Love, the MMO: I promise it has nothing to do with drugs and the sixties

If you heard Rev Anthony's RevRant from this week's RetroForceGo! you've already heard a little about the amazing indie showing at GDC. It's truly one of the richest gatherings of indie work you're likely to see, and if you love that as much as I do, you find it always leaves you salivating for more. Eskil Steenberg's mini-MMO Love (better known as For The Love Of Game Development) was shown among that very group, and clearly has affected some of the people who saw it already.

I know I'm going to like a developer when he has the balls to subtitle his game as "first person not so massively multiplayer." Screens from the game look like concept art fleshed out in watercolor. What does it play like? Here's a bit from Rock Paper Shotgun's article:

So far he’s already populated it with weird animals and wondrous, gaseous visuals, and he intends to build the world into a kind of communal adventure, where gamers work together to furnish a central village, defend it from enemy attack, and explore the surround world and its many dungeons. Players will be able to do things like deform elements of terrain, allowing them to build tunnel networks or walls to defend their property. Items will also be intended for the good of all as Steenberg creates them and drops them into the world. You won’t be picking up rifles in your adventures, but more likely the plans for the rifle-building machine, that can then be utilised by everyone in your village.

Steenburg clearly sees that MMOs are not pleasing all gamers, and his unique vision is an inspiration to what games could become freed of their boundaries. He says he isn't working on the project for financial gain (not shocking, somehow,) and he will only need about 200 subscribers to justify running the game live. I find myself envying those 200 vacant spaces waiting to be filled. I have no way of knowing if the game would satisfy my sensibilities or not, but sometimes the ideas are as worth supporting as the games themselves.

[Thanks, Jonathan]