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Today, I'm going to share with you a secret of plot writing that I have never heard anybody else share. Why has nobody ever said it before? Possibly because it's obvious. It kind of is with hindsight. Or perhaps because the secret is so incredibly valuable that they don't want to give it away.

Fortunately for you I'm a very lazy person. I doubt I'll ever write an adventure game plot. Which means this secret is of little value to me, and I'm going to share it with you. Lucky, lucky people.

The Problem -- why writing adventure game stories is hard...

In a classic adventure story, you have a protagonist who leaves their day to day life, quickly masters a range of skills, passes through one trial after another, overcomes massive odds, wins the heart of a beautiful woman with sheer charisma, and eventually vanquishes the foe through force of will and inherent brilliance.

In an adventure game the protagonist is an idiot. He spends the whole time wondering around cluelessly asking the same questions over and over again, mindlessly trying to combine objects or pick up pieces of scenery. The protagonist is constantly failing. Worse, the player never overcomes any odds. In the best LucasArts adventures you cannot fail. There is no jeopardy at all.

If you were to write down what the hero does in an adventure game then it would not make for exciting reading:

John Magnet approached the barman and started a conversation. He suddenly realized he'd already asked every question he could think of, and walked away. He tried to steal another drinker's beer, but the drinker told him he couldn't have it. He tried again. The beer drinker threatened him a bit, but stopped short of any actual violence.

Then John Magnet went back to his house to see if anything there had changed. It hadn't. It was still the same. He looked to see if he'd missed any possibly useful objects lying around. He opened his underwear drawer again. Still empty. Magnet left his house, returned to the bar, and approached the barman.

Even Dan Brown writes better prose than this.

And yet the best adventure games have great stories. How can you do this?

One way to do it is to take the truly heroic moments out of the player's hands. The "plot bits" are told in cut scenes. In the cut scenes the protagonist undergoes a complete change in character from clueless idiot to master of the universe. It gives the game a story but it feels bogus.

Another solution is to make the game so open ended that the player can make their own story as they go along. But great stories have a plot that is carefully thought through and follows certain patterns. Unless you build lots of great plots into your game, you won't end up with a story -- just a bunch of stuff happening to the player. That's what most RPGs or open world games feel like.

The final solution -- the one that actually works -- was created about 100 years ago by Arthur Conan Doyle. His great innovation was to write stories where nothing much happened to the protagonist. Sherlock Holmes stories don't rely on interesting things happening to the Sherlock and Watson -- Sherlock is just a way of gradually revealing a story that happened to other people. Nobody had thought of this before.

The villain is a few steps ahead of the protagonist throughout the game, until the final act when they meet and there's a showdown.

How to write an adventure game plot

Let's get down to business. What do you need to write an adventure game plot? Here are the essentials:

1. An evil villain with tremendous powers. An evil genius scientist who experiments on animal brains.
2. Some nasty goal that the villain is trying to achieve. He wants to control the world.
3. Some method for the villain to achieve that goal. He's going to switch the brains of humans with the brains of dogs -- stupid, loyal, trainable.
4. Some reason for the protagonist to get involved. The villain has stolen John Magnet's beloved Shih-Tzu for his cruel experiments.

At first, all the protagonist / player knows is that his dog's been stolen and he wants it back. As the game progresses, he starts to find out more and more about why. The stakes get higher and higher. Eventually, after loads of aimless wondering about, the player figures out the whole plan and he manages to get into the villain's secret underground laboratory.

And then... the tables turn, the villain captures the protagonist and is about to experiment on him! The protagonist and the shih-tzu's brains are switched! The final act has the player controlling the body of the shih-tzu, trying to get the brains switched back around so that the plan can be stopped once and for all.

It's this final act in an adventure game where even the best ones seem a little forced. You have the evil genius standing by their mind control machine cackling for as long as it takes for the player to win. It could be days. However, it does give the story a satisfying ending so that's a price worth paying.

Now go away and make up a story. But first retweet this and post a comment.

I spent Saturday afternoon in Birmingham Central Library trying to find a single solitary book on game design. There was nothing. So I came home and tried the Internet, which rewarded me richly. Here's all you need for a crash course in game design:

By the way, I'm not talking particularly about computer games here. I'm talking about broad questions of what makes a game, how can some games be better than others, and so on...

The Click-Me Challenge
This is a great place to start thinking about what makes a game... play Andrew Wooldridge's non game. Ask yourself what would be required to turn this into a compelling game, perhaps even try modifying it yourself.

You could apply the Click-Me Challenge concept to a board game (the goal is to reach the end of the board -- every turn you can move one space forward) or a card game (your goal is to get rid of all your cards -- every turn you can discard one card).

Contemplating such an obviously flawed game will get you on the road to thinking about how to fix those flaws -- which is what game design is all about.

http://andrewwooldridge.com/blog/2009/11/12/the-click-me-challenge/

Game Design Friday in the Escapist
Scroll down about a third of the way until you get to non-digital games. These are some simple board or card games that you can play with equipment you already have. They're described, along with design notes, in articles by social game designer Scott Jon Siegel.

It's fascinating and inspiring to see how simple games can take their inspiration from the real world.

http://numberless.net/blog/games/

The Basics of Game Design
From a defunct blog on Casual Game Design, this one page summary on the basics leaves a lot out -- but will make you think a little. Follow up some of the links too.

http://www.casualgamedesign.com/?p=21

I Have No Words and I Must Design
This is apparently the first really formal discussion of game design ever seriously attempted. It encompasses computer games, sports, board games, card games. It tries to define what they are, and what qualities a game MUST have if its going to be interesting.

Working a basic game idea through this article will help you see the flaws in it, and possibly address them.

http://www.costik.com/nowords.html

Game Design Concepts
A full, comprehensive game design course presented as a blog -- complete with assignments and required reading. Even if all you do is read it, you'll learn a lot. Start at level 1 and keep going until the end.

http://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/level-1-overview-what-is-a-game/

Designing Yomi

This is a great case study to end with. It talks through what stops scissors, paper, stone being a challenging 1 on 1 game -- and then discusses how to fix it. It does get a little complicated for me, but the basic idea of taking a lame game and turning it into something good by making a few tweaks is a fascinating way to learn.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/designing-yomi.html

An article from the mid 90s identifies 4 different kids of players in MUDs, the pre-cursor to more recent social games.

Let's see how the four kinds might work in social games:

• Achievers. Want to maximize their points and climb the leader board. Driven by succeeding at the game.
• Explorers. Want to understand how the game works and figure out the optimum strategies, and the consequences of each decision -- but then probably aren't that interested in carrying them out.
• Socializers. Most interested in getting to know people through the game... they'll support other players, and comment on one another's farms.
• Killers. Love the possibilities for malice and getting "one over" on other players, especially preying on achievers because they care most about losing. These are people who'll love to steal crops just for the sheer fun of it.

One of the points the article makes is that you need some balance of the four kinds of player, because each kind of player provides "fodder" and interesting challenges for the other 3.

Read the full article.

One of the cleverest and easiest ways to make a game more addictive is to ration interactions.

Scarcity increases value. If you make interactions a scarce resource then players will value them more.

Mousehunt rations interactions by letting you only Sound the Hunter's Horn once every 15 minutes. If you don't sound it in any given 15 minute period, the opportunity is gone and you'll never get it back. Game play becomes a scarce and valuable resource.

This doesn't make sense, does it? If you want to get people playing your game a lot then surely you should encourage them to play all the time. Wrong!

Rationing interactions leaves the player hungry for more, and likely to come back later for the next go.

You can imagine a quiz game that only lets you answer one question every 15 minutes. So to maximize your score you need to return every 15 minutes exactly and answer a question correctly. Any other behaviour is sub-optimal. This will be much more addictive than letting people answer one question after another until they've had their fill and got bored.

Most popular video games are based on action, and test the players physical dexterity at playing the game.

Dexterity is the physical skill or technique required to succeed in a game.

On Canabalt the dexterity is timing your jumps correctly so that you clear the gaps.

On Pong it's about getting your paddle to the right place to knock the ball past your opponent.

On Need For Speed it's about controlling your car so you can overtake other cars without crashing.

Most successful video games reward the player for some kind of dexterity -- racing games, shooting games, platform games all work by challenging the physical responses in a player. In fact, for most people thinking about "computer games" that's the main idea they'll have.

Dexterity is something that video games have in common with sports.

Needing to hone a physical skill is the foundation of most sports. It's not enough for a footballer to decide to shoot, pass, or tackle. You need some physical skill to execute that decision.

Computer games have inherited this characteristic from sports.

Board and card games usually require no dexterity.

It's not hard to roll a dice, move a chess piece, or hold a few playing cards. In almost all board and card games, dexterity is irrelevant. All that really matters is participating (you do have to roll the dice or move a piece, or else the game won't progress) and making decisions (choosing the right piece to move, choosing what to do with the cards you have).

Where a board or card game needs to simulate "physical skill" in the real world it'll typically use luck. A dice roll decides which side wins. You can make decisions that will stack the odds in your favor.

Social games are like card and board games, not sports.

The most popular social games require no physical dexterity from the player. They just require the player to show up and make reasonable decisions. The Facebook App leaderboard is full of games that require absolutely no physical dexterity on the part of the player. Action games are not what Facebook is all about.

I've noticed that many social game developers also develop paper based games. Take a look at Playdom designer Numberless's games for the Escapist (scroll down to the "non digital" section) or the card and board games by Slide designer @lorenhernandez. Don't these feel more like social games? Wouldn't they adapt easily to Facebook?

This is good news for amateur and indie developers.

It's the real time, physical aspects of a game that are hard to program and require specialist development knowledge. Take out the dexterity, and you can write a serviceable game with PHP and static HTML.

And you can design and test the game concept with a dice and a few bits of paper.

If you want to launch a game fast, social is the way to go.

The other weekend I wrote a post on this blog. I'd put a fair amount of effort in, but didn't think it was a masterpiece. It immediately got retweeted by a couple of people. It must have been a slow day for gaming blog posts because, seconds later, it got retweeted by @TM_Gaming, which means my post had got to the top of the TweetMeme Gaming category. I could sit back and wait for more and more retweets now. It was unstoppable. Thrilling stuff!

It was then that tragedy struck. Twitter went down.

Literally seconds after I got to the top of Tweetmeme Gaming. Defeat was snatched from the very jaws of victory.

I've blogged before about how blogging is a social game. Now, consider what happened here:

1. I prepared a post, and did what I could to make sure it would succeed, in the time I had. The fact that I already had some readers and followers on Twitter increased my chances of success. So my previous successes mean I can be more successful in the future.
2. I "clicked to post", and off it went.
3. The result was a mixture of how well I prepared my post, how successful I'd been at building a following with previous posts, and a large dose of luck -- good at first, rapidly followed by bad, bad, bad.
4. The more exposure that post gets, the more followers I'll have, and the greater chance of success I have with future posts. I can "level up".

Yesterday I started playing a game called MouseHunt. Here's how it works:

1. You prepare a mouse trap -- you choose the base, the weapon, and the bait. You buy all of these with gold, which you earn by catching mice. The more previous success you've had, the better trap you can assemble, the more likely you are to catch a big mouse.
2. You click to "Sound the Hunter's Horn".
3. The likelihood of catching a mouse, and the size of the mouse, depends on your choice of trap and bait, and of course on whether you could afford the good stuff. So there's a mix of luck, good decision making, and reward for previous success.
4. The bigger the mouse you catch, the more money you earn, the better trap you can buy in future rounds. Level up.

The mechanic is exactly the same.

This mechanic is so simple and so powerful that I'd suggest any Facebook indie game designer takes it as the starting point for their game:

1. Invest previous earnings, make decisions, prepare.
2. Click to implement those decisions.
3. Calculate an outcome based on the quality of decision making and a hunk of luck.
4. Reward the player for success, and enable them to reinvest for the next round.

You could apply this mechanic to just about any theme, including of course my favorite social game idea... Wedding Planner Tycoon.

Any smart game ideas based on this simple mechanic? Fire away...

One of the controversial areas at GDC yesterday was whether social games are going to get more complicated so that players experience more depth, or stay simple so that they keep attracting new casual players. Only computer game designers could think that depth and simplicity were mutually exclusive. Traditional board and cardgames take "an instant to learn, a life time to master" -- examples include Reversi, Dominoes, Draughts, Scrabble and of course Chess. The mechanic and rules of play are incredibly simple, but the variety of outcomes gives the game depth.

Here's 6 ways to give your social game depth without sacrificing simplicity.

1. Put your reader at a high level. If you want to give your players a "deep" experience without needing complex gameplay, put the player in a presidential position. Have their game character be somebody who (like the player in real life) is too busy to spend much time on your game's problem. If your game is about running a school, make the player an education minister not a janitor.
2. Deal with lofty themes. Have your game touch on themes that make people think interesting thoughts, even if the game itself is shallow. Some wrestling with moral issues will help. Remember how Themepark Tycoon let you add more salt to the fries, in order to sell more drinks -- hardly a lofty theme in itself, but it got players thinking about the nature of capitalism a little at least. Anything that touches on environmental issues, politics, Fairtrade, education and other things that cause controversy or that people really care about will feel deeper.
3. Distill the game down to key decisions. Somebody running a huge industrial farm doesn't "click to harvest". They tell their staff what to do and leave them to get on with it. Put the player in a position where they are making big decisions, not trying to mimick the minute-by-minute actions of real life. Can you distill your game down to the players choosing one of three options, based on a "proposal" presented to them? "The French are amassing a huge Navy. Parliament thinks you should half healthcare spending to fund our own Navy. Do you accept the proposal, reject it, or send back for amendment?" or "Chelsea FC wants to sell you Ashley Cole for 10m plus one night with Cheryl. Do you accept, reject, or hang on for a better offer?" Even a real time strategy game could be distilled to "move forward", "fall back", and "attack".
4. Give actions unpredictable, far reaching, and logical consequences. When a player takes a decision in your game, they should know it has consequences -- but not be 100% sure what those consequences will be. That's what gives chess depth -- you know that your opponent will respond in some way, but you don't know how. The move could be what wins the game for you, or you could make a mistake here and lose everything. In Tower Defense games, you'll win the first level pretty much whatever you do -- but decisions you make on the first level will still have consequences many levels later. That gives the game depth even though its simple.
5. Have multiple interacting score systems. Readers will get a sense of depth when they have to make trade offs between success in various different areas. There's a trade off between driving fast and getting good mileage. There's a trade off sometimes between having a winning sports club or a profit maximising one, but maximise short term profit too much and you'll lose all your matches and eventually your fans. Is it better to run a high yield farm with lots of fertilizer and pesticides? Or have low yield organic farming and charge premium prices? Even if the mechanic of the game is simple, having readers make trade offs between different score systems will make them think deeper about how they play.
6. Introduce more complex "rules" for experienced players. There are various chess rules that beginners might not know -- em passant, castling for example. Professional Scrabble tends to have more rules than friendly Scrabble games at Christmas. Currently most social games only change statistically as the player progresses -- the new items that unlock are more powerful, but behave in about the same way. Make your game items change the gameplay "rules" a little, so that the game becomes more complex as the player gets more immersed in it -- but is still simple for anybody who starts.

What do you find gives a game depth?

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Fellow Posterous blog games4networks posts about the importance of Clickability in social games.

Clickability = the routine yet enjoyable behavior of executing a set of game actions, with the mouse, and intuitively responding to the UI feedback, during a single social (Facebook) game session