Another week has passed, and it is time once more to talk about Love. Since we began this little experiment, we’ve seen this game through the eyes of the Explorer and the Team Player, and the gaming conventions Love throws out the window has cast an interesting light on these playstyles. I expected to experience the same as I played as the Loner this week, and I was not disappointed.

We’ve all encountered soloers in MMOs, and most of us have even taken on this role at one point or another. And yet, despite how common the Loner is, the greater MMO community always seems ready to condemn him when he complains about a part of an MMO being too difficult to solo. “Why are you playing an MMO if you don’t want to play with anyone else?” comes the battle cry, and on the surface, this argument does seem perfectly reasonable. The truth is, there are plenty of reasons to solo, ranging from the difficulty in finding a group/guild to run a dungeon/raid, to the extreme pressure a “serious” group of gamers can put on each other, to pure and simple shyness.

Besides, isn’t there something of a romantic air about the lone wolf who wanders from challenge to challenge? Without the community an MMO provides, who would bear witness to your exploits?

So, how does this apply to Love? Again, Love presents a unique challenge. It is presented as extremely open, a world that the players create with their friends (or so the about page claims). However, the game revolves wholly around community, and if you don’t have a settlement, you find yourself alone in a dangerous world armed with nothing but a mere laser gun. And infinite lives. And no death penalty. Oh, and of this week’s patch, the enemy AI seems to have lost its ambition to aggressively hunt down players or build up any advanced weaponry.

Sure, hopping around blowing up AI bases was entertaining the first couple of times. However, without sustained challenge, there wasn’t much to keep me entertained. The worlds of Love are beautiful, but aside from their value as a simulated nature walk, there’s not much to discover.

It is worth mentioning that, in Love, there is no region chat. There is no community chat, or economy chat, or any easily accessible channel with which to communicate to far-flung players. What there is is the radio, a tool that works like, well, a radio.  To get your hands on a radio, you must be part of a settlement, which was against the Loner playstyle I was going for this week. And I discovered something interesting: I may enjoy soloing for a fair portion of my playtime, but I certainly don’t like to be alone. With absolutely no one to interact with, I found myself begin to walk in circles, hitting the same groups of AI over and over again, purposeless and lost.

As a one-week soloer, I imagine that, at least in my case, I don’t solo because I want to play by myself. Rather, I play MMOs for the possibility of interaction, and the possibility of experiencing a new story with my fellow players. It just so happens that it’s easier to fall into soloing, especially when so many games don’t present immediately accessible venues through which to build the connections needed to build up a strong community.

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