You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here
15/12/08 18:35 Filed in: They Just Don't Get It
Ok, Home launched last week, and I just don’t get it. Do we really need another shopping sim? I mean, isn’t Sony a little late to the party here with this one? Before I go any further, I’ll come clean and admit that I do not have a PS3, nor have I had a chance to actually try Home. But I honestly don’t want to. My beef with Home isn’t with how well or poorly it is put together. It’s with the actual concept of Home and why I don’t think it works in todays gaming landscape.
I’m about to amaze you with my knowledge of the history of Home. Or well...amaze you with my ability to read the wikipedia page about Home. Home started as “The Getaway Online”. The game got scrapped, and the code got moved over to another project, Hub. A project championed by Phil Harrison. Hub then turned into Home and got announced to the public in March of 2007. Blah blah blah, public betas, and bam here we are today. That explains(although not very well) the who, what, when, where and how. But it doesn’t touch on the why.
Why did Home come about? Well to the casual observer(read: me), it would appear that Home was initially a knee-jerk reaction to Nintendo’s Mii’s. When Mii’s first arrived, they became the first universal avatars for a major gaming console. At first only Nintendo games would use these avatars, but they have since been opened up to be used in other titles. Home looks like classic one-upmanship in my book. It looks like they saw the Mii’s come out and said, “oh yeah? You can create little cartoon characters on the Wii? Well on the PS3 you can create realistic looking characters, the apartment they live in, and play minigames with them!” Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with console makers trying to one-up each other. If it weren’t for the competition, the console war would stagnate, and we would never see anything new. Again, I just don’t agree with Home as a concept.
So what is the concept? Initially it appeared like it was going to be the answer to Xbox live. Users of Home would be able to navigate around the online gaming world using their newly created avatars. Whenever conversation turned to talking about Xbox Live, Sony fanboys would almost instantly chirp “Just you wait until Home launches, then Sony will rule the online gaming world!”. But over time, as more details surfaced, we started to see a clearer picture about what Home really is. A “Second Life” clone. A world where users create a custom avatar, decorate a house or apartment, and interact with other users. Oh...and shop. And you know what, this is where it all falls off the rails for me.
Virtual shopping centres. The mere idea sends chills up my spine. I can tolerate going to a real life shopping centre, but why would I want to do it with a virtual one? Maybe if Sony filled the mall with zombies I would be more interested. But then again, I’ve already played that experience. Just think...as you read this, people are wandering the Playstation Home shopping centre and I shit you not, paying real money for virtual clothing, and virtual shit to decorate their virtual apartments with. I’m fine with paying money on Xbox live, or the playstation store for games, videos, and other things that I would get enjoyment out of. I’ve bought things on both stores in the past. But virtual clothing? What. The. Fuck. Proponents for buying virtual shit(read: fanboys) say that they are fine with doing so because of a couple of reasons. One, because if everyone had access to everything right off the bat, there would be no individuality amongst the users. And two, because Sony has to pay the bills for Home somehow. But I think both those reasons are crap.
First off, if you give people enough variations to work with, you will not have to worry about everyone and their apartments looking alike. People don’t want to look like everyone else in general, and will find new and interesting ways to be different. Also, Sony could have put in a system whereby achievements...er...sorry...”Trophies” could be used to purchase virtual stuff. That way, the better the game player, the more virtual currency with which the player can buy virtual shit with.
Second, I don’t buy the “Sony needs to pay the bills” argument. From all reports, Sony has absolutely filled Home with advertisements. From trailers for games, to demo levels of downloadable games, to billboards dotted throughout the virtual landscape. Home is all about advertising. Add that to the fact that Sony has already admitted that they are going to have virtual shops in their virtual shopping centres where real life retailers can sell virtual versions of their real life crap. And you can bet before Nike sells it’s first virtual shoe that a lot of money has changed hands already. This all spells $$$ for Sony.
Now Home does have some redeeming qualities. I like that people are able to wander around this virtual world for free if they choose to. I like that Sony has built in a bunch of minigames like pool, bowling, and arcade games. That’s all well and good. But many believed that Home was going to be the answer to Xbox live. And it really doesn’t come close. Live offers something that Home doesn’t come close to offering. Actual online interaction.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. You’re playing Braid on your 360. A notification pops up showing that one of your friends just signed in. You press one button(the big silver X in the middle), and it automatically takes you to that users gamercard screen. It shows that your friend is currently playing Crackdown. You want to play with your friend so you choose the option that allows you to join him. The console asks you for the Crackdown disc, and you pop it in. The game fires up, and your friend gets a notification asking if they want to allow you to join them. They select yes, and bam...both of you are playing together. Granted, last time I did this with my brother it didn’t work so well. But I’ll give Xbox Live a pass on account of my living on the other side of the planet from him, and my internet connection being crap, and because the 50 or so other times we’ve done this with other games, it’s worked flawlessly. But after we couldn’t connect, we started up a voice chat, and decided to play R6 Vegas 2 instead, and that went seamlessly.
But back on topic, I’m not interested in Home. If it were to come out on PSP, I don’t even know that I would fire it up. Why would I? And that’s the big question that I still can’t figure out. Why?
I’m about to amaze you with my knowledge of the history of Home. Or well...amaze you with my ability to read the wikipedia page about Home. Home started as “The Getaway Online”. The game got scrapped, and the code got moved over to another project, Hub. A project championed by Phil Harrison. Hub then turned into Home and got announced to the public in March of 2007. Blah blah blah, public betas, and bam here we are today. That explains(although not very well) the who, what, when, where and how. But it doesn’t touch on the why.
Why did Home come about? Well to the casual observer(read: me), it would appear that Home was initially a knee-jerk reaction to Nintendo’s Mii’s. When Mii’s first arrived, they became the first universal avatars for a major gaming console. At first only Nintendo games would use these avatars, but they have since been opened up to be used in other titles. Home looks like classic one-upmanship in my book. It looks like they saw the Mii’s come out and said, “oh yeah? You can create little cartoon characters on the Wii? Well on the PS3 you can create realistic looking characters, the apartment they live in, and play minigames with them!” Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with console makers trying to one-up each other. If it weren’t for the competition, the console war would stagnate, and we would never see anything new. Again, I just don’t agree with Home as a concept.
So what is the concept? Initially it appeared like it was going to be the answer to Xbox live. Users of Home would be able to navigate around the online gaming world using their newly created avatars. Whenever conversation turned to talking about Xbox Live, Sony fanboys would almost instantly chirp “Just you wait until Home launches, then Sony will rule the online gaming world!”. But over time, as more details surfaced, we started to see a clearer picture about what Home really is. A “Second Life” clone. A world where users create a custom avatar, decorate a house or apartment, and interact with other users. Oh...and shop. And you know what, this is where it all falls off the rails for me.
Virtual shopping centres. The mere idea sends chills up my spine. I can tolerate going to a real life shopping centre, but why would I want to do it with a virtual one? Maybe if Sony filled the mall with zombies I would be more interested. But then again, I’ve already played that experience. Just think...as you read this, people are wandering the Playstation Home shopping centre and I shit you not, paying real money for virtual clothing, and virtual shit to decorate their virtual apartments with. I’m fine with paying money on Xbox live, or the playstation store for games, videos, and other things that I would get enjoyment out of. I’ve bought things on both stores in the past. But virtual clothing? What. The. Fuck. Proponents for buying virtual shit(read: fanboys) say that they are fine with doing so because of a couple of reasons. One, because if everyone had access to everything right off the bat, there would be no individuality amongst the users. And two, because Sony has to pay the bills for Home somehow. But I think both those reasons are crap.
First off, if you give people enough variations to work with, you will not have to worry about everyone and their apartments looking alike. People don’t want to look like everyone else in general, and will find new and interesting ways to be different. Also, Sony could have put in a system whereby achievements...er...sorry...”Trophies” could be used to purchase virtual stuff. That way, the better the game player, the more virtual currency with which the player can buy virtual shit with.
Second, I don’t buy the “Sony needs to pay the bills” argument. From all reports, Sony has absolutely filled Home with advertisements. From trailers for games, to demo levels of downloadable games, to billboards dotted throughout the virtual landscape. Home is all about advertising. Add that to the fact that Sony has already admitted that they are going to have virtual shops in their virtual shopping centres where real life retailers can sell virtual versions of their real life crap. And you can bet before Nike sells it’s first virtual shoe that a lot of money has changed hands already. This all spells $$$ for Sony.
Now Home does have some redeeming qualities. I like that people are able to wander around this virtual world for free if they choose to. I like that Sony has built in a bunch of minigames like pool, bowling, and arcade games. That’s all well and good. But many believed that Home was going to be the answer to Xbox live. And it really doesn’t come close. Live offers something that Home doesn’t come close to offering. Actual online interaction.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. You’re playing Braid on your 360. A notification pops up showing that one of your friends just signed in. You press one button(the big silver X in the middle), and it automatically takes you to that users gamercard screen. It shows that your friend is currently playing Crackdown. You want to play with your friend so you choose the option that allows you to join him. The console asks you for the Crackdown disc, and you pop it in. The game fires up, and your friend gets a notification asking if they want to allow you to join them. They select yes, and bam...both of you are playing together. Granted, last time I did this with my brother it didn’t work so well. But I’ll give Xbox Live a pass on account of my living on the other side of the planet from him, and my internet connection being crap, and because the 50 or so other times we’ve done this with other games, it’s worked flawlessly. But after we couldn’t connect, we started up a voice chat, and decided to play R6 Vegas 2 instead, and that went seamlessly.
But back on topic, I’m not interested in Home. If it were to come out on PSP, I don’t even know that I would fire it up. Why would I? And that’s the big question that I still can’t figure out. Why?