Weekly Discussion Wrap-Up: Avatars

So at the start of last week we unveiled Weekly Discussions, the natural evolution of Lunchtime Discussions; in much the same way that Charmander will eventually burst free of its humble shell and evolve into Charmelleon (and then into a bloody great dragon). With this new form of discussion lasting a whole week, and we do hope you’ll continue to comment over the week, it seems that some kind of wrap-up of the topic is needed.

This week’s topic of Avatars got a more mixed response than I’d initially expected, in particular there were a lot of people who said that though they didn’t like avatars themselves, they didn’t see the point in hating on them. I think Bladesteel managed to sum it up nicely by saying:

They are a useless waste of pixels and money. But hating on them is a useless waste of anger and blood pressure.

This is the kind of reaction we like to see at TSA, realising that whilst something might not be to your taste it’s pointless to get angry that others do like it. You can’t control what others like, so why bother letting it enrage you?

One of the other points that a number of people brought up was how Sony had missed a trick by not further integrating avatars into the system, even if it just consisted of integrating Home avatars into the PS3 in general. There does seem to be some desire to have avatars on the PS3 that you could take into games, in particular with Shields_t wanting them to feature in EA Active.

I do think Sony could do a better job of integrating their Home avatars into games though, like cc_star says they are missing a trick given the opportunities given to Wii and XBox avatars in games, if I could pull my Home avatar into EA Active, I’d definitely but (sic) that gooner shirt!

Surely the incentive of extra cash to be made must be enough to push Sony towards further integration of their avatars? Given they’ve already got the infrastructure for avatar purchases and customisation built, it does seem a little odd not to further capitalise on it.

For our final quote, I think our very own cc_star manages to quickly present both sides of the argument, seeing things from his own point of view as well as his daughter’s.

I’m someone who just hammers X to get in game as quick as I can, I have less than zero interest in customising anything much less something on an XMB I use solely to access a movie or a game & spend as little time as possible on it.

My daughter however, spends hours customising stuff & dressing it and its sad the PS3 doesn’t offer anything like Mii’s or Dashboard Avatars which you can then take into games with you (Don’t mention Home, it is the only thing in the world of less interest to me than avatars themselves)

Of course that’s not quite all for our wrap-up, we still want to hear if you have any last thoughts on the topic before tomorrow brings a fresh topic of discussion.