"Love" Is...An Indie MMO From a Sole Developer

ZAM takes an early look at Love, an upcoming MMO developed by programmer and indie game designer Eskil Steenberg.

When you think of independent game development, the MMO genre probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Indie games have a long and rich history in video games; everything from cult classics enjoyed by small niches of players to simple ideas that went on to be picked up by professional publishers. But historically, the MMO genre never really lent itself to indie development that well, especially in today's industry, where even the smallest ventures typically cost millions of dollars to produce and no fewer than a dozen people to develop.

In Sweden, there is a programmer who refused to accept that the MMO industry was off-limits to the indie crowd. His name is Eskil Steenberg, and he's the sole developer behind Love, an artistically-inspired indie MMO that you're going to start hearing a lot about in the months to come, if you haven't already. Steenberg created Love "for the love of game development," hence its title. Love isn't about killing rats or gearing up to raid endgame content; it's a "procedurally generated" MMO that relies on sophisticated code to dynamically populate the game world with content based, in part, on your actions as a player.

To better understand what Love is all about, don't rely on pre-conceptions or try to analogize it with modern-day MMOs. Instead, think of Love as part experiment and part art, with exploration- and building-based concepts, played out through a first-person perspective in a persistent, multiplayer world. Since I'll never be able to explain it as well as Steenberg, here's a quote from the "About" section on Love's official website:

Love is everyone

This is a game to play with your friends, and for them to play with their friends. Never enough to be crowded; never so few to be alone. You can make your mark, but as in life, it's not a contest. It's not about who you are; it's about the things you do. There is a small planet waiting for you to explore. There is an empire waiting for you to overthrow.

Love is evolving

The world is worth changing, so get on with it. Take your mates and make your planet whatever you want it to be. Some of it is yours, and some is your friends. Some just happens by itself. Sometimes it disappears and makes you sad. But then again, you know that kind of thing can't last. It's a balancing act between love and loneliness.

Love is an endeavor

What could be better than you and your mates on an adventure for the benefit of everyone? Play whenever you want, make your mark, then come back later and see how it's changed. There is always something new to discover, someplace you haven't seen. Love is not a casual thing you need to take seriously – it's the most serious thing, in a casual way. If Love isn't easy, you're doing it wrong.

Love is yours

You won't be told a story, but you will get to live one. It's not what is given to you, it's what you do when you hold it. The more you give, the more you get. Love your planet, and everyone who's on it. We know you can, so just go for it. It's the right thing to do, and you know it.

As mentioned, Love is being developed by Steenberg alone, "without funding or support," according to his website. He's built the entire game from the ground-up, including "all code, design, networking, engine, art, pipeline and tools." He goes on to say that aside from being an experiment in game design, Love is "also an experiment in how games can be developed drastically more efficiently using technologies like Verse, procedural generation, new tools and a host of other clever solutions."

The "procedural generation" is a key element of Love, both in its design and gameplay. From the design standpoint, Steenberg needed a way to create the game world and all its elements without spending the amount of time it would traditionally take to fabricate it all from scratch. His solution was to create algorithms that build elements of the game world in real-time, based on simpler elements that he coded himself. Again, since programming theory isn't exactly my strongpoint, I'll defer to the way Steenberg explained it in his presentation at the GDC 09:

I like to divide the making of levels in to two different parts, one being the making of the basic layout of the level and the second one being populating it with detail, graphics and textures. The later part is the part where you can really make use of procedural algorithms. The best way of using procedural generation in my mind is not to try to generate everything but rather make the procedural algorithm assemble big complicated things from small hand made pieces. This means that you have control over the big picture, and can art direct the details, while still not having to create big data sets.

The level layout can be either done by hand or generated. While generated data doesn't give you the same control, while working on Love I have discovered that generated levels can have some unexpected benefits. A generated level often feels more organic and less like something that has been prepared just for you. By generating data you can create the complexity that lets players improvise and discover the uses of the environment. While in a handmade game you may have a mission where you have to steal some keys to a building to use it as advantage point for a ambush, in a procedurally generated game every building can have an electrical system you can manipulate, every guard can have keys that give access to their locker, room or home, and every building can be entered and used as a vantage point.

The game world might look a little…raw at first, but once you begin to understand the design vision behind that world, it looks more and more appealing. Screenshots of Love show a game world that looks like a work of art itself; similar to impressionist paintings, or a game that was created with broad strokes of a watercolor brush.

"Part Zelda, part Tale in the Desert, part adventure shooter, and wholly abstract and beautiful," as Boing Boing described it in an early article, "Love looks like the kind of amalgam of art, programming and internet savvy that we've desired without even being able to imagine. It has the potential, and Steenberg has the huge intellect, for this to be one of the most precious events in PC gaming."

Designed to accommodate around 200 people per world server, Love is a composite of several different gaming themes, mixing exploration, adventure, story-telling, building and first-person shooter action. On the "Gameplay" section of Love's website, Steenberg explains that the low-population servers encourage a tighter-knit community of players who subsequently care more about their game world and have more of an impact on it. As for the rudimentary gameplay itself, Steenberg summarizes it two main points:

Shared World

In the world you can find a "Token" that lets you create a settlement. In this settlement the terrain is deformable so that you can build houses, caves or what ever else you want. Other players can join your settlement to help you develop it and protect it. When you go out in the world you can find other tokens that you can put in your settlement, giving you new tools and things you can build. Once a token has been placed in a settlement, any one in that settlement can use it so all resources are shared among the community. If you bring in new Tokens to the community it will matter for everyone not just you. This system forms the basis of the social gaming structure of Love, as players are never competing against each other and are always playing against AI characters.

Building Structure

The building system lets you not only deform the terrain and place object like trees, it also lets you lets you create infrastructure. Various objects can be connected to work together by setting Coordinates, Radio Frequencies and Keywords. For instance you can set up a sensor that sends a keyword over a radio frequency to open a door. This system is also used by infrastructure built by AI characters. By studying infrastructure the players can "hack" it by sending commands over the right frequencies. This system lets players build intricate relationships, but it also sets up plot as the players will need to manipulate enemy installations, like deactivating shields, opening doors, and cutting power to enemy weapons.

Love has received an increased amount of attention from the media throughout the past few years, most notably after Steenberg showcased it at the Games Developers Conference (GDC) 2008, and again at the GDC '09 in March. A few days ago, Steenberg announced Love's first round of Alpha testing, which allows players to download the client and run the game's loading screen. You can't log in and play just yet; this initial round of testing simply allows Steenberg to collect end-user hardware statistics and get an idea of how many servers he will need in the first round of play-testing.

In the meantime, Steenberg released a few videos to tide the community over until he pushes Love to its Beta testing phase. Perhaps most insightful is the gameplay video, in which Steenberg narrates a demo of a few typical tasks players will perform in Love. If you're interested in some of the technical aspects behind Love's creation, you can check out the tools video and a comprehensive blog post about its design process. In addition, Massivley.com has an exclusive over-the-shoulder video of Steenberg showing a demo of Love on his laptop from the GDC '08.

It's still too early to tell when you'll be able to actually download and play Love, or what sort of fees Steenberg will charge to play the game. In an interview with GameObserver.com last month, Steenberg confirmed that he will be using a subscription model, rather than free-to-play with micro-transactions. For more information on this ambitious, one-developer MMO, visit the official Love website. Also, stay tuned to our Love portal site here at ZAM.com for news as it unfolds.

Tags: Love, News

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