Eskil Steenberg's LOVE has been flying well under the radar of late, even more so than is usual for an indie MMORPG. A little phenomenon called Minecraft happened over the past year since LOVE's launch, and while both games hail from Sweden, that's about where the similarities end. In fact, comparing LOVE to any other game is rather challenging (but also instructive), as evidenced by a new Eurogamer interview.
Steenberg is literally a one-man development show, and the piece covers a lot of fascinating ground including everything from how you measure the title against more traditional fare to how players react when confronted with LOVE's open-ended paradigm shift. Gamers will "play a game like mine... and they'll go back and play something scripted and say 'oh my God this is so archaic.' It's like if you play Dragon's Lair today. I'm not controlling it, it's all fake," Steenberg says.
The interview also touches on why Steenberg opted for a non-traditional approach to massive development, or put another way, why he didn't fall into lockstep behind World of Warcraft (and EverQuest before it) as the vast majority of the industry has done. "I'm trying to do something completely different," Steenberg says. "What they're doing is limiting what you do. You follow, you grind upwards. [Progression] is something you should do if you want to make money because you get that hook. But I was never interested in making my players addicts."
Reader Comments (11)
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 7:16PM crainey92 said
I've saw this numerous times on various sites aswell as looking at gameplay footage on Youtube and this game seems interesting I'm just wondering should I take a plunge into the worlds of LOVE, wot you say?
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 9:21PM Joshua Przygocki said
@crainey92 It's not too expensive, and definitely worth a try. The community is wonderful, but make sure you have Teamspeak so you can talk with them. There is quite a learning curve, after you get familiar with the game, however, it's quite deep, a lot of fun too. I believe that there is still a buddy system where you can play free on someone's "guest" account while they play. Try the forums or jump on the Teamspeak and ask about getting on one to try it.
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Posted: Feb 16th 2011 9:02PM Beags said
i wouldn't.
i went to his site... navigated through the oddly setup registration page. gave him all my info, entered my paypal details. so he got my $20 or whatever it was...then no response. stupidly, i went back to the site, signed up again and gave him another $20... but still no response.
you're supposed to get an email containing a voucher number which you then enter into his site to open an account.
i even contacted him by email several times... no response. i'm really not impressed. at all.
if his was an actual company i'd hate to think what the customer service would be like.
i went to his site... navigated through the oddly setup registration page. gave him all my info, entered my paypal details. so he got my $20 or whatever it was...then no response. stupidly, i went back to the site, signed up again and gave him another $20... but still no response.
you're supposed to get an email containing a voucher number which you then enter into his site to open an account.
i even contacted him by email several times... no response. i'm really not impressed. at all.
if his was an actual company i'd hate to think what the customer service would be like.
Posted: Feb 16th 2011 9:19PM Joshua Przygocki said
@Beags Works just fine for everyone else. You don't even know how much it costs... Quit being a failure troll and go play WoW.
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Posted: Feb 17th 2011 2:53PM PaterFrog said
@Beags You don't pay 20$ for LOVE. You pay nothing for it. You pay 10$ for 31 days of game time. You get the mail with the voucher in it by email, and you do get it. If you didn't it's not Eskil's fault, 'cause everybody got it. Checked you spam? Called in or contacted you mail account provider? They may have banned his IP as a side effect to some area ban. There's a lot you don't seem to have done. Did you actually get on his TS server? He's there every other evening.
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Posted: Feb 16th 2011 11:21PM Integral said
I wanted to like this game. I really did. But I couldn't stand the noise filter constantly moving over the graphics. It hurt my eyes. Anyone know if there's an option to disable that? It was literally the only thing keeping me from play. I can stand subpar graphics (actually, I thought they looked quite artistic) but my eyes got dizzy from that noise filter.
Posted: Feb 17th 2011 1:00AM Fixie said
I highly recommend NOT to buy this game.
While the gameplay sounds wonderful (and i really enjoyed it for the 2 hours that i got myself to play it), howewer the post processing filter is really horrible. It flashes fast, and lacks any kind of visual stability, so it causes anythng between dizzyness and migraines within 1 hour to 8 out of 10 people that i showed the game to.
Not only that the post processing effect cannot be turned off by design, I asked the developer by e-mail and he responded that he didn't want to give some players advantage over others (in a strictly co-operative PVE game), and that it is not a considerable portion of the playerbase. That assumption can be combatted by the fact that a poll with 60 votes on the love in verses unofficial forum had people state "post processing effects" as the major problem of the game 35% of the time. Also i showed the game to 8 people, all of which had the same issues (we howewer do share some genetic background).
I've even tried hacking the game to turn off the post processing effect using GLIntercept (lets you see and modify shader calls that the code makes to the GPU), howewer the most annoying post processing effect (the flickering square-like patches) is not a shader and would reqire de-compiling the game in order to remove it. At which point i gave up.
If you think you can spare 14 dollars (i think it was something like that, was months ago tho) on a game that you will probably enjoy immensely, but probably won't be able to play go ahead (and if it turns out you can't play it send him an e-mail, perhaps he will after years of nagging budge and let us play his game, which really was quite great).
While the gameplay sounds wonderful (and i really enjoyed it for the 2 hours that i got myself to play it), howewer the post processing filter is really horrible. It flashes fast, and lacks any kind of visual stability, so it causes anythng between dizzyness and migraines within 1 hour to 8 out of 10 people that i showed the game to.
Not only that the post processing effect cannot be turned off by design, I asked the developer by e-mail and he responded that he didn't want to give some players advantage over others (in a strictly co-operative PVE game), and that it is not a considerable portion of the playerbase. That assumption can be combatted by the fact that a poll with 60 votes on the love in verses unofficial forum had people state "post processing effects" as the major problem of the game 35% of the time. Also i showed the game to 8 people, all of which had the same issues (we howewer do share some genetic background).
I've even tried hacking the game to turn off the post processing effect using GLIntercept (lets you see and modify shader calls that the code makes to the GPU), howewer the most annoying post processing effect (the flickering square-like patches) is not a shader and would reqire de-compiling the game in order to remove it. At which point i gave up.
If you think you can spare 14 dollars (i think it was something like that, was months ago tho) on a game that you will probably enjoy immensely, but probably won't be able to play go ahead (and if it turns out you can't play it send him an e-mail, perhaps he will after years of nagging budge and let us play his game, which really was quite great).
Posted: Feb 17th 2011 1:21AM Fixie said
@Fixie 8 out of 8... the 10 somehow reflexively slipped in when i wrote it.
Another thing i forgot to mention is the games creative use of view bobbing, which may also contribute to the dizzyness. Turning quickly while jumping twists the camera along the Z axis in a somewhat unnatural way.
Also the servers lag horribly for people in europe, howewer the code seems to handle that pretty well as there was no real rubber banding, just problems when you wanted to hit the NPCs with one of the guns available in game (which by the way lack any distinct graphical effect so you can't at first even identify that you shot).
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Another thing i forgot to mention is the games creative use of view bobbing, which may also contribute to the dizzyness. Turning quickly while jumping twists the camera along the Z axis in a somewhat unnatural way.
Also the servers lag horribly for people in europe, howewer the code seems to handle that pretty well as there was no real rubber banding, just problems when you wanted to hit the NPCs with one of the guns available in game (which by the way lack any distinct graphical effect so you can't at first even identify that you shot).
Posted: Feb 17th 2011 1:36AM InspectorDubplate said
minecraft? is that you?
Posted: Feb 17th 2011 3:00PM PaterFrog said
The game is definitely worth a try.
Don't simply go and buy it though, first download the software itself, which shouldn't take you more than a few seconds and enter the login screen. This is where you'll first see the visuals and also if your hardware can run it well enough.
If everything seems to work, go onto the TS-server and ask some guy for their guest account. You'll usually find somebody there, depending a bit on where you live. You can also go to the official forum and look for threads related to guest accounts. PM a couple of people.
Don't simply go and buy it though, first download the software itself, which shouldn't take you more than a few seconds and enter the login screen. This is where you'll first see the visuals and also if your hardware can run it well enough.
If everything seems to work, go onto the TS-server and ask some guy for their guest account. You'll usually find somebody there, depending a bit on where you live. You can also go to the official forum and look for threads related to guest accounts. PM a couple of people.








