Unsocial 'Social' Games by Greg CostikyanCostikyan is a classic designer of some awesome games and wrote a nice article on the social aspects of gaming. It's not the usual griping that social games like Farmville aren't very social, he talks about what it means for a game to be social and how to design good ones.
You can argue, in fact, that SNRPGs are antisocial in nature, since the only real interaction with other players is attacking them.
In short, developers have learned how to use the social graph to rake in the bucks, but not how to use it to foster gameplay that is actually social.
What does "actually social" gameplay look like? It's not very mysterious. The following is not exhaustive, but here are at least a few of the means by which social play can be encouraged.
