Watch the full episode: The Importance of First Time User Experience in Game (Game UX Alchemists Podcast)
In this episode of Game UX Alchemists, we chat about the importance of First-Time User Experience (FTUE) in game development, including:
- What makes a strong FTUE?
- What are the biggest mistakes studios make?
- How do you fix them?
If you’re short on time, we broke it all down in the summary below!
Let’s get into it 🙌
What Defines a Good First Time User Experience?
A strong FTUE introduces players to the game without making them feel like they’re sitting through a lesson.
It should teach mechanics naturally while keeping players engaged with the world and the story.
The team emphasized that onboarding shouldn’t feel like a separate tutorial. It should be woven into the gameplay itself.
Joan offered a great example of a game that did this well:
Portal 🌀
Players are guided through mechanics without ever realizing they’re in a tutorial. Instead, they’re solving puzzles that organically teach them how the game works.
On the flip side, many games bombard players with walls of text, hand-holding prompts or drawn-out tutorials that make players feel like they’re clicking through instructions rather than playing.
That’s a fast track to disengagement.
The Biggest FTUE Mistakes Game Studios Make
One of the biggest pitfalls the team has seen is overwhelming players with too much information.
Joan pointed out that in some mobile games, players spend the first 10 minutes just tapping the screen without absorbing anything. Then, when the tutorial finally ends, they have no idea what they actually learned.
Another issue is tutorials that don’t align with real gameplay.
For example, Valorant’s previous tutorial covered basic movement and shooting but failed to introduce the complexity of agent abilities and team-based strategy.
As a result, players were unprepared for real matches, making the transition feel jarring.
A big takeaway from the discussion is NOT to treat all players the same. Some might be experienced in your genre and want to skip onboarding, while others need gradual guidance.
A good FTUE finds the balance between both.
The First 30 Minutes
The team agreed that the first 30 minutes of gameplay are the most important.
This window determines whether a player keeps playing or quits. Within this time, the game should:
- Show core mechanics in action without overwhelming the player.
- Introduce engagement hooks – something that makes the player want to keep going
- Give meaningful rewards – not just congratulating them for pressing a button
Too much hand-holding makes players feel like toddlers, but too little direction can leave them lost. A good FTUE empowers players to explore and learn naturally.
So, How Do You Get FTUE Right?
The key to designing a great FTUE is understanding how real players experience your game – not how developers think they will.
That’s why playtesting is essential. Studios that rely solely on internal feedback or analytics risk missing critical insights.
Watching players struggle in real-time shows where onboarding is failing and where improvements can be made.
FTUE playtests also help identify issues like:
- Players forgetting key mechanics because they weren’t reinforced properly
- Poor onboarding pacing. Either too slow and boring or too fast and overwhelming.
- Misaligned difficulty. Some games assume too much from new players, while others oversimplify and alienate experienced ones.
Final Thoughts
A bad FTUE can destroy player retention before the game even starts.
But when UX is done right, players stay engaged, learn effortlessly and enjoy onboarding instead of tolerating it.
If there’s one takeaway from this episode, it’s this:
Players decide early on whether they’ll keep playing. Make sure this stage is intuitive, engaging and easy to understand.
Thanks for reading the episode summary!
We’ll see you next time 😊
