Gaming Love

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After an amazing weekend, some from morning til night weeks of work following four weeks of exhausting traveling, I feel happy if somewhat spent. I want to thank everyone who participated, who I spoke to over teamspeak and who game me feedback an bug reports this weekend.

There is however one thing I would like to address before I stretch myself out; usability. Many players who play Love this weekend became very confused about what they should do, how to play and how things work.

In my mind, Love is a very logical game, its just not the same logic as you will find in other games. I have always considered there to be a big difference between user friendly and beginner friendly, and while Love is a very user friendly game, it is not a very beginner friendly game. There are a number of things I could do to make the game more beginner friendly, but I don't think they would matter too much in the grand scheme of things without either vastly simplifying the game, or making it much more similar to other games.

Love was designed as an experiment, as a project about pushing the envelope of what is possible, and to explore new designs that has never been tried before. It was also designed for my own personal enjoyment and on all these accounts it has been a huge success. But it worries me that I have overestimated people willingness to explore something new. It may not matter too much to Love, since the costs are low, but it does not inspire others to try to innovate and create more open ended games that are truly interactive rather then funneling you along, something I think we really need in gaming.

Ive been trying to "Fix" Love lately, but this weekend a few interesting things happened, I added some thing, and after listening to the community defend the game to those who wanted it to change, I had this strong feeling that Love needs to be Love. Yes I dabbled with progression, and I have tried to add things to make it easier, but in the end I dropped most of the progression and realized that I like some things should remain a mystery. The thing that really made me feel i hit on something special, was the possibility of friendly relations with the Tribes, something that pushes it even further in to uncharted territory.

Does that mean that I think that people who think that the game is confusing or difficult are wrong? No, not at all, If that is your reaction, that is your reaction and there is nothing wrong with that, but rather then trying to change to accommodate, perhaps Love should be what it is, and instead we should try to explain what it is better.

That's a nice thought for life in general, the idea of being yourself, and work to be better understood, rather then trying to change to be like everybody else. What do you think?