A List of Home’s Dance Floors
Where to go to get your polygon’s grooves on
By NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Anyone else out there a digital dance freak?
All of us have our favorite activities in Home. Glitching. Dolphy Racing. Bowling. Saucer Pop. Cross-dressing. And so on.
For me, it’s dancing.
In real life I can’t dance worth a damn – I’m Norwegian, for god’s sake, and our country’s claim to fame is sweaters and dramatic squints – but on Home I get to be Michael Flatley on a gallon of Red Bull.
The great thing about dancing is that it gives your avatar something to do besides stand there and look banal while chatting. And let’s face it, given the perpetual Mardi Gras costume freak-show that Home is, there’s something to be said for seeing ninjas, hamsters, hipsters, gangsters, pirates, UFOs and Jesus all gettin’ down together on the floor. It’s like a techno remix of the David Bowie ballroom scene from “Labyrinth” – it’s just out there.
With Konami’s new public space (and Dance Dance Revolution discotheque) in Home, I figured it’d be worthwhile to take a look at the various dance hotspots Home has to offer.
1. CENTRAL PLAZA
Let’s start with the obvious. Central Plaza’s dance floor is sorta like McDonald’s: even if you’re a vegan tree-hugger, you sneak in every now and then, even if it’s just for the fries. It’s also a hilarious place to watch new users fumble about with no keyboard and little knowledge of the R1 button. Unfortunately, it also lends itself to a lot of juvenile behavior and sexual harassment.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Track selection (voting).
2. Multiple tracks to listen to.
3. Always busy.
4. Hilarious user behavior.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. EVERYONE votes for “Chain Swing” – over. And over. And over.
2. No, really. Everyone keeps voting for Chain Swing. Dear god.
3. It’s Central Plaza, so it’s predominantly new users running around.
4. If you’re female, you’re practically guaranteed to be harassed.
2. MOTORSTORM CARRIER
For a while, MotorStorm Carrier was the dance spot on Home. It had a lot of Central Plaza’s best tracks (including “Danger Room EX” by Dan the Automator), a DJ booth for controlling the lights and music, a huge dance floor, and a pretty fun mini-game within the space itself. Unfortunately, the playlist got completely redone, and now it only plays short snippets of great songs. Fail.
ADVANTAGES:
1. DJ booth allows you to control lighting and track selection.
2. Huge dance floor.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Tracks only play for a few seconds before shifting. Kinda defeats the point of dancing.
3. WIPEOUT MUSEUM
Dancing in a museum? Sure enough, WipeOut Museum, on its upper floor, has a track selector and a place to dance.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Huge track selection.
2. Really fun racing mini-game nearby.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. The upper-floor dance area is the size of a NyQuil cup.
2. The techno music is about as generic as a bottle of aspirin in a narcotics raid.
3. Low user traffic. You don’t want to hear crickets chirping while you dance, y’know.
4. THE PLAYGROUND 
One of Home’s most lauded public spaces when it came out, and still pulling in decent visitor numbers. Playground is also notable for giving Home’s population access to a boombox which plays its tracks in any private space of your choosing. Unfortunately, as the Playground replicates Brooklyn, it tends to attract users who want to appear “ghetto.”
ADVANTAGES:
1. The best 80’s funk and rap that was never recorded.
2. Spacious dance areas.
3. Great mini-games.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. A lot of “gangsta” wannabes running around.
2. If you don’t like urban environments, then this place will appeal to you about as much as leprosy.
5. SINGSTAR/SINGSTAR VIP 
The only dedicated public discotheque in Home. SingStar is a vast, two-story dance mecca that’s almost always packed. Of special note was the old VIP room, which for a long time was accessible by invitation only; although the music wasn’t as good, the restricted accessibility kept a lot of the trolls out, making it possibly the best dance floor (and one of the best spaces in general) in all of Home. The VIP room also featured real-life artists, most recently the Stereophonics (one of my favorite bands). With the 1.4 update, SingStar has changed its music, although it’s still extremely enjoyable.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Great music. Seriously.
2. Huge dance floor.
3. The floor lights up when you stand on it. Now that’s just cool.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. The video screen plays snippets of music videos by Rick Astley and Bonnie Tyler, among others. This is somehow considered trendy?
2. No more SingStar VIP. Restricted access kept it a fairly pleasant environment.
6. RED BULL BEACH 
While Red Bull Beach is frequented by glitchers, it has a great dance area as well as a truly hilarious video on rotation (featuring “Too Hot” by the Swollen Members, which is a fantastic rap song). The Flugtag mini-game is a great challenge. Unfortunately, perhaps because it’s a beach setting, Red Bull Beach tends to attract a lot of male tools. Some of the worst chauvinism and female harassment I’ve ever witnessed has taken place here. Which is a shame, because it’s a great space to visit.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Good music.
2. Music selection (voting).
3. Large dance floor.
4. Great music video.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Odd lighting/shadow effects.
2. Higher propensity for female harassment.
7. BURN ZOMBIE BURN
I know, I know: there’s a dance floor in a graveyard? And the answer is yes, there is. And it doesn’t involve Michael Jackson. You have to go through the garden maze mini-game to get to it, and it’s small with fairly repetitive music, but it’s a novelty experience.
ADVANTAGES:
1. A sense of accomplishment upon getting into it.
2. Good lighting effects.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Tiny dance space.
2. Repetitive music.
3. You have to beat a mini-game to get to it.
8. SCORPIO’S 
This might not exactly be a dance floor per se, but Scorpio’s Bar, at the Sodium space, is a great hangout to meet people and dance while playing the bar’s mini-game. If you haven’t tried your hand at bartending in Scorpio’s, I highly recommend it. Sodium, to this day, still has some of the best mini-games in all of Home.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Three catchy tracks on rotation.
2. Great mini-games.
3. Usually attracts a good crowd of well-behaved users.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. The music doesn’t make it to the dance area in the VIP section.
2. Not really a dedicated dance floor.
9. RATCHET & CLANK
Still to this day my favorite dance floor in Home. It’s a brightly-lit, cheerful spot that’s almost always packed, and “Let’s Celebrate” by Nelson is just an unbelievably catchy track. The dance floor also features the Groovitron, a robot with the best dance moves in Home. I want the Groovitron to just randomly show up in other Home spaces, throw down the disco, and show everyone how it’s done. Groovitron SOCOM. Groovitron Siren Hospital. Groovitron Godfather. Yes. Yes.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Outstanding music.
2. Outstanding lighting and color scheme.
3. Large dance area.
4. Usually busy, and attracts a crowd of (typically) more mature users.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Only two tracks are played (and one’s just an instrumental version of the other).
2. The tracks have to be manually started every time. There’s no automatic play.
10. KONAMI PUBLIC SPACE 
The newest public space in Home (as of this writing), featuring a killer dance floor and Dance Dance Revolution mini-game. The music’s fantastic, although at present the space has little else to offer besides the dance floor. I suspect it’ll pull good traffic numbers for some time to come, though.
ADVANTAGES:
1. Great music.
2. Fun DDR mini-game.
3. Great lighting.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Doesn’t seem to lend itself to sociability as much as other dance spots do.
2. If you lose the DDR mini-game, it kicks you off the floor.
3. The space itself has a somewhat unfinished feel to it – like there are more features yet to be added.
When I look at the various public spaces in Home, the ones that seem to have the most long-term traffic are the ones which have a “hook” to them that keeps users coming back. It’s the communal elements, moreso than the game elements, which typically hook people. I know that half the fun I derive from the Ratchet & Clank dance floor is the anticipation of seeing some of the same people there, every time I go to visit. The dancing is simply a shared activity we all enjoy while we chat.
One of the disappointing aspects of Home, to me, is that a lot of public spaces don’t have much long-term appeal because they’re themed around a specific video game title. Unless I’m a fan of that title or franchise, there’s nothing to bring me back. Whereas spaces with dance floors – which offer a communal activity that has nothing to do with the game title itself – provide that long-term hook to keep me coming back, and possibly even explore the rest of the space and products that the developer wants to sell me.
November 27th, 2010 by NorseGamer | 2 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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LOL!
I love how you speak truth of how these different environments contribute to people who want to enjoy themselves but will sometimes run into problems that are now always expected to be had.
Thanks for the feedback! I massively enjoy the social scene that goes with most of the dance floors in Home — you tend to run into a lot of the same regulars — but there’s no question that these individual spaces all have their own idiosyncrasies, particularly given the type of user they attract.
For me, my top three are Ratchet & Clank, Singstar, and Konami. God, how I wish the old by-invitation-only Singstar VIP room would come back…