Comments on: Home, Zynga and Community

By: Willis Mattan

Willis Mattan — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 01:09:14 +0000

I enjoy coming back daily to see your thoughts. I have your page bookmarked on my favorite read list!

By: Keara22hi

Keara22hi — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 03:35:02 +0000

I got sucked into Zynga games by FaceBook friends and relatives needing more “neighbors” to unlock certain upgrades. OMG, this corporation must be owned by descendants of Machiavelli. I have a choice, woo even more friends to these games or sign over my credit card to this gaming company.

By: SORROW-83

SORROW-83 — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:13:32 +0000

is Sony have realy this view for HOME ? i doubt halas….

By: Gideon

Gideon — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:57:23 +0000

Thanks everyone. Im glad you enjoyed it and learned something. I, myself, learned quite a bit while writing this article and got a lot of ideas for ways Home could better intigrate community and social networking. I’ll pile the concepts together into an article soon.

Burbie… I am totally in agreement, that steampunk game needs to come out! It was totally a team effort adventure.

By: Orion_NGC1976

Orion_NGC1976 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:31:44 +0000

Gideon, great article. I am with Burbie on this one. I would like to see a really good RPG that you would be able to play with your friends. I know that this would be hugely popular as others have spoken of it as well. The problem that I have found with trying to do a group event with friends (like Siren and Xi) is that some will be thrown out to the beginning or will get separated and lost. This makes it frustrating to pláy as a group as everyone has to exit when one person gets ejected. Something like LBP with checkpoints would be nice. Also group chat is a must and I have found that voice chatting in some public areas results in a lot of garbled conversations and makes it difficult to help each other. A real enjoyable read and I am looking to hearing other reader’s ideas about social/group gaming on Home.

By: Aeternitas33

Aeternitas33 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:15:26 +0000

I would love to buy a Japanese keyboard for example, but my PC/OS won’t support one. So I have to make do with the virtual keyboard instead.

By: Aeternitas33

Aeternitas33 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:03:57 +0000

Also true. I was chatting with someone in the Asian Home a few days ago who didn’t have a keyboard, and if she hadn’t mentioned it I wouldn’t even have noticed. In my opinion the language barriers are a bigger problem than any lack of a keyboard.

By: Orion_NGC1976

Orion_NGC1976 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:49:47 +0000

Being a computer person, I had extra keyboards laying around. Oddly enough, I have quite a few people on Home who don’t have keyboards, which includes friends that I communicate with on a regular basis.

By: Aeternitas33

Aeternitas33 — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:13:00 +0000

@Kid Fleetfoot -- Norse’s comments aren’t really “comments.” They’re more in the nature of “disclaimers,” which is why they need to appear in the article.

@Norse -- I’m not really feeling this particular disclaimer. Anyone who buys a PS3 is going to have a PC. Most PCs use USB keyboards. So take the keyboard from your PC and connect it to your PS3 until you have time to buy a 2nd keyboard (assuming that you don’t already have a 2nd keyboard). That’s what I did when I first began to use Home.

By: Kid Fleetfoot

Kid Fleetfoot — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:07:07 +0000

I enjoyed the article and while I know more about the subject than I did before, I still don’t know all that much about the communities. I suppose one has to participate, don’t they, to know?

Excellent article.

Note: Norse, I wish at times you would put your occasional comments in the Reply section instead of the article itself. In this case it to me anyway, it breaks the continuity of the article.

The article is an award winner.

By: Burbie52

Burbie52 — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:15:44 +0000

Love the article Gideon. I think that Sony needs to have a large scale rpg type of game, one that would be interactive and utilize several people at a time. I had heard that the so called “Steampunker” space was supposed to have something built in like an interactive game. but it seems to have disappeared as an idea since there has been no word about it for quite awhile now. I think that Sony needs to rethink things a bit and ask developers to create spaces with different multi-player games built in. If Xi was so cool to play, why not have N dreams bring the full game out again for the thousands of people who never got to see it. like me? There are many ways to go with this, but the core of it is that Sony has to realize that though games are still important to us all, without the gamer, there is no game and without the social interactivity in Home, there is no gamer.

By: CheekyGuy

CheekyGuy — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:25:24 +0000

Absolutely fascinating article, and yes, I remember being a part of the huge XI game that was released in 2009. It did bring people together, I know of this much, (however bizarre and different the game was)
Sony do seem unsure of which direction they want to take Home into. But I can’t see them just throw games into it, to appease a new audience, in my own view this alone isn’t going to attract a new audience.
What WILL bring back an audience is to shift it’s focus back onto at least 2 things; The target age bracket that it is aiming for. (They have said time and again that it is ‘family friendly’ PG, when I can clearly see it’s not with sexualised clothing and Brimstone dancers popping up all over the place)Either this or an ‘adult’ area of Home which would be more appropriate for this sort of thing.
The virtual companions (Pets) are a fantastic idea, this brought people together, though i think the pets could do more.
Another community based game, similar to ‘Little Big Planet’ in that using basic teamwork and problem solving could be something Sony could look toward, would be another great revenue maker.
(why not use teamwork to ‘Build’ your new Private space? Something fun and colourful, like a fluffy ‘Lego’?)
But I do still believe Sony have hit onto something that is truly unique, with it’s graphics engine and Social networking, Home could surpass, dare I say it current Social King ‘Second Life’ which has been around since the past decade.