What is Conveyance

            Conveyance is the idea of showing or explaining a concept through visual clues and situational agency. At least, that’s how I define it. You can also think of it as subtle instructions. Any kind of guidance given to you the player that doesn’t rely on a very obvious and blatant “go do this now” text or arrow is conveyance. It’s important for games to do this so the player doesn’t feel lost in a world with little to no direction. Good conveyance lets the player know the mechanics of the game without forcing them to rely on the manual too much and does so in a way that the player can easily figure out. Bad conveyance holds your hand for the most trivial of tasks such as jumping. Even for players who have never played a video game in their entire lives can figure out what does what with a little experimenting. The only things that really need direct instructions are complicated commands.

            I’m going to use Spyro the Dragon as an example. Our titular hero Spyro is a dragon. Naturally as a quadruped, he can move around forward and steer in whatever direction he needs to go. The controller has buttons that read as arrows, so naturally one would start by pressing those first. Some games rely on the analog left stick for more accurate movement. This may not read as well for movement, but the player can figure that out in time. As for starting the game, Spyro is in a safe location. He cannot begin his adventure until he starts moving. It’s up to the player to initiate those commands via button presses. There are no tutorials at this point in the game.

            What else can dragons do? Breathe fire, of course. Checking the other side of the controller you can see four buttons with shapes on them. The player should be curious enough to see what they do. They try the X button first and Spyro leaps into the air. That’s jumping figured out. Try hitting the square button and Spyro charges forward. The player might even tap or hold these buttons to see what else they do. Holding square makes Spyro charge indefinitely. The player hits the circle button and he spews a cone of flame. There’s your fire breath attack. Those basic abilities were easy to figure out for me because the game came with a manual. But most games, especially digital, have no manuals. They can still have conveyance without relying on text and pictures.

            Megaman X probably has one of the best forms of conveyance I’ve seen. The first level introduces the idea of movement, taking damage, and jumping. In one part, Megaman X falls into a pit. He can jump, but he doesn’t jump high enough. Naturally, the player will want to find a way out in order to continue the game. Moving against the wall and jumping at it causes him to slide a little ways down it. Repeated jumping lets him wall jump. This becomes a central mechanic later on in the game and it’s essential to progressing through stages. Had that one moment not been implemented, players might not have figured out that wall jumping is a thing that can be done in the game.

            Bad conveyance can make a game annoying and possibly stale. When you get a tutorial box that pops up the moment you start, you know something went wrong. “Hey! Did you know you can move by pressing up to go forward, back to step backwards, left to strafe left, and right to strafe right?” Not only that, your view is obscured and the game is paused. You haven’t even gotten to see the world yet! Let the player explore around a bit and give them a reason to not be afraid. Nothing should be implemented that can kill the player at the very start of the game. You can introduce hostile AI a bit later when they know they have a means of fighting against it.

            This kind of conveyance might actually be a problem in children’s games. Sure, it makes sense to be very direct and show big flashy arrows pointing to where players need to go. But if you make this big open world to explore and you have all these detour signs posted, virtually more than half of the level is untouched let alone forgotten. Something like a hint box may be useful such as “Find the red rabbit.” Highlighting the text might help it a little to show emphasis. However, there is no need to point to the objective. Let the player go looking for it. It’s up to the designers to place the objective in a place the player can easily locate.

            Conveyance can also be done through level design. This goes back to the Megaman X example I mentioned. The player had a sense of agency and a big obstacle. Through experimenting with what they knew they were able to find a way over the obstacle and progress. A level design can do the same thing. Maybe there is a split path in a forest stage. One path leads to the main objective and the other leads to nothing. Implementing a subtle hint can lead the player on the right path. A guidance marker is only necessary when the objective is extremely far away like in Skyrim. Lots of quests take place all over the world and it’s easy to get sidetracked.

            One of the only exceptions to bad conveyance would be to explain a complicated mechanic. Maybe you’re playing a game with an intricate interface with tons of information. A tutorial helps a lot when explaining what everything means and why you need to see it. Even then, you should not stop the gameplay unless it’s to keep the player safe for a moment. Having too many of these paused tutorials will mess up the flow of gameplay and make it annoying to keep playing. You might have a younger and inexperienced audience in mind when making these tutorials, but please do not let it impede the veteran players who understand common mechanics in games and just want to get started already.