Any time the loyal customer base collectively complains about something, I like to look at whether or not it’s a tangible or intangible complaint. If it’s tangible, such as the five examples listed in the tail end of the article, then I agree that it’s hard to fault them. Where it gets tricky is with intangibles, because perception and reality can be two totally different universes. This is where some really strategic PR presence can pay off.

When it comes to commercialization in Home, my personal take on it is that it’s a shame Home had to give away the house for so long to get its feet underneath it, because now it’s built up an expectation within the community as to what the general parameters are for various types of commodities. Changing those parameters can be a real challenge, because people are apt to forget the awesome bargains and all the freebies and focus in on rising average prices for stuff they want to purchase.

(Side note: You do not have the patience to wait for these people to get out of their wardrobes. Log out and play a game for an hour and come back. They won’t realize you’ve been gone).

Then there are those, like myself, who buy judiciously. Diamond suit for $15? Not gonna happen. Scariachi Band for $1.99? I’ll take two. That’s a steal. Scribble Shooter? Love the game, worth the money to me. Same with the Mech Jet.

These are the sort of reasonable customers that the Home managers would do well to cultivate. I can think of a couple of people on my Friends List who don’t have much disposable income at all, but they’ll still go out and buy the things they really like. The only danger here is making more content than they can afford. We can be stirred to anger when something really falls outside of our vision of the pricing model, such as the Lockwood handbags.

Then you have the crowd that shouts “That’s greed! Why does it cost so much?” I’m convinced that the reality for most of these ki-- er, people, is that they want the items and lack the means to afford them. They’re aspirational, but they don’t buy anything. anyway, so the price isn’t really an issue. The passion they have for the items is reflected in the vitriol they spew against the developers. They’re the ones that scream at the accidental Mech Jet discount. They wouldn’t have bought it at $2.99, either, but that detail gives them some supposed leverage to rail against the managers.

There is a small subset of this group that falls under the judicious category, actual buyers who feel genuinely ripped off when something doesn’t perform as expected. Scribble Shooter brought this crowd out in droves, and it’s hard to argue with their position. At that price, a game had best behave in expected ways. That blunder raised suspicion among this group of buyers, and they’re keeping their money on the sidelines unless they’re 100% confident in a purchase. I don’t blame them at all for feeling this way.

The last identifiable group is the freebie hunters, who log in to grab whatever rewards they can get. They might spend $20 a year on a personal space. They won’t complain about prices, because they don’t buy much to begin with. Anything they do buy is something they completely love. This is the group that most likely keeps The Green Ticket and personal spaces atop the sales charts for months on end.

The vast majority of pricing complaints, as I see it, come from those who are not loyal customers to begin with. There are times, however, when something stirs up the loyal customers, and those are the cases where I would hope management takes notice.

There are psychological barriers in place. Each of us will look at a thing and form a mental evaluation of its worth. Successful developers, and that includes the Sony team, will find a way to price toward the high end of our expectations and discover success in doing so. They’ll also throw out the occasional mad bargain, like the Scariachi Band or the Spiked Demon, that nudges us toward a higher-priced item in the future, because we want to reward them for the great deals they’ve given us in the past.

Something else to ponder -- How many people complaining would actually buy the items that they complain about if they were changed to match their criterion? My understanding is that a large percentage of the forum posters have never bought anything. I have heard rumours that the people in the forums who do buy are some of the best customers, but those who buy less tend to not buy at all.

Another question is -- How many of the complainers are uner 18? If they get an allowance and Home starts to inflate prices, Home may be losing some customers. I wish we had some stats on the users so we could put their comments in context.

There are all sorts of psychological behaviors being poked at here. I have read about tests where people were paid for a task they would be inclined to do for free. When the monetary incentive was taken away, they were less likely to do something than they were before being paid. Hence, what I refer to as the Reward Effect. Now it is hard to make a game in Home that does not have Rewards built in.

The one thing all makers of online gaming agree is that complaining is a constant that you have to accept. The worst thing to happen is that people stop complaining. The opposite of love is not hate it is indifference. As long as they keep complaining, at least we know that they still care.

The only way you would get them to come to HSM is if you promised to publish daily lists of every freebie and ‘prize’ and trophy you can get for nothing in Home. Even when a lot of things are free and others cost very little, there will be those who complain that the freebies aren’t good enough and that 49 cents for a shirt is highway robbery.

“I would not fault them for being too greedy — I would fault them for not being greedy enough. There is huge growth potential for entertainment(of which games make up a part) on Home. The biggest slam against Home by most people is that there is nothing to do — and games may alleviate some of that feeling, but there is room for much, much more entertainment for a price.”

Bam. That’s it in a nutshell. Awesome response, Cthulu.