Innovate rather than replicate

With the intention of looking at innovation, the focus of my project should be focused on creating new ways of showing players game mechanics, rather than identifying the best existing one.

My colleague Paul pointed me in the direction of Zack Hiwillers depiction of Mario if developed in 2011 http://www.hiwiller.com/2010/04/29/if-mario-was-designed-in-2010/. During Mark Zuckerberg's speech at F8 this year he talked of how while being able to share achievements and content is what makes 2011 so great to be in, but doing so intrusively at the annoyance of the player is an unfortunate repercussion of  its popularity.

I believe this is how players feel about many mobile game tutorials/introductions. Rather than helping payer they're seen as a hindrance, one to be skipped past if possible. While there's no doubt some games require a reasonable amount of tutorial (such as 'GameDevStory'-which while fun often feels like one big tutorial) others would benefit from more exciting methods.

My aims then are as follows:

1. To identify current methods of introducing game mechanics and controls within mobile games.
2. To determine which ones work well and which don't based on: 
1. Time taken to get into gameplay from booting the game
2. Whether players get frustrated by the game
3. Level of enjoyment experienced by players
3. To identify any demographic trends

My general objective is to research and carry out experiments into how introducing mechanics and controls can be done either without the player feeling like their hand is being held or wasting their time.

To do this I will first observe and test using human player subjects playing a variety of existing mobile games for the first time.

During testing I'll have to use games the subjects haven't played before, possibly negating the use of such games as Angry Birds and Cut the Rope.