Is Home A World of Locked Doors?
“Coming Soon”
By cubehouse, HSM web designer
I genuinely find it hard to criticize PlayStation Home sometimes; it has evolved from a glorified chat room into an incredible 3D gaming platform of its own. There is so much potential in the service and so much great new content, features, games, events and spaces to look forward to…loads of ideas and concepts have been shown to make you see the potential Home has.
However, when I think about it: maybe this idea of “potential” is the one common theme that highlights my limited critiques.
When struggling to find nice things to describe a service, people often say, “It has great potential.”
I always quote comedians when it comes to initially reinforcing my point. So, to quote the great Dylan Moran, “Potential is like your bank balance – you always have a lot less than you think….Leave it as a locked door within yourself. Because then at least in your mind, the interior will always be wonderful.”
Slightly out-of-context humorous quotes aside, when watching demonstrations of Home, it can often feel like its success is riding on the future potential the service could have. All sorts of content has been shown in the past – the trophy room, media sharing, pets, et cetera — but has yet to hit “Home reality.”
Are there too many of these in Home?
The legendary trophy-room concept will almost certainly never see the light of day in the form it first appeared. Remember, this was “pre-trophy” era. If you play a lot of PS3 games, you will have noticed that developers usually don’t invest much time to do different icon images for trophies – let alone creating full-3D models representing your achievements.
(I question whether a similar concept would even vaguely function in the structure of PS3 trophies now. I actually suggest we already have this feature: look at the handful of games that support Home rewards. I’d say that is even better than the original trophy room concept. Maybe if some more games implemented Home rewards, we would be getting somewhere.)
So, really, what I am asking is this: is Home flaunting its potential too much?
Have a look at the spaces for LittleBigPlanet, the Star Wars Cantina, the Home Square/Plaza, the “SingStar Quiz” or the Presentation Podium. If you look around Home, you will see gaps in development that have never been filled (often wielding a sign with my personal pet hate, “Coming Soon”).
It seems Home has really become a world of locked doors. So much future content is promised, and we don’t always seem to be getting what we expect. Everywhere we go, we see signs talking about future content, and blocked-off rooms locking us off from new areas. All of this obviously makes our imaginations run wild with thoughts of how awesome the new content could be beyond those walls.
But, I think maybe we’re locked inside an already-amazing world. and each door that finally unlocks is simply expanding an already incredible place. Sometimes, it seems we get so worked up about what is coming in the future that we forget that Home is already bursting to the brim with innovative and entertaining things to do.
Every week, many people judge Home on that week’s content alone, and by the lack of features that haven’t yet arrived. I think some people haven’t realized that while they’ve been focusing on small things in the future, Home has blossomed in ways we could never have predicted.
November 25th, 2010 by Cubehouse | 2 comments
Cubehouse is a very British computer scientist who loves everything PlayStation Home and serves as HSM's webmaster. He lives and works in Bristol, UK and holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Cubehouse is working in the internet security and gaming industries.
Thank you for saying what a lot of us have been thinking. I will take more interest in the new places AFTER the ‘coming soon’ spaces have been implemented and the EA Sports Center and the Uncharted 2 spaces returned.
Well we must also take patronage to those independent companies that are entering the virtual goods production as you notice these companies like Lochwoods, Loot, Heavy Ink, etc. are all independent companies (they don’t work directly for Sony) that contribute to Home.
A really good idea for Home would be if they would be open to many independent companies making more virtual goods, spaces, and apartments for us Home users to use and enjoy.
BTW the poker table for personal apt was suppose to originally be done by EA but after months of them doing nothing on updating any of their stuff, they gave it to Mass Media who did a nice job cause they were wanting and willing to do it, along with their other creations.