I’ve only played a human so far, and at first I found the game environments a little bland. I guess having just finished the World of Warcraft trial, I was used to the bright colors and dense designs. I found LotRO to be much more sparse and less colorful. By sparse, I mean the designs are not cram-packed with tons of over the top details like giant weapons, huge armor, and fantastic creatures. (That’s a key point here.)

So the first good bit of the game, you are among humans and fight mostly normal animals and a few slightly fantasy creatures (though still in the realm of “realistic”). Playing this, while fun, was a little like quitting the Twinkies and eating raw veggies instead. It was kind of a shock, but it was still compelling, and I wanted more.

But then we progressed farther and started to see the first fantasy creatures: goblins. I found myself really excited by them because they were very different from everything I had experienced before. Not wolves or spiders or huge flying insects, but real monsters! They had some camps in a marsh with bonfires at night, and it was really exciting.

This made me realize that most games, like WoW, give you such a constant and intense stream of eye candy and fantasy visuals that it all becomes kind of bland after a while. You meet another boss that looks incredibly cool, but your reaction is, “Meh.”

LotRO has used contrast to build up the fantasy elements simply by using them sparingly. I can’t imagine my excitement when I see something like a Black Rider or a Dragon! This is a powerful technique, and it won’t cost you more money or time to implement (other than planning how to pull it off with aplomb).

Because my wife and I started in a “normal” area without these elements, seeing them within that “realism” made them feel that much more fantastic. I’ve seen these kinds of things in games so many times before. Yet, here I was all giddy about it this time because I hadn’t been hit over the head with it to the point of being numb. I hope the rest of the game does this and uses the fantasy elements sparingly throughout.

I think this is a valuable observation for game developers. We should work to heighten contrast for maximum effect whenever possible. Less is more.

For instance, some games have “quests” (in most games, that means one click).

These jobs sometimes require you to have a certain amount of friends in your “crew” or group or neighbors before you can access it. That really just means inviting players into the game and forgetting about them since they become a number.

Interestingly, this gives rise to “add me trains,” where a huge comment thread consists of players asking other players to add them as friends to increase their in-game friend count.

Or, you give a friend a gift to entice him or her to play the game. Gifting can be very fulfilling, but in this case it’s entirely in the service of marketing the game with sleight of hand. It’s not actually “social” in the way you expect when you say the word.

But…

…is this fun?! The answer depends on who you ask, but it’s not much fun to me. These games are certainly engaging because of the behavioral psychology behind their design, but I’m not sure that is the same as being fun.

There’s no meaningful interaction in most current “social” games. Your social graph is nothing but a marketing data mine for the developers. I don’t have a big problem with that on its own, because you do opt in. You don’t have to invite your friends. But the motivating factor is not the quality of the game, and I would wager that you won’t need to force your players to tell friends if the game is good enough.

I love the idea of shared worlds.

As I define it, a shared world game is where the gameplay alters the world state, and the world state alters the gameplay in a fun feedback loop. It’s really fascinating to think about the potential when players’ actions can change the world in which they play, and then that, in turn, can affect what players do next. It sounds like a blast to me.

It also happens to dovetail nicely with social games. I mean, here’s a chance to make them actually social! I don’t mean like “talky ha-ha” social. I mean like “negotiating with each other” or “participating in simple forms of governance within a game world” social. You know, the kind of social where you interact with other people and fun things happen as a result.

To be clear, these things don’t have to happen in synchronous, full-on MMO style. But it also doesn’t have to be a game as vacuous as most of what we see on Facebook today.

The time is ripe for a new kind of social game that is more than hollow mouse clicks on a plastic harvest. And I hope to make one soon.