To draw the audience in a good writer or director will show, not tell. Modern video games have huge advantages there. A great deal of information can be conveyed in very natural ways without the viewer or player even realizing they are absorbing it. Certain books, games, and movies are much better at this than others. This is true for character personalities, world building, major plot points, and even subtle hints. To put it another way, if you want to be immersed the best way to do it isn't to stare at the water, you really want to be able to jump in and get wet.

This is important for more than storytelling and world building too. This is an important part of game design that can drastically smooth out learning curves and improve player's experience without them even realizing it. I remember a really good youtube video demonstrating this principle using the introduction to Megaman X that I can't find at the moment because I'm at work.

It goes beyond easing a player into the mechanics of a game without a manual or tutorial. The same idea is very important to apply to the user interface and the major interactions the player has from the game such as sound and animations. One example might be having a tooltip that says an ability takes 2 seconds to charge up. That would be a bare minimum (sadly many developers neglect even this amount of player communication) but you can also use sound to communicate this to the player such as your character drawing in breath. You could use an animation of your character tensing up and unleashing their ability. You could convey it with visual effects as they gather energy around them and it gets larger and brighter before focusing into a beam. You can have the interface show the ability filling up, lighting up when it fires, and cooling down. Ideally, you want to do some variation on all of these and more.

The more intuitive and easy to pick up a game is the better a player's experience is going to be. Even very complicated games can have their learning curve drastically reduced. The basic idea of "easy to get into but plenty of depth to keep you thinking" is a hallmark of excellent game craftsmanship.

Project_Hero wrote:

Egoraptor's Megan sequelitis, perhaps?

Thank you! I found a censored version someone made I can run at work without logging into youtube and you're right, this is exactly the video I was thinking of.

I'll link the censored version since I can't access the original here. It feels weaksauce but it does get the point across.

[youtube]2v3nlbYywww[/youtube]