He's creating a world for others to play in

Video game producer Jeffrey Steefel says his job is ''like being the director of a movie that is never finished.'' (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)

Jeffrey Steefel has a job that many young kids dream of: He's a video game developer who, yes, gets to play video games for a living. But as executive producer of Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, a massively multiplayer online role playing game, Steefel does so much more than that.

"It's like being the director of a movie that is never finished," says Steefel, of the subscription-based game that has hundreds of thousands of players. "My typical day is like jumping out of an airplane. I never know where I'll land."

Log on to Lord of the Rings Online (www.lotro.com) and you'll be transported into Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional fantasy universe where you can meet Gandalf and Bilbo, and put on the enchanted cloak of regeneration in your quest for the ring.

"It's a 3-D immersive world, and you're dumped in as a character from Tolkien, where all the things in the book are happening, and you can go on epic quests," says Steefel.

In this carefully crafted world, the landscape and terrain, cities and towns strive to be a virtual reproduction of the Third Age, where the Free Peoples must face the threatening shadow growing in the East. Developing this game "is kind of like taking a film production, cable network, and software application team and putting them all together in one place," says Steefel.

"We can be sitting in a very serious meeting and be talking about how the chicken is not behaving properly or people are falling through the worlds," says Steefel. "If the giant troll is broken, this is a tragedy. We can be here until 3 in the morning with engineers, trying to diagnose how to fix it."

At Turbine Inc., the Westwood gaming company that also makes Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, Steefel admits there is "the typical creative geek atmosphere" which includes a game room stacked with sci-fi novels, equipped with leather reclining couches, pool table, foosball table - and numerous video game machines. He works with a number of people who are novelty game collectors. One team member is the "world designer," as well as a published fantasy author. Another co-worker is a Tolkien scholar who can read and write Elvish, the Tolkien language.

"I myself know more about Tolkien than I ever thought possible," says Steefel, who says a game developer can earn from $30,000 up to $300,000, depending on the company and responsibilities.

For his part, Steefel grew up wanting to be an astronaut until he realized "motion sickness and the military were involved." Instead, he turned to the odd combination of engineering and professional acting, skills which perfectly mesh with his current role, which combines storytelling, visual, and musical arts in a performance masterpiece. "I'm still not an astronaut, but I'm flying through space every day," says Steefel.

This video game took about three years to build, and tens of millions of dollars, but you sometimes find yourself fixated on minute details like the red squirrel. Tell us about the red squirrel dilemma.
That was a big uproar on the game message boards. There was a red squirrel in the game, and everyone knows that Tolkien's world is based on the Anglo-Saxon universe where there would be no red squirrels. But, it turns out that our resident Tolkien expert found proof in the literature that there really was a red squirrel. But until then, the red squirrel almost brought us down.

Gamers must spend hours in Middle-earth - or they'd never worry about red squirrels.
There are players who will literally play for days, continuously spending anywhere from 30-50 hours online. It takes 350 hours to completely play the entire game, and there is an expansion coming out in a few days that will extend that to 500 hours.

Do you build these games so that they are addicting?
People who are addictive by nature will be drawn to anything, whether it be shopping or drinking, or, in this case, playing video games. We have built in a feature that tells you what time it is. In some Asian countries, like China in particular, it is even more of a problem. People are so committed to a game that they actually will die because they haven't taken a break. We work with the government to put in game alerts such as "It's been four hours, it's time to stop."

You have a son, 11. Wouldn't it be fun to add some element to the game that is just for him?
Those are called "Easter Eggs" and in the old days, we would do things like that, but today, the stakes are getting higher, so we tend to be less loosey goosey. Of course, for all I know, maybe one of the engineers has done that for their kid.

I have to ask, are you a geek?
My wife says I am. I make games for a living and I have every gadget known to man. I have so many gadgets that I need a special bag just to carry all the adaptors. So, yes, I am a geek.