Editor's note: I've been gaming for even longer than Mike, but I don't have the hate that he has for tutorials. He does, though, have a valid point -- don't tie tutorials to the plot, and allow us to skip 'em if we want to. -Jason

Mandatory tutorial levels make me want to burn down an orphanage. After 20 years of gaming, I'm at a stage in my life where I can figure out any mechanics that you throw at me. All I need, at most, is a manual that tells me which buttons do what. Some games just put that information on the first load screen. I applaud that.

Tell me how to play your game only when no other stimuli are possible. Even if I don’t memorize all of it, I promise that I’ll figure it out in the first 5 minutes of the game.

Whatever you do, don’t make me go through a tutorial level. Don’t teach me every facet of your game’s controls as if I’m a 4 year old memorizing words for his first vocab test. It’s bad enough that you have the audacity to tell me that the Up button moves my character forward, but when you make me repeat this action five times just to make sure that I get it right, I feel like you've lost all respect for me as a player.

Just recently I tried playing The Chronicles of Spellborn, a free MMO very much in the World of WarCraft vein. I spent my first 30 minutes of gameplay moving with the arrow keys and changing the camera with the mouse. Over and over and over.

When it got to a point where the game was teaching me some of the actually unique and interesting game mechanics, I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. I already had tutorial fatigue. How could these people think that I needed an intensive tutorial on walking? Who playtests these things?

At this point, can’t we assume that if you’re making a new MMO, chances are most of your players have played World or WarCraft, or at least some similar MMO? Is it really necessary to teach me how to talk to people and accept quests?

And look, I get it. Not everyone knows how to play games. There is a percentile, however small, that could jump into any game at any moment without the slightest idea of how to play it. That’s why you give them an optional tutorial.

If you want to blow some newbie’s mind away by telling them that the R trigger fires their weapon, then do it there. Just leave me out of it. Don’t make all of us suffer.

I know it’s become popular to make games for the lowest common denominator and then hope that your more seasoned players will be forgiving when you have them practice using the jump button for the eighth time. I just don’t understand why we have to suffer through this.

Also, don’t fill your optional tutorial level with relevant plot. Nothing better than starting a game on level one, only to realize you have no idea what’s going because you opted out of a tutorial level that, surprise, set up all of the game’s characters and plot threads. Whoops. Better start over. Time to learn how to crouch and look down your scope.

Of course, once someone experiences this just once, they’re terrified to ever skip the tutorial level again. We become wise to developers' tricks rather fast, so we put up with their insulting tutorials.

So to the FPS that tells me that I move my character with the left stick, the RPG that tells me that HP means “hit points,” the RTS that tells me that I move my selected units by right-clicking on the map, and the racing game that tells me that the L trigger is the break -- I get it.

Use the time that you’re wasting on unnecessary tutorials on proofreading your game’s script or something.

Don’t worry about me: I promise that I’ll figure it out.

-- Mike Minotti (still without a job -- maybe I should make a tutorial on how to hire me.)

See this post and more on my site: Give Mike Minotti A Gaming Journalism Job.