I need to get my Cary Grant on. Judy,Judy,Judy. Anyone for a spot of tea?

lol

The stick is, at once, all of these things and none of them. It is ultimately our individual perception of the stick that guides how we think about it.

The same goes for any sort of item-based class distinction, in Home or elsewhere. The only thing Home can ultimately offer us is a simulation of experience. What we bring to that simulation speaks volumes about who we are as individuals. Some will want to emulate the life they have, or aspire to, while others will see an opportunity to write the ills of the real world out of this reality. Those are the emotions that items like the Mansion and the Gold Suit prey upon, and they are dangerous emotions for marketers to toy with, because they generate visceral reactions on both sides.

I’ll criticize Norse for reading far too little into the emotional significance of these items. Glitchers, high-scorers and those who value grammar are nonstratified affinity groups. You earn your way into those groups by demonstrating a specific set of skills that the group finds appealing, whether it’s figuring out how to get on a bench or using punctuation as intended.

High-priced items come with no skill requirement, and no common bond among the buyers other than the ability to spend money. There is no intrinsic affinity among Gold Suit wearers or Mansion buyers, other than their decision to spend money on a particular item, something that anyone can do.

Yet there are those who will believe that these purchases place them in some rarefied social strata. Encouraging this behavior may put a few extra coins in the register, but it happens at the cost of those consumers who either don’t like these particular items or don’t believe they’re worth the money. To those consumers, the continual addition of perks for a subset of the community reeks of class separation, and in the long run will likely tend to inhibit sales more than grow them.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with Home rewarding its most loyal customers, it’s a matter of how its done. Why not go the Veemee route and add features to the Mansion spaces, as was done with The London Pub? Why not toss a special item to Mansion owners from time to time? Why must these rewards take the form of perks hidden in unrelated personal and public spaces?

I own all of the Mansion, so I’m a beneficiary of this largesse, but it doesn’t encourage me to buy anything. Winter Vacation Villa and Tycoon Penthouse joined my private spaces because of their merits and design, not because of some add-on.

As a professional marketer, this decision to create a “mansion class” in Home makes me shake my head, in part because it rewards fealty to a handful of spaces that not everyone wants to own, thus limiting participation, and in part because of the anger it engenders in a portion of the community. As a marketing experiment, it has not gone well.

Successful loyalty programs are broad-based and offer people some choice in how they participate. nDreams almost hit it right with their rewards program, but their failure to expand the qualifying items ultimately defines what the level of participation will be. If Home wants to reward users with a loyalty program, base it on spending, as Sony did with the $10 reward program in October.

Anything less is going to create a perception of a class divide, because a narrow portion of the user base is receiving special attention. That is the whole point of a loyalty program, but it should be based on broader criteria than ownership of a particular set of personal spaces.

This theatre VIP floor, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with the mansion. It’s just an attempt by Sony to boost sales of the personal space. I don’t know what lies beyond the velvet rope and, therefore, cannot comment on its value as a purchase incentive.

The part that irks me about the jeep and the helicopter is that buyers do not get full value for their purchase without buying another space. If the jeep is a feature of the villa then it should be there for anyone who buys the villa, likewise the helicopter. Just my opinion.

So just to be clear, anybody who owns part (or parts) of the mansion can access the upper floor?

Not that it matters much to me really. I don’t own the mansion, the villa nor the tycoon penthouse. Nor do I care much about the jeep, helicopter nor the VIP floor at the theatre. Let’s face it…the supposed VIP spaces on Home are all lame anyway.

Sodium VIP = always empty
Guitar Hero VIP = forgotten
EA Fight Night VIP = long gone
PS+ lounge in EU = tacky
VIP stairway to the second floor of the theatre = big whoop-dee-freakin-doo!

I still do not understand why that should divide people into classes as CTHULU93 referenced: the haves and have nots. I understand how it could evolve because that is something I believe to be emotionally based. But why should it? Why is to difficult for people just to relish in what they have and not be jealous of what others do? I see all three of the items as a great reward for purchasing all of the spaces. Sony gives out alot of rewards to people who choose not to spend alot if any money on here. I see it a balance. Am I out of touch and don’t see this as an issue like other people have chosen to be vocal about?

Sony was not trying to sell the bracelets with the attached VIP status.

I struggled with what to say on this topic, so I’ll just ramble a bit..

For me, I am known to say I did not care about the price of something on here. I bought a dress that cost 10 dollars. I might buy the diamond bundle I don’t know yet. I am deciding if it has a return value for me. To paraphrase what Joanna Dark said before, when I buy something, it needs to have the ability to be multi tasked. I do not look at something and ask if I purchase it, will it demote me or elevate me to another tier on the HOME social ladder?

I have a tendency to look at the purchases I make as an investment into the video projects we produce. If I need it I will buy it. When I bought the Winter Villa and did not see the jeep, I went out and bought what I needed to acquire that jeep. I did not buy the Villa for the jeep or to be at a social class level. I would have bought the jeep if sold separately. I needed it for video shoot. Same as for the Tycoon space. I would love to have that helicopter waiting for me at my Tropical space, and if we could fly it to The Hub and land on the yacht moored at the Pier Park there, how epic would that be?

Are these two commodities used as bait to buy upgrades? Sony is a business that is in the business of making money. Yes they are an entertainment company but it is still about the bottom line. If they made more video making equipment/props for us machinamers to purchase, are they creating social class and would they attempt to exploit that? I would hope so, because I would if I was a decision maker at Sony.

I would not refrain from purchasing a commodity because of a person or group telling me on how it might personify me.

As a retail marketer my self, I can see a reason for that approach. Take the Sodium 2 solo racer machines.. To be competitive you are going to have to keep a supply of booster rockets. Eventually you will max out your level and the credits you receive will be less. Working at Scorpios hustling drinks gives you a small return on your labor and squishing scorpions is boring. At some point I needed decide how to get those boosters. I bought what I needed. Did Sony have this premise in mind from the onset? For me it does not matter. They are a business and I am a greedy consumer as well as a stock holder.

If there are indeed some type of social classes being formed on Home, well, we are a product of our environment. To me this is cause and effect. When Sony creates a commodity with a certain price point, I choose to believe they are very aware of the consequences their decisions have. As NorseGamer articulated earlier: artificial classes are already prevalent on HOME. The Nation of Avatars has been exploiting that since they started making “fams” on here.. Social classes are a way of life in the real world and I see how that can’t but find its way into the realm of HOME. My position is I am indifferent to it. To my surprise I was dubbed an elitist because of my affiliations on HOME. I scoffed at that notion. There was a adage that went something like: “It is their reality therefore it is real to them”.

HOME is what a person makes of it.

I see Sony as presenting many different options out there for the consumer. Not everything we like nor is everything is bad or “conspiracy driven”. I see Sony as making tremendous leaps and bounds by constantly responding to reader/player feedback. I would say if your gonna give me a jeep and a helicopter( which I use alot) maybe allow me some diversity in its use.

Darth Vader: Asteroids do not concern me,Admiral. I want that ship and not excuses.

Just to clarify the discussion from earlier now that the Beta NDA is over I’ve made this video. Obviously the debate wasn’t just about a jeep and a helicopter. For those who support this separation as fine and dandy I will say I’m really disappointed in all of you. This was vehemently opposed in the Beta forum. That debate had little to no effect sadly with the launching of our New Home.

This is absolutely ridiculous in my view and for a Sony official here to seem to find this just find and dandy is extremely disappointing. North American Home needs to get a clue.

It’s a sad state of affairs and heaven only knows where it will end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecTGPvMhPM8&feature=player_profilepage

I’m done with this debate in this comments section. Supporting Sony at any cost seems to be the order of the day with some I’m afraid.

Obi-wan would have been opposed to this development I suspect. Money appears to be the only truth some are concerned about. That is really sad.

Another option could be a method for transporting all of your guests from one personal space to another. “Attention all Penthouse guests, we will now be boarding the helicopter for the Winter Villa”

As it stands now, the jeep and helicopter just seem like a method to coerce users into buying more personal spaces. I don’t like the idea of needing to buy more personal spaces to activate the full features of one that you already own.

If someone can afford to buy an Alpine estate or Rolls Royce Phantom in real life, it certainly places the buyer among the socioeconomic elite class. The problem with the “Exclusive” merchandise on Home is that anybody can afford to buy it if they choose to do so. I could buy the mansion, villa and tycoon penthouse along with every other personal space without making much of a dent in my finances. So what? I’m sure that any 15 year old slinging burgers at McDonald’s could own them as well. I can hardly say the same thing about buying a 90-foot luxury yacht to cruise the Greek Islands in real life.

The perception of exclusive items and the supposed elite status to which they entitle the buyer is entirely fabricated by Sony for marketing purposes. I’ve chided Locust_Star and Glasswalls in the past for their use of the terms “elite class” and “exclusive” in the blogs. A free item that is only available for a week (Central Plaza souvenir) or a difficult reward to win (Golden VICKIE) are far more exclusive than anything available in the mall. If someone likes an expensive object enough to justify the price, then he/she should definitely buy it. Just don’t feel like the purchases are reserved for some high society of Home. As far as I’m concerned, the popularity of $15 pixelated suits and $35 virtual mansions just proves P.T. Barnum’s legendary maxim.