Yeah, that whole part was absolutely bonkers.
At the end of this discourse, Mary dumps the pieces of the game across the floor.
In the interview, Mary explained that winning was important to her – she wants to show Jacob that she is smarter than him. In addition she explained how she felt that Jacob was cheating throughout the whole time and she didn’t trust him.
She only spent 16 seconds in total reading the directions, so she did not have clear directions on what constitutes a win.
I’ve finally found the time to watch this. Quite fascinating as a reminder to do due diligence all the time. Especially on the producer end. Don’t take a joke someone makes for fact.
I wonder how TCGs fit into this? Due to my incompetence at MtG playing opening boosters might have been the most fun part? No, I am lying. It was counterspelling someone’s Serra Angel of course. But opening boosters was pretty high up on the list.
As for rulebooks: I am in favor of anything reminding publishers that there is still a lot of room for improvement on most rulebooks. I think a major reason I failed to play Voidfall again is the tutorial game. (and the insert. but that’s a different issue)
My concern is that the Voidfall tutorial sequence may well have been inspired by some descendent of this study, some idea that reading the rulebook is the worst part of the game and we’ve got to move people from opening the box into actually playing as quickly as possible.
I first met the idea of a tutorial you’d work through with the Munchkin Rigged Demo, a pack of about 20 cards that SJGames gave out as a convention freebie. Each one was a standard Munchkin game card, but they had numbers on them, and you could follow the script to effectively go through the motions of playing a few turns of a game. It was a reasonable introduction to the rules, but nobody seemed to enjoy it much.
I’d always assumed that the ‘tutorial mode’ approach had been inspired by video games, where it works really well. I guess the difference there is that the constraints in a video game are enforced automatically, rather than having to remember them all.
I’ve been playing some retro games lately and there’s something refreshing about the design space of the 80s and 90s, where the game came with a physical manual, so the game was 100% gameplay right at the start, because you were expected to pause it to look at the rulebook if you were still working on learning the game.
I don’t do video games much now, but from what I remember of tutorial mode you could usually explore other things a bit as well—e.g. for an FPS “you’re on the firing range, shoot the target” but you can also run and jump in the range area, you aren’t restricted to just the single action you’re being asked to do. Might be different with an RTS I suppose.
I know for Miniature Games (ie: Warhammer and its ilk), X-Wing was considered revolutionary.
Prepainted minis, a quick tutorial system, meant you could open the box and be playing the actual game in minutes. No assembly, no huge backlog of rules, just plop the stuff on a table and be shootin’ down TIE Fighters before lunch.
In those contexts, I think FFG did really, really good work. The “tutorial game” was still the full game, but shrunk down and sped up.
Now, contrast that with the sublime Space Alert, one of the best (if not the single best) tutorial system in a game I’ve ever played… 4 full playthroughs before you get to play the actual game once. Brilliantly written, well-paced, fun… but almost impossible to get to the table because nobody wants to play a game 4 times to learn how to play a game once. And honestly I think Space Alert is as good as it gets! The tutorial system in Root is awful… confusing, unclear, slow, boring… I was excited that they dropped it for Arcs because gosh that was an awful way to learn the game.
I still think Miniature Wargames need more of the X-Wing style solution, but that’s a very particular niche.
This also came to mind in regards to the “reading the rulebook is the worst part.” First thing I ever did when getting a new Nintendo or Playstation game was to read the manual. For Nintendo games especially, that was pretty much the only way you’d know the story of the game!
And really, I love breaking into a new game and reading the rules. It’s fun!
For some RPGs reading the rules was the only thing I ever did. So I agree to some degree.
However, on BGA or app implementations I sometimes try and learn a game by just try and error. 90% of the time this leads to a sub-par experience where I miss important details about how to play the game like I never quite figured out what the deal is with the wares in Castles of Burgundy.
I prefer learning the rules as I setup and play a game. Step-by-step setup is a very nice thing to have. But after that I want rules I can consult over and over and not some forced tutorial that is often very different from my own thought processes…
I’m not sure it’s that revolutionary to copy existing games. Other people had done that before FFG turned Wings of War in to X-Wing. Also wasn’t heroscape similarly prepainted and fast to get playing?
I honestly don’t know if others did it first… I vaguely recall a Wings of War starter, but for some reason I recall it post-X-Wing, not pre. Maybe that was Wings of Glory?
And many have tried since. At least a half dozen tank games, at minimum.
I don’t know what alchemy X-Wing did, but it unquestionably did it. For a while it almost rivaled WH40K, which is a statement of weight.
They certainly haven’t managed to get that ligtning to strike twice, sadly.
Take one part easy to learn game system, one part nice miniatures, one part Star Wars, and mix well. BOOM! You’ve got a successful release.
Isn’t Unmatched exactly that, but with one part reversed? (remove one part Star Wars)
True, but I’m still hoping it’ll show up, maybe as the final release for the system. Meanwhile, they’ve added a ton of other stuff, so that makes up for it 
It works for computer games because there’s only one person doing the tutorial.
Mmmm mmm, feels good.
(I had someone in an online game years ago take ages to build up a huge monster that was technically within the rules but definitely a bad-faith cheese move, and I Spirit-Linked it for 1 White from my starter White deck and he quit. Felt amazing).
There are vastly more people who don’t want to read rules. Getting a game going fast is how you get them to the table.
I theorized some time ago that there is a large portion of the population of the earth that would enjoy playing games, but don’t pursue it because of how unenjoyable the process of learning the game seems to them.
I’ve encountered several people that are perfectly willing to play hobby boardgames; but once you’ve taught them one, that’s enough… Let’s just keep playing Dixit/Hanabi/Ticket to Ride until it’s lost any remaining remnants of enjoyment.
These are often, I found, the kind of people who say, “let’s just start playing and learn the rules as we go”
I imagine, I suppose, these graduated introduction walkthroughs are aimed at this particular audience.
I also imagine, integrating new information into my previous experiences… Perhaps, some people in this group may yell at their children and flip the Connect 4 board if they lose.