From the Editor’s Desk: 2011 and Beyond
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In real life, I tend to be a Clarke fan.
I mean, how could you not be? If most of humanity’s consciousness is at sea level, and a few souls from time to time try to rise to higher elevations, then Clarke towers like Guallatiri over the Altiplano. You can see the tremendous fires burning through vents along the side of that icy, immovable mass of cold rock, but you know that you can only marvel at its unreachable, brilliant summit from afar.
Did you know that it was Clarke who invented the geosynch communications satellite, that makes possible all of this electronic whiz-bangery that you take for granted? And when we finally crack the code of muon-catalyzed fusion (which, if I’m extremely lucky, may happen in my lifetime), it will be sobering to realize that Clarke was writing about that a century earlier.
As far as I’m concerned, if you haven’t read Childhood’s End, Rama or the Odyssey series, you just aren’t a member of the human race.
I’m talking about Clarke today because of one of his titles: 2010. The Year We Make Contact.
That title’s been rattling around in my head for a while, because 2010 is the year I made contact with Home.
(Oh, the cries I can hear in the background. “What!? The editor-in-chief of HSM hasn’t been around since Closed Beta? NOOB! NOOB!!!!one!!eleven!!!!!” And this amuses me greatly; a lot of people think that somehow a user’s longevity with Home is a measure of their worth. Open Beta’s only been around for two years, people. The emerging social classism in a society that’s a tenth the age of my cat is fascinating to watch.)
At the time of this writing, I’m thirty years old. I’m part of that last generation that was born into an analog world, and — having been raised in Silicon Valley — I was at the epicenter of the digital tidal wave that we all surf like Laird Hamilton riding a keyboard. And that whole time, one of the big holy grails of pop culture and computer technology was virtual reality.
And, in the early part of 2010, I made contact with it: Home.
What a staggering concept Home is! Yes, its core purpose is to support the sales of video games and other peripherals. Yes, it is currently viewed first and foremost as a gaming platform, rather than a social network for gamers (a mistake, in my opinion). However, it cannot be denied that Home, along with a few other titles out there — Second Life, Entropia, etc. — marks our society’s first true foray into the concept of virtual life. And Home’s big advantage is that it’s console-based, which means it’s a lot easier to proliferate.
Remember the first time you set foot in Central Plaza? 
The realization that everyone around you was a real human being, and that this was a living, breathing place for you to interact with? I swear, “Also Sprach Zarathustra” should play the first time you behold that digital marvel. Forget Saucer Pop; there should be a black monolith standing in the middle of the fountain.
The downside of Home, frankly, is a substantial chunk of its user base. How it must occasionally gall the developers of Home to put all of that time and energy into developing wonderful public spaces, full of games and attractions, only to find such spaces overrun with griefers, trolls, perverts and worse. The downside of Home being a “freemium” universe, as opposed to a pay-to-access subscription system, is that it often feels like Sony brought a bottle of Chateaux Lafite-Rothschild 1869 to a frathouse keg party.
And yet, speaking as a journalist, Home — specifically because of its “freemium” format — offers a fascinating and compelling look at humanity. Home is as close to a true anarchistic society as anything the species has ever seen. When you’re anonymous, physically invulnerable, able to take on any appearance you want, and no visible police presence to deter you, the behavior of the individual directly reflects his level of maturity and personal concept of unenforced morality.
Predictably, most human behavior centers around the quest for sex and the quest for survival and power. And, frankly, Home offers a very dim commentary on the species. Or, more accurately, it holds a mirror up to the species with the veneer of civility stripped away, and reveals many of us to be little more than brutish, uncivil beasts. It took more than two years to see the return of public voice chat, simply because of the horrendous abuses that took place during Closed Beta.
In short, this is a social anthropologist’s wet dream.
If Home was a completely homogenous society of civil and polite adults capable of intellectual discourse, it would be the digital equivalent of Conan Doyle’s Diogenes Club. I, of course, would find it heavenly. But Home is a for-profit enterprise, and that means it needs to appeal to the plebeian masses. And for a journalist, this is a rich soil indeed.
Social issues are the beating heart of HSM, and there’s a plethora to choose from. Racism. Sexism. Cross-dressing. Ageism. Social groups. Community events. Elitism and classism. Marriages. LOVE STORIES. The whole digital cante-jondo candomble carnival of humanity on display. Entering Home these days is like having a conversation with Michael Sheen at the End of Line Club: something’s gonna happen, and probably with a kick-ass soundtrack behind it. And no other journalism project out there, to my knowledge, is covering Home from this angle. Certainly not with the depth and maturity that HSM does.
One of my favorite television shows — and it’s absolutely criminal how overlooked it is — is Babylon 5. And not just for its correct depiction of an O’Neill Cylinder. At a time when Star Trek was showing us an increasingly beige concept of human happiness, B5 had squabbling species, political intrigue, and an actual judicial system. Or, as Harlan Ellison put it (and I’m paraphrasing this from memory), “You’ve got to show the legal system in space because inevitably some alien is going to crap down some other alien’s breathing tube.”
It was, in short, sociologically interesting. 
(Heck, they even had a species that got into planetary-wide fistfights over whether they wore green or purple. Now if that doesn’t remind you of the absolutely ludicrous “fam” fights in Home, specifically regarding what colors users choose for their text chat, then tell me what does.)
Home, to me, is sociologically interesting. I’ve never played Ratchet & Clank, but the friends I’ve made at the R&C dance floor in Home are fantastic people to listen to. I’ve never played an Uncharted game, but the Himalayan Village was a wonderful place to find digital solace. And I’m not a poker player, but the human interactions in the EA Poker Rooms were fascinating to watch. Take a look at the love story we just published last week; it was Home that made that possible.
And, all the while, Home’s infrastructure has continued to improve, and continued to expand. Take a look at where Home is now compared to the beginning of 2010. It’s astonishing how much the service has grown and improved itself just in the last twelve months.
What do I, personally, want to see in 2011?
I’d like to see Sony embrace the fact that they have a social networking goldmine on their hands. I think they’ve realized that it’s the social connections which draw a lot of users back, but they’re putting a lot of emphasis on gaming elements to appeal to the larger population segment that either lacks the conversational skills or the equipment (such as a keyboard) to communicate at a satisfactory level.
I’d like to see new emotes and dance moves for the avatars. More means of self-expression with the world.
I’d love to see a public space devoted to avatar dueling, with a specialized gaming interface to allow fisticuffs. That way, when users engage in an escalating war of words, they can contain it largely to one space. They can “take it to the ring,” so to speak. It might just reduce the amount of juvenile chest-thumping that takes place in all the other public spaces, by focusing it into one spot. And don’t tell me it wouldn’t be a massive attraction. Home’s population is the worst case of testosterone poisoning I’ve ever seen.
I think it’s a foregone conclusion that Home desperately needs enhanced blocking features. Harassment is the single biggest issue in Home, and lord only knows how much revenue Sony and other developers have lost by not offering an environment in which the average user can shield himself from the daily barrage of people out to have a good time at the expense of others, just because they can.
And, frankly, I’d like to see Home offer a subscription-based version of itself as an optional add-on (perhaps as an enhancement to PlayStation Plus). Such a service would undoubtedly offer a lower population of (generally) more well-behaved users. Same public spaces, just without the idiots. I might enjoy reporting on the circus, but that doesn’t mean I want to live there.
And if none of what I want comes to pass…you know what? So be it. Home’s still a hell of a lot of fun, warts and all.
Think about this for a moment: 
it is now actually possible — and as we’re the first generation of humans doing this, we’re writing the societal foundation for it — to spend a shocking amount of your biological life as someone completely different than what you are. A man can be a woman (which, in Home, happens quite often). A black man can be a white man. An elderly woman can be Lolita. We can all be a dancing society of bilaterally symmetrical size-zero Calvin Klein models. With lightsabers. On a beach.
It truly does amaze me that we are the first generation of human beings that has the ability to spend more time in a fantasy universe than we do in the real one. And the lure of it is obvious: online, you can escape from what Thoreau described as the “quiet desperation” that most of us live with. We have always sought new forms of escapism, but it’s only been in the most recent of years that the forms of escapism have become so engrossing and interactive. I wonder what Clarke himself would have chosen as his avatar, had he so deigned to visit Home.
Obviously, virtual reality still has a long way to go. True virtual reality, akin to a Star Trek personal holosuite, is still some time away. If Moore’s Law holds true once we enter the age of quantum computers (around 2020 or so), it’s entirely possible that this could happen in my lifetime. I’d likely be a very old man then. But in virtual reality, it doesn’t matter, now does it.
Goethe once wrote, “At the end of their lives, all men look back and think that their youth was arcadia.”
Perhaps, at the end of my life, I’ll actually be able to go there. Perhaps it will even be Sony that made it possible. And Home, in my view, is the first step in that direction.
December 31st, 2010 by NorseGamer | 12 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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HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIEND!I wish you Health…
So you may enjoy each day in comfort.
I wish you the Love of friends and family…
And Peace within your heart.
I wish you the Beauty of nature…
That you may enjoy the work of God.
I wish you Wisdom to choose priorities…
For those things that really matter in life.
I wish you Generousity so you may share…
All good things that come to you.
I wish you Happiness and Joy…
And Blessings for the New Year.
I wish you the best of everything…
That you so well deserve.
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A very interesting read for a New Year’s morning. And one that quite hits home on a personal level.
It is funny the titles and the human race analogy you mentioned in the beginning of the article, since the only one enjoyed by yours truly in full was, 2010. The Year We Make Contact.
There was a time (and lurking in the mind is still) when it seemed Home management was experimenting with its community, not the Homeling Community that consumes 99% of personal Home time, but the whole Home “community”. The PlayStation® Community > PlayStation®Home forums were frequented regularly and often by nosdrugis and had become an integral part of the personal Home experience. Quite often Home users interacted with in the forums would be met with in Home completely out of the blue. These individuals were not on the nosdrugis friend list on the PSN, nor were they on the friend list on the forums. They were of all types, from respectful and fun to the opposite, and, although this phenomenon was touched on from time to time in the forums and brought to the attention of those individuals met by “coincidence” in Home, it seemed the only one really taking notice was *points to self* this guy… and perhaps a few others. It has been pondered for some time, and still seems odd at best. What other explanation could there be in a realm of “millions of individual users”?
Am looking forward to this new year with great anticipation. Should prove to be interesting and eventful.
A subscription based version of Home could be possibly detrimental to the Home Community as a whole, and even to the Homeling community. While am in agreeance that it would offer some benefits as stated in your article, it could cause a great divide that may hinder the overall experience. The unsavory types that most of us wish to not endure are indeed something that needs attention from the Home Management Team, but one would hope that better tools provided to us may offer us solutions as opposed to a divided community based on a monetary platform.
I actually do wonder how many repeat users there are in Home; I know I touched on this in the Home profitability article, but if we assume that the average user has two accounts, we’re down to roughly 8,000,000 accounts. Assuming the Pareto Principle, that’s 1,600,000 actual users spread out across the planet and all of its time zones. Now narrow it down to just North America, and then narrow it down further by the fact that certain users frequent certain spaces (there might very well be a SOCOM “crowd” in Home, but since I never go there, I’ll never encounter those people), and it does start to enter the realm of feasibility that you might encounter a lot of the same people over and over again. Particularly since you don’t pay attention to the unfamiliar screen names. It’s sorta like how you buy a new car and suddenly notice everyone else on the road who has the same make/model as you do.
I’d prefer to see enhanced blocking features offered to the user interface — asking the moderators to try to ride herd on a community of this size is a logistical nightmare — but, barring that, I’m very curious to see how certain new features, such as the PS Plus members-only space in SCEE Home, are accepted by the community.
What’s next? Pay Clubs?
One might argue that it could benefit Homelings, since unsavory types are not exactly what we are looking for… and although this is quite true, since abusive users are unlikely to pay for a plus service, we would surely miss out on many potentially awesome beings who would love to be Homeling, but due to financial status, would therefor put off joining a certain group, or even PART of a group, or club, because they cannot afford to hang out with the “premium” or “plus” Home Community Club members. Sorry, had to stop due to run on sentenceness. How will we deal with that dilemma? Guess groups would be forced to forgo the expansion to including a PS Plus Membership only. Is this where the premium clubhouses come into play?
Homelings have always said that all respectful beings are welcome to join us. This doesn’t change. When Homeling Collective upgrades, ALL Homeling Members, (current, and future) must be afforded to upgrade with it. Would this make us a lesser group if we did not upgrade to “Plus”? Because paying, “Plus” members, are not likely to use a lesser account to hang out in an essentially lesser version of Home -- a separate, lesser community… hmm… this doesn’t sound good… or maybe the PS Plus home members get better tools than those Home users who cannot afford them? Or better virtual items and premium content and features that non-plus members must pay for? Doesn’t sound any better, haha… nut funny…
<..>
Serious Home Clubs will be forced to make hard choices… if there any choices offered that include the WHOLE Home Community. We’ve paid for our clubhouses (and what little functionality that they have). Currently Homelings occupy 25+ clubhouses. All are used, relevant clubhouses that would get used even more often if there was more functionality included in a basic clubhouse. Advertising of paid for clubhouses should also be a part of the basic clubhouse functionality, and could be done so in a number of ways quite easily.
Surely there are more Home clubs other than Homelings that this affects. Most successful Home clubs have been forced to create themselves a home away from PlayStation Home altogether because the functionality of the clubhouses are so… primitive.
Gah… shut up, Nos…
All excellent points; the challenge that Sony faces is how to continuously derive new revenue sources from a base model that’s free. Had Home started as a subscription model, it wouldn’t face any of the dilemmas you just brought up (and it would have a much smaller population of generally more well-behaved — and older — users).
But, since it *is* a “freemium” service, it now has — as you pointed out — a large number of users who would be potentially affected by a shift to a subscription model.
I doubt Sony would ever make such a change. It’s frankly too late at this point to do so. Too much negative PR risk. But I can definitely see them implementing more premium-access services as an enhancement to PlayStation Plus — and, in the process, creating further social stratification within Home.
(Disclaimer: I myself am not presently a PS Plus member. It doesn’t hold any “goodies” which I covet yet.)
I was reading a recent interview with Jack Buser, and he got rather elusive on the subject of clubhouse improvements within Home — although he acknowledged just what a huge part of the community experience clubhouses are. Sony’s emphasizing Home as a gaming platform rather than a social network for gamers, so I frankly wonder just how high of a priority clubhouse enhancement is on the list.
You ever get the feeling that Sony has a tiger by the tail, and this thing exploded exponentially faster than their infrastructure had planned for? I tell ya, it’s a great time to be a journalist covering Home.
Excuse me. First, morality is not a function of financial level. Sick, irrational, and perverse humans can be found in public housing and in so-called exclusive gated communities. See newspapers and tv. Second, some of the problem comes from no commonly agreed-upon understanding of “manners.” Different age groups, ethnic groups, work groups, linguistic groups & many more divisions have different customs as to the proper forms of meeting strangers, behavior of youth to elders, blue collar to white collar, and so on. Over time, PS Home users should develop an “standard language and behavior” which most of its users will adhere to in public spaces, and, as in Real Life, each group will develop a more one used to distinguish its members common interest. Example: accounts, lawyers & engineers will speak one form of English in a general group & a different one in each group.
I agree that financial levels r a poor indicator of morality,i could give u probably hundreds of names of rich men that were scoundrels,Ghengis Khan,Gilles De Reis,Marquis De Sade,Almost any pope around the time of the Reformation.Also the ability 2 create multiple accounts renders punishment on 1 account almost ridiculous,if we were allowed only 1 account per ps3 i think ppl would take things a bit more seriously and act there age.There seems 2 b a debate about homes future direction,either game or socially oriented.I believe this view limits homes potential,i think home is big enough 2 go in both directions simultaneously.I was lured 2 home by a game,EA poker,but ive stuck around because of the social scenes.The potential 4 profits would b maximized and it would make 4 a more enjoyable scene 4 all home users,and yes something really needs 2 b done with our clubhouses,since the last update inviting ppl into 1 is a nightmare,and y can we only join 5 clubs?Is there a reason 4 this?Its very limiting and causes socially embarrassing scenes as u try 2 juggle friends clubs around without making them feel like they arent worthy 2 b on your list.
While it’s true that money does not reflect a level of morality (far from it, in many cases), the first rule of Freakonomics is also true:
Humans respond to economic incentives.
Strip the issue of morality out of it for a moment. This is an amoral point I’m bringing up. The more financial risk you incur with something, the less likely you are to gamble losing it. The stakes are higher.
So much of the harassment in Home takes place because, frankly, there isn’t much of a threat of deterrence. The mods are invisible, and likely horribly overworked. The trolls are anonymous. And there’s no financial penalty for bad behavior — if anything, Sony would err on the side of not punishing anyone unless blatantly necessary, because they stand to lose revenue.
Now consider a subscription-based element to Home (not all of Home, obviously). If I’m paying, say, $10/month to access Home, that’s $120/year. Now I have an economic incentive to behave a bit better, because I don’t want Sony to suspend/ban my account. I’ve got skin in the game.
Raise the monthly subscription fee and you raise the stakes. And if it’s not applied unilaterally throughout Home, then you don’t lose the installed user base, either. You’re just offering a new premium-access service level, much like how airlines charge for faster security lines, preferential boarding, and so forth.
You’ve both looked at it in terms of morality. This is an amoral proposition. Economics don’t give a damn about morality.
Now, that said, you’ve both brought up excellent points about how Home will slowly develop its own set of social mores (and hopefully offer a means to shorten and flatten the learning curve), and that Home can — and should — simultaneously expand in both the gaming and social arenas to further retain and attract users in greater numbers.
Lol i assume by”you’ve both looked at it in terms of morality”u mean Bayern_1867 and myself.I cant speak 4 Bayern but i merely agreed with Bayern that economics r a poor judge of morals,not everything else Bayern wrote.And now im saying i agree with u on a couple of things,its true that economics dont give a dam about morality,and that as the stakes go up so does the deterent factor.But i say that with a big fat asterisk,if im allowed 5 accounts at the higher price tag whats the difference from what we have now?if i were in the “troll”business id have 1 account with everything that i wanted 2 keep and use the other 4 for my neferious purposes.I still believe the 1 account per ps3 is the only effective way 2 make ppl behave,would “trolls”risk their only account 4 a few laughs?Maybe a few but i doubt many would.I myself have a few accounts and wouldnt want 2 lose any of them so im not really advocating this,just saying i think its the only really effective way i can think of 2 crack down on this short of turning home into a virtual version of Orwells 1984.
Interesting point; if Home users were restricted to just one account, I wonder how much that would affect the sales volume totals due to the loss of region hopping. Now, if the one-account rule was implemented with region hopping, the social ramifications could be very interesting, indeed. Given how the different Home regions are largely separate business entities, though, I don’t know how feasible this would be.
The easiest solution to the troll problem in Home is to deploy enhanced blocking features that allow the user to stop the problem on the spot. These features would have to be abuse-proof as well, however.
Agreed,if its abuse proof.Btw if sony is seriously looking 4 revenue makers then they should start with getting us music in our personal spaces,almost every1 i know is waiting anxiously 4 that day 2 come.Also,they have a million clothes 4 your avatar y not have clothes 4 the pets they just came out with?personally i wouldnt buy a pet or clothes 4 it but i know in real life there r ppl that do this so y not here 2?Probably the easiest way i can think of 4 home 2 reap a truck load of cash is 2 open a casino,i dont mean like a real 1,but 1 that would charge a small fee 4 a set amount of time.The former EA poker room crowd r so starving 4 the “good o;e days”that they alone would send that into the black,then add on blackjack,roulette,craps and the other standard casino games and the profits would b substantial.
lol *good old days