Starting to ideate on an essay I've been meaning to writer for some time: Onboarding design for authoring tools. It's in the very early stage but wanted to share examples along the way.

I think a lot about the Sega Genesis game X-Men: Clone Wars (1995). It subverted my expectations as a kid because the game threw you right into gameplay. You didn't get to pick a character, they chose one for you. There were no tutorial on controls, you had to figure it out for yourself. You started with level 0.

Upon completion, you were presented the intro screen. Now that you got an understanding of the mechanics, you now could pick a character.

Dropping people in level 0 allow them to learn by doing.