Returning Home

The way PlayStation Home sits neatly under the Network section of the XMB makes you wonder whether Sony themselves truly believed that Home would take off into the wondrous service that Phil Harrison proudly announced back at the Games Developers Conference in 2007.

While it initially seemed like an innovative and inventive way to connect via videogames, for some it’s now hard to see Home as anything other than a messy hive of ideas which has an unlikely future within the PlayStation brand.

Jack Buser, the director of the Home, spoke to Giant Bomb earlier this year detailing the vital statistics of the service whilst shedding some light on the virtual space’s audience.  Unsurprisingly, he conveyed a positivity that is rarely displayed when discussing Home. It seems he is extremely pleased with the way Home is functioning, and why shouldn’t he be?

Although Buser was reluctant to go into specifics on the matter, he explained that “Home is heavily reliant on the microtransactions business model” or, in layman’s terms, dependent on the money that consumers spend in the variety of outlets that populate the Home shopping centre. He also went onto say that “microtransactions tend to be profitable due to the low cost of virtual item development and the high traffic on the platform” hinting that Sony certainly aren’t doing badly from the venture, even if many consumers have been left cold by what Home has to offer.

He stated that Home has 20 million participants from a userbase of 77 million, with an average session time of 70 minutes. However, he refused to comment on the number of daily users, suggesting that participating could equate to simply having a go and then never coming back.

Buser is very quick to counter this implication, by explaining that many users visit Home regularly in between purchasing games; “They’ll have a big game they bought, they beat the game or otherwise get tired of the game, so what do they do with their console between that and the next time they buy a game? They use PlayStation Home” he says.

[drop]This also underlines why the average Home user is, apparently, the most hardcore gamer on the PlayStation 3. Buser refers to them as “rabid consumers of media” and explains that these are people who buy more games and watch more movies than the average user, highlighting the fact that they may have more time for services such as PlayStation Home than everyone else.These were the people who were likely to have jumped into Home at one of the several closed beta phases and, much to the pleasure of Buser, Home retains its beta status even now. He says that the tag accurately conveys the message of development; that Home is continuously evolving and adapting to meet the demands of the consumer.

Whatever the director of Home spills out, the only way to really reinforce or dispel the idea that Home is a failure is to venture into the pixelated world itself to see what the service has to offer 32 months on from the release of the open beta. Initial impressions are good; other than the 58 second wait for the central user interface to load things seem to run very smoothly indeed, a far cry from what many consumers experienced at launch. That’s not to say that proceedings couldn’t still be significantly improved; downloading each space individually can be a pain and seems unnecessarily awkward when it could all be condensed into a large but single initial download.

After editing a vague recreation of myself, I travelled into the Home Square which primarily serves as a central hub, advertising other spaces and offering visitors seats in an attempt to provoke discussion. Although, as I soon found out, this discussion isn’t usually the chatter that Home was built for. Upon entry, among the first few phrases I was greeted with were “jizz tits” and “fancy a bum.” I had spent no longer than a minute walking around Home’s central space and already had I gained a unique perspective that, perhaps worryingly, offers a relatively accurate representation of some of the so-called “hardcore” gamers inside Home.

Jogging over to where the discussion was taking place, I discovered a group of male avatars crowded around a scantily clad female; an appearance that she had evidently bought into from the shopping centre. Saying nothing to halt the advances of the men, she continued to talk to them as if she were enjoying the attention. This sort of communication provides Home with a somewhat sinister atmosphere; users seem very reluctant to partake in an intelligent discussion outside of the standard “hello” and “where are you from” phrases that can easily be selected from an integrated menu.

In an attempt to grab some content for this article and to shatter the dark atmosphere, I wandered around asking avatars what they used Home for, and whether they had ever purchased something from the variety of virtual retail outlets. I was met with no replies whatsoever, outside of the expected stock responses.

In a last ditch effort to actually get some opinions, I explained that I wrote for a videogaming website and would really appreciate some opinions to use within the article.  A lone avatar approached me, and as soon as I saw three dots appear above his head, indicating that he was writing something, I expected a decent response. When “Eh, what’s it for” appeared in almost incomprehensible text speak, I coolly detailed that I wrote for a videogaming website and just needed an opinion on Home.  Before I had even pressed start to send my reply, I was met with a stock “goodbye” and was left to watch my only hope run away into the shopping centre.

Giving up, and with the dictum “if you can’t beat them, join them” whirling around inside my head, I too decided to travel to the Shopping Centre. After a small download I walked into one of Sony’s own shops, the appropriately named “Estates.”

Every Home user is kitted out with a standard apartment overlooking a picturesque harbour, but those who wish to take their virtual living space to the next level can shell out £3.99 on a new one, reasonable if you hold regular gatherings in Home but completely outrageous if you’re just a one off visitor. Even if you do hold gatherings in Home, I’d personally find it hard to justify a £3.99 outlay when you could simply meet those people in real life, or speak through a video chat on PSN. If the game launching from within Home was particularly well supported my view would differ, but it isn’t. This is a key feature that Sony needs to get right, to attract new users into the community and to also provide Home with a much needed sense of worth.

New living areas aren’t the only thing that can be purchased from within the Shopping Centre either; clothing can be as cheap as 79p but also reach the two pound mark, hinting at why Sony is being extremely secretive in regards to the financial element of Home. If the number of people walking around with seemingly exclusive outfits on is anything to go by, the bosses at Sony must be laughing themselves all the way to the bank.

[drop2] There’s nothing necessarily wrong with indulging in these commodities; after all, if Home is part of your daily PlayStation routine you are going to want to make your avatar look as good as possible. But it’s what Home can offer to that daily routine that is the main issue; at present, there are several games with which users can partake in, but none really stand out as being brilliant and fit more into the time waster category than anything else. Project Velocity in the Sodium 2 space is a personal highlight; the futuristic pod racer showing what is possible within Home if developers understand what works and keep well away from what doesn’t.

There is no doubt that the potential for Home is staggering. I truly believe that the foundations have been laid for something that could develop into brilliance, but it’s vital that Sony decide on a solid direction for Home to move in, without being further drawn into the lucrative microtransaction markets. Profit is obviously necessary for the survival of the space, but it could very easily get to a point where advertising and virtual shopping becomes so suffocating that it turns people away.

At its core, Home is about the videogaming community; one which is stereotypically frowned upon within reality can be let loose in a virtual world to hang around with similar people of similar interests. That’s the theory, and occasionally it works; the regular live streaming events showing that there are respectable people inside Home who are up for some intelligent discussion and light hearted banter. Sadly though, it’s the classic case of the minority reflecting on the majority; the perception that Home is the perfect hunting ground for freaks that can hide behind anonymity maybe unfair, but is certainly not unfounded.

If Sony want Home to develop into the buzzing utopia that it so clearly could be, this is a notion that needs to be fought. On top of that, it’s the responsibility of those developing for Home to see what works best; Xi by nDreams brought an unprecedented amount of activity into Home, because it got everyone talking. Not about sex, but about how Home had gone a long way to reaching its potential by offering an experience that had never been seen before anywhere else. This is something that needs replicating, not only to attract people back into home after periods of sustained absence, but also to show the naysayers that Home can achieve the excellence that was promised, but not delivered, at the start.