How Much Handholding Is Enough?

Marvel’s Wolverine is the latest AAA video game title going through the media ringer. It’s a story about everyone’s most beloved mutant, Logan aka Wolverine, teaming up with other X-Men to solve the disappearance of other mutants.

Reviews on PlayStation’s own platform are mostly positive. Professional critics largely enjoy it, with a few caveats. But according to my X feed at work, it’s a terrible, nearly unplayable game.

The two main lines of criticism? Cut corners and too much handholding.

If you spend $300 million on making a video game, can you really put in a water splash animation that’s basically a short GIF popping up again and again? Not really. People will notice. Alas, every budget will be shaved off at the edges.

The second criticism is more interesting: In some aspects, the game almost plays itself. Every treasure chest gives off super obvious shockwaves from hundreds of meters away. A blue trail blatantly guides you to your every next target in missions. In a motorcycle chase scene, you needn’t even hold the controller to make it to the end! And all quick-time events—cutscenes where you need to press a button to perform some action—can be completely ignored. The game will just march on. No game over, no problems.

The thing about triple-A anythings, be it movies, games, or TV shows, is that they’re not tributes to hardcore fans. They need appeal to the widest audience possible to even be in the black, let alone generate a return. And if you need to pull in folks who usually wouldn’t be here, well, then guess what you need? Handholding!

At work, we face a similar dynamic. Our engineering team naturally thinks our blockchain education courses are too basic. Of course! They know everything there is to know about the technology. But from the outside, 90% of feedback is more along the lines of: “It’s too complicated. Can you explain it in simpler terms?”

For better or for worse, an online course is the way it is after you ship it. Modern video games, however, are not. They’re software, and software can be upgraded. This is where the criticism really finds its merit: Why couldn’t the studio have made all these supportive mechanisms optional? If you want a tougher experience, just turn it off! No blue trail, no self-identifying treasure chests, no casual punch to the enemy’s face if you don’t press X on time.

How much handholding is enough? Only you, the creator, can decide. But wherever handholding can be shipped on a sliding scale, do your audience a favor: Let them decide for themselves.