Live-for-speed.de: A couple of weeks ago you released an Alpha Version of the upcoming LFS S2 package, we saw a lot of downloads during the first week and we saw a growing number of users and active drivers on the gameservers. Did you expect such a run on the alpha or were you as surprised as we were about this huge response?
Victor: Well obviously whenever there is something new there's a wave of activity, so it was expected to stir the community. But the fact that the 'online user count' record was broken within one hour after release and kept rising up to over twice the previous record - that was a very nice surprise!
Even today the user count is still high compared to the pre-S2 demo days. Yet of course we did quietly expect lot of people to be interested in the S2 demo, because of all the gfx and physics updates and new features. We're very happy to see that people think we're on the right track.
Live-for-speed.de: In which state is the development of the upcoming Stage 2 of LFS at the time?
Victor: Still in ALPHA.
Live-for-speed.de: Well, let us have a look at the german community. As you know there are many users in Germany supporting the project by a lot of publicity work. Especially the Ocrana racing team in person of Vykos and Limiter but also we as Live-for-Speed.de and the ESL. Ever dreamed of getting a support like this?
Victor: It's great :) Germans appears great enthusiasts of electronic sports and that makes it also rewarding for the people who do these promotions, which keeps them going. Which is good for us, being a small business with limited resources it's kind of necessary to have a great community. Thumbs up for all the fans! :)
Live-for-speed.de: As you heard about the confusion of Live-for-Speed.de with the 4Players Company what did you personally thought about this?
Victor: If you mean the rumours that 4p was 'too commercial' when live-for-speed.de chose to cooperate with them, then the answer is that my personal thought was that it was a good step forward. Live-for-speed.de gets full support from 4p, who have more resources than live-for-speed.de had before. Live-for-speed.de in turn helps building a web community at the 4p networks. I don't see where this is commercial, hence I thought it was a good step.
Live-for-speed.de: What do you personally think about the service of selling LFS on a CD? And do services like this "force" you to stay on your own without a publisher?
Victor: It's a nice extra service that people can buy LFS on a CD and it doesn't force us into anything in any way. If we want to sell cd's / get a distribution deal, we can do so. If someone else wants to sell LFS on cd's they can do so (following the usual regulations). We do prefer sticking with online license-sales though, since when selling actual physical products, the business model would change a lot and make things more complicated. But the future is still very open and anything can happen :)
Live-for-speed.de: If the german community offers you one whish for free what would this be?
Victor: Drive around with Live for Speed stickers on your car/bike for a year and convine other to do the same :D
Live-for-speed.de: So that's it. Thanks for spending time on this one, hope to hear of you soon and keep up this amazing work.
Victor: No problem and you too keep up the nice community building.
Hinweis: Die deutsche Übersetzung findet ihr in den Comments.
