Tekken 7, which launched on consoles and PC over the summer, does not have tutorials. There’s a good reason for this. Bandai Namco’s producers have studied the series’ telemetry and they know that even if a tutorial is offered, players don’t spend enough time in it to make it a worthwhile feature.

That’s per PCGamesN, in an interview with longtime Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada. “You hear a lot of people say this game is great because it has a tutorial but when we look at the data, not many people play these tutorial modes," Harada said.

"This is the same when you buy something new, you take it home and you don’t read the manual,” he added. “It’s a positive for your product if you can say you have a tutorial but when you take a closer look you notice that people aren’t really playing it.“

Harada goes on to say that Tekken 7 instead uses its story mode to teach players the game instead. This is something seen in sports video games, and in their narrative modes (like The Journey in FIFA, or The One in NBA Live, or six years ago, Champion mode in Fight Night). It’s now filtering in other, highly competitive genres where some kind of technical understanding is needed either to be any good or to be capable in online play.

“We can tell with most of our games which modes players are spending time in,” Harada told PCGamesN. “We have that data in our company.”

It’s instructive that video game developers know a lot about how much you’re playing their creation, and how much time you’re spending in their specific parts.