is tension when the world starts reacting negatively.
Exposition dones wrong does indeed sink movies and makes them boring. But you have to do it somehow, especially if it's a science fiction. Inception does it so, so well.