A lesson developers seldom learn: Text-based tutorials

There exists a principle of graphical user design that many books and university courses on that subject present: If you feel the need to explain the use of some element via a text label, that's a sign that it's badly designed and could benefit from a re-design. The simpler the element is to use, the more likely it is that it's badly designed if its use has to be explained with text.

(Note that this is different from simply naming an element with a text label. The name of, for example, a button can make it clear and self-explanatory what that button does. Problems begin when the function of said button is not clear from its name alone, and instead there needs to be additional text explaining what it does. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is a dialog with something like "click OK to (do something)", or similar.)

Optimally a user interface would have as little explanatory text as possible, and still be very intuitive and easy to use, where every element is either completely self-explanatory, or at least very easy to figure out (and doable so "safely", in other words, just trying it doesn't cause irreversible, or hard-to-reverse, changes to anything.)

This same idea can be, and optimally should be, applied to video game design as well. It should be a lesson taken to heart, with the vast majority of games: If you feel the need to explain something, or add a tutorial, in the form of text on screen, then you are doing it wrong.

As an example, suppose you are making a 2D platformer, where the playable character can "wall-jump" (in other words, when the character is in mid-air, but touching a wall, the jump button will make the character jump off the wall, to an even bigger height). These wall-jumps may be an integral part of gameplay (even to the point of some levels requiring it to be passed.)

There are essentially two options to inform the player of this mechanic: Explain it with text, or create an introductory level where players will intuitively and naturally discover the mechanic on their own.

Some games embrace and implement this idea of subtle "tutorial levels" to a magnificent extent (the Portal series being a good example.) However, way too many games are too lazy about this and will simply go the easy way of just slapping some text-based tutorial texts on screen. This just feels like lazy game design.

Intuitive controls and game mechanics, learnable without any text-based tutorials, are especially important in casual and mobile games. That's because the average casual gamer does not read text. (There is also the practical consideration that not all players might actually understand the language.) But they are important in all types of games.

But this is a lesson that most game developers have still not learned. Text-based tutorials are ubiquitous, even though games that succeed in being intuitive without them feel much better designed.