Echo Chronicles: Homelings Without Home
by SealWyf, HSM team writer
As the Great PlayStation Network Outage of 2011 creeps to its inevitable close, the inhabitants of Home take stock of lessons learned.
First, there are the fiscal and computer-security lessons: use PSN cards for purchases. Don’t reuse passwords.
Then, the gaming lessons: Keep some stand-alone, single-player titles handy, in case this happens again. Or, better yet, find a hobby that does not depend on network connectivity.
But the deepest lessons, the ones etched forever in our twitching gamer cortexes, are the psychological ones. We have learned how important our online friends are, by the depth of the pain we feel when we can’t reach them.
Nowhere is this more true than for the members of Home-based clubs. For many of us, this is our social life. Or at least a large enough part of it, that, when it is missing, the world feels small and unihabited. Fortunately, there are alternative paths, the computational equivalent of the secret path over the mountains, the one by which nobody expects us. They stretch through the wilds of the Internet.
For individual friends, email and Facebook made up for some of the lost “face time” in Home. There were also the Home-based sites, though the collapse of the PlayStation Network’s authentication services soon knocked most of us off the official PlayStation Forums.
But Home-based clubs have other resources, in the form of their group websites. These took on new importance as the outage dragged on. They became, in many ways, our home away from Home.
The Homeling Collective was no exception. The Collective runs a complex website, Fluidic Space, with forums, blogs, image galleries, videos and a chatroom. It’s a large site, but it’s usually quiet. During normal times, you might find a few beings in the chat room, and see three or four forum posts a day, unless some controversy is brewing.
But these were not normal times. Within hours of the PSN outage, website traffic increased. Homelings gathered in the chatroom or posted forum messages. What was going on? We traded rumors and URLs, checked the PSN, and reported back: Still can’t log in. Does anybody know anything?
Days passed. Rumors were replaced by official announcements. The date for full recovery kept slipping. And the Homeling Collective settled into its website, like refugees camped out in the high school gymnasium. We didn’t have Home, but we had each other. Use of the site became complex and creative.
One night, unable to sleep, I logged into Fluidic Space at 3:00AM local time. Normally, the place would have been empty except for a few Homelings from the far-west time zones. But I found a General and a Subcommander in the chatroom, in their own small hours of the morning, playing Scrabble on their cell phones. We chatted a bit, bemoaning our mutual frustrated Home-addiction. They invited me to join them. I regretfully declined; I needed sleep, and I didn’t own a phone that supported apps. As I left, I pictured them huddled in a corner of the gymnasium, hunched over a lamp and a game board, as the other refugees slept, rolled in their blankets.
The outage continued. And the Collective faced a dilemma. Much of what makes the Homelings the success they are, is a regular round of administrative meetings. The two main ones are Command Central, which is open to all officers, and HROP, the Homeling Respect and Outreach Project, which is open to all Homelings. Command Central (or CC) focuses on matters that affect the whole Collective — planned events, current controversies, announcements and policy discussions. HROP is more of a self-help group — each week we point out uncomfortable situations, and discuss how they could be better handled. “How to maintain Respect while being disrespected” is a common HROP topic.
These meetings are held in two of our shared clubhouses: one set aside for Command Central, another for other meetings, such as HROP. But without Home, we had no Clubhouses. What could we do?
We could have skipped the meetings. But Homelings enjoy spirited discussions and the good-humored banter that accompanies it. Missing our weekly gatherings would have increased the distress we were already experiencing, exiled from our beloved Home.
And so, we did the only thing we could do: we held our meetings in the Fluidic Space chatroom.
At first, protocol was a puzzle. In Home, we signal that we wish to address the meeting by standing. After a bit of thought, it was announced that anyone who wished to address the chatroom Command Central meeting should type “stands”. Unnecessary chat and random banter was to be kept to a minimum. The first Command Central in exile was conducted in an efficient and orderly manner.
A slightly different tactic was adopted for HROP. Since one of the goals of that meeting is to ensure that everyone has a voice, we proceeded alphabetically, passing the virtual “talking stick” down the list of participants in the chatroom list. A few beings quickly changed their screen names to jump ahead in line. Even in virtual life, the ambitious find a way to get ahead!
Now, as the Great PSN Outage draws to its close, we gather on the bridge of our drifting Mothership and gaze toward the approaching shore. We know that soon we will be back in our own world, dancing in long lines in Central Plaza, or luring humans into our bubble machines, to be klent and assimilated. But we take with us the knowledge that Homelings can face adversity, even a meltdown of our network. We survive.
Last night, I asked the beings gathered in the Fluidic Space chatroom to comment for this article.
A Homeling General stated, “I think it’s shown how much more Homelings are other than simply an on-Home entity. We’re a true group of friends who gather for one another, not simply the role-play and ritual, not just the avatars and Echochrome, but the company of our fellow Homelings.”
A young Representative added, “We create our own Home.”
And, in those five words, he summed up everything I have just said in over a thousand.
May 7th, 2011 by SealWyf | 16 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer by day, and an officer in the Homeling Collective by night. She has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is utterly addicted to PlayStation Home.
Great read Seal! Being the leader of the Grey Gamers I wonder what will be there when I return sometimes. But I have been lucky in that the people in my group are older and therefore more understanding of the situation we are in. I think that we will be fine. I too have just now created a website for the group during this outage. It is under construction so to speak, so we don’t have a message board or chat room yet but I will see if that is a possibility. The problem is my club members are mostly unaware of it right now. That will change when we return to Home so that if this ever occurs again, God forbid, they will have an outreach. Many of us here at the magazine have been using the chat here to keep in touch as well.
One thing I know though is that some of my members don’t have access to a computer, I just hope that everyone is there and well when I return.
Group websites are essential, and not just because of outages. I’m very impressed with the inexpensive (free, if you tolerate ads) forumotion sites. They support forums, image galleries, chatrooms, and many other features that make group management easier. There are many other resources out there. I wonder if this is something we could discuss on the HSM forums?
And, by now it is obvious that Home is NOT coming back this weekend. Testing is taking longer than expected. As an IT person, I can sympathize. Testing ALWAYS takes longer than expected, even when you expect it to. So I will have more time to improve my Tetris scores, and the Collective will have yet another Command Central meeting in the FS chatroom. But we will survive. So will we all, though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.
great read, seal. I too am glad to see Homelings evolve beyond the confines of a game. I hope to continue to witness the branching out of the Collective.
Wonderful story Seal! I’m one of those Homelings that have spent many a night lounging in the chat room with my fellow ‘Lings and it brings a warm smile to my face. I’ve had time to dream up some new events and time to get to know some Homelings on a more personal level without all the eye clutter of Home. What I thought would be devastating (Home being off line) has become quite bearable when I know my friends are just a click away on my computer. Yes, we will survive, we always do!
Indeed.
It’s awesome to get alerts on a regular basis multiple times daily of new happenings on Fluidic Space. Whether they be replies, comments, new data, photos… and indeed, as saddening as it is, the passings of a fellow Homeling. The Collective goes on. It’s near impossible to completely paralyze an established community.
Although we do not have the use of our Home avatars, or the realm itself, and cannot klent an unsuspecting onlooker… we are still Homelings. And we still have a home away from Home.
Am thankful for the Collective friends who frequent Fluidic Space, as well as those on other Home-based online communities such as this one.
Thank you, Seal, for a wonderful read.
And thank you, HSM, for this medium
great article and its true some of us don’t have computer access all the time im actually on my ps3 right now lol
well how me and my friends stay in touch , we get on playstation home today.
I think all of us would have suffered greatly if the Forums on PSHT, Fluidic Space, and HSM (plus the chat rooms) had also been down. Many thanks for the hard work of Cubehouse, Nos, and Darkan keeping these channels open to all of us.
Sure miss seeing my Homelings friends. Is there a link to the chat to come visit you all? Peace
Indeed, littlepeddler. Just log into Fluidic Space, and pick Chat from the rightmost choice on the top menu. Or use this URL:
http://fluidicspace.ning.com/chat
Says I need a passcode?
LP
Sorry, I didn’t realize you hadn’t created a Fluidic Space account yet. I’ve sent you the passcode by HomeStation Magazine email. Welcome!
Ok im working on the verfication but do not know all the answers to the questions. I kind of got mixed up with my assim due to it took several days for me to go through it that there were several involved. So im on crew member list and not sure what to put.
Don’t worry — we’ll figure out where you belong.
I was at your assimilation, littlepeddler! very nice.