“Home Plus” Premium Membership
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
I’m writing this from 41,000 feet, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. The plane itself is nothing spectacular; a typical Boeing 752, with all the amenities customarily offered by United.
Prior to every flight, there’s the fun Bataan Death March known as boarding. A separate line exists for first-class passengers and economy-class passengers. Everyone’s jockeying for position, hoping to secure an overhead luggage bin.
Prior to boarding, there’s the first-class lounge. Some people can access it. Others have to sit in the main holding area, listening to the screaming child. Because there’s always a screaming child.
Prior to the lounge, there’s the security line. Or, more specifically, two security lines: the regular one that stretches from here to Moscow, and the premium line that you can pay for ahead of time.
Prior to the security line, there’s curbside. Some people are dropped off via taxi. Some via limousine.
Prior to the curbside drop-off, there’s the neighborhoods we all came from. Some of us came from apartments on the wrong side of the tracks. Some of us came from mansions.
There are so many elements of our real-world society that separate us based on economics that we’re simply oblivious to them (with the exception of the jealous and angry and forlorn and bloodshot stares when you board a plane first, I suppose). And, of course, once you’re on the plane, the experience is still markedly different based on economics. First class, particularly on an international flight, practically does everything but bring Queen Catherine’s horse over for you to enjoy. Economy class gives you a Diet Coke and a pulmonary embolism.
That’s life. We muddle through as best we can, and we try to treat ourselves to what little pleasures we can afford.
Why is it, then, that virtual reality should be societally organized any differently?
There’s a growing sentiment within certain elements of the Home community that “premium” elements are something to be viewed with suspicion, distrust and ambivalence. Here are the primary objections I’ve seen so far:
- The value doesn’t justify the price tag. The Gold Suit was an exercise in driving a premium price tag out of novelty, but re-skinning it in some other type of gemstone theme arguably dilutes the exclusivity of the Gold Suit, and doesn’t do much to justify its higher price.
- Along those same lines, there is a fear that the community will continue to buy these items strictly because of the price tag, encouraging developers to become “lazy” rather than driving a premium price tag for content which perhaps merits it.
- Interlinking private estates is a “hard sell” approach which is distasteful.
- Offering an exclusive “members only” section in the middle of a public space creates divisiveness within the community. Developers should not create arbitrary social classes to drive product.
- Offering an exclusive “members only” section will hurt new-user retention rates.
On one hand, I get where the emotion is coming from with these arguments. On the other, I’m not entirely sure the logic is there to support all of these points.
I’m going to start off by criticizing the developers.
The screeching tires you just heard was the sound of several astonished readers all slamming to a stop and re-reading the last sentence.
I’m dead serious. All of these developers are quite proficient at creating content, but the methods they use for advertising and marketing are about as subtle as the Tasmanian Devil on a keg of Jägermeister.
To be fair, though, I understand it. The vast majority of Home’s active population doesn’t spend a dime. And the ones who actually spend some money do so, at best, intermittently. There are, comparatively, very few hardcore repeat spenders in Home – and those repeat spenders who populate the forum certainly don’t shy away from using that “status” to their advantage when attempting to emphasize the relative value of their opinions.
Here’s the reality, though: Sony had to give away the house for nearly three years of open beta in order to build up an active core user base, and in the process built an artificially price-controlled economy which did little to spur sales from non-spenders and created a certain expectation of How Things Are from the people who actually generate revenue. Home needs to have a broader market base; it needs to have more people spending money, rather than solely focusing on how to generate more revenue from the limited number of people who are currently spending. Changing that paradigm isn’t something that happens overnight, and it has to be handled strategically in order to minimize any disruption.
Again, this isn’t a matter of product. The Hub changed Home overnight. No, this is a matter of perception. Just because Sony knows how to build something doesn’t mean they know how to properly get people to buy into it.
Case in point: Home’s overarching “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” theme to drive prices higher. The Gold Suit. The Diamond Suit. The Mansion. The Tycoon Penthouse. And so forth. This is a great idea. But it was a great idea that was implemented completely wrong, in the same way that invading Stalingrad does little to beat the RAF. You’re just going in the wrong
direction.
The problem isn’t that Home is building a social distinction between community members who spend lots of money and those who don’t. The problem is that they did it half-assed, and as a result offer products which do little to justify their price tags and manage to honk off some of the Sony forum’s most prominent voices.
Now, I’m the first to state that some of the people on that forum have a vastly overinflated opinion of just how far they can push their hyperbole and think it’s somehow okay. During the recent debate over the roped-off staircase in the new movie theatre, the conduct was, to put it mildly, rather disappointing. It almost makes me wish Sony hadn’t removed the rope, because now some of these people believe that their embarrassingly poor conduct is the way to get things done. In the process, the more well-reasoned and logical arguments against the rope were overshadowed in the us-versus-the-devs invective.
(What astonishes me is just how lenient a place the Sony forum is. I’ve been on the internet for a while, and I think some of the forum denizens don’t realize just how good they have it. Terra reminded me of the ultimate example of this, which is Richard Kyanka’s famous edict over at Something Awful: “I will ban you if you break the rules, I will ban you if I don’t like you, I will ban you if I’m playing Scrabble and I get a triple word score on a word which starts with the same letter as your username. I will ban you just to ban you.”)
But I digress.
Sony can offer a commodity for sale to the community, but that doesn’t mean they know how to properly sell it to them. Had they done this correctly, they would have had some of the more vocal detractors trumpeting their praises right now, which would have made it far easier to be more audacious down the road.
The key is to try to get the community involved, even if only a fraction of the input is used. Look at how fast the tone of the conversation changed with GlassWalls’ inquiry:
“Now that the velvet rope thing has been settled (it’s coming down), I want to pose a question to you all since there are those on either side of the debate. What would you find of value that should belong in an exclusive access area? Would it be a private (as in public, but with restricted access) space, a club that gave exclusive rewards on a somewhat regular basis, exclusive access to special events, early access to content, etc? I’m just listing ideas off the top of my head, but there is a potential here that could be interesting. I’m just your humble, neighborhood community guy, but I am also a conduit of ideas. If you have any, here’s the chance to share them.”
From that point forward, the respondents provided what they should have been offering all along: suggestions on how to improve upon the strategy Sony’s putting in place.
Not to make this too much of a “told ya so” moment, but this is already what I suggested in my recent article on Home’s class division. Rather than stand there and rail against something Sony’s obviously going to try (with very sound business logic behind such a move), why not offer input to direct it the way we want it to go?
My personal theory on how to do it correctly: implement a “Home Plus” loyalty rewards system. Call it whatever you want — I rather like the idea of calling it a “Second Floor” membership — but we’ll use basic nomenclature for ease of discussion.
Gamers are inherently competitive people; thus, use money as a method of keeping score. Every dollar is one-hundred points. Every penny is one point. Thus, someone who has spent one-thousand dollars in Home would have 100,000 points on that account. It wouldn’t have to be publicly displayed, like those ridiculous Aurora rankings plastered to everyone’s backsides. But it does create the ability to restrict access to public areas to accounts that don’t have sufficient points.
It also gives the ability to set different pricing tiers. Let’s say a new private estate is released with a price tag of twenty dollars. But, to accounts with X-number of points, it would cost less. Discounting based on cumulative prior spending across the board with Home is a way to reward repeat business, and the distinction in price point would make it very easy for Sony to measure how that commodity sold to repeat spenders versus new users (or infrequent spenders).
If this sort of setup sounds familiar, it’s because we see it in our everyday lives. Having worked in resort development for nearly a decade, virtually every major hotel chain out there has some sort of reward-point system. Even Ritz-Carlton, which railed against such a bourgeois brand loyalty scheme, finally gave in as part of their reinvention and created Ritz points.
Did I like giving away rooms to Marriott points members, for instance? Hell no. They lowered my Average Daily Rate (ADR). Curiously enough, though, the RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) wasn’t affected all that much, as those people had a tendency to spend their discretionary dollars on various resort activities and other concierge services.
And, best part of all, someone who used his reward points to score a room for free (or at a sharply discounted rate, such as Starwood’s cash-and-points system) would end up being a phenomenal source of word-of-mouth marketing.
Home has none of this. Instead, Home had an arbitrary divide in which Mansion owners get a few extra perks that other community members don’t receive.
Like I said: great idea, lousy execution.
If Home really wanted to push things, they should have created a “Home within a Home” which required at least one of three things to access:
- A cumulative amount of prior spending;
- A PlayStation Plus subscription;
- A new “Home Plus” subscription.
This Home-within-a-Home would feature multiple public spaces, games and private-estate features which could only be accessed by the accounts that qualified. It’s no different than how a full-service luxury resort offers a concierge level – a resort within a resort – to high-paying guests. But it’s open to anyone who’s spent the green. Limiting it solely to Mansion owners would be like limiting access to the Concierge level at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua solely to people who live in Windermere, Florida. It would honk off everyone else who has the money but chose not to live in that neighborhood.
(Ironically, the Hub actually was a golden opportunity to offer a Home-within-a-Home experience. The fact that they didn’t – that they spent a ridiculous fortune making so much content available to the entire community for free – is a fact that seems to be overlooked.)
Now, one thing I will say which is going to annoy some people: I don’t support communism. There are those who contend that Home should be, in essence, a classless society. This is complete and total horseradish. Home citizens do a very good job of segregating themselves into classes and trying to look special already. Some of them glitch benches to stare down at others. Others mix-and-match clothing items to show that they spend money. And so forth. To wag a disapproving finger at Sony for attempting to capitalize on human nature is plain ridiculous.
That doesn’t mean they’re doing it the right way, mind you. But a blanket “thou shalt not” is Maginot Line thinking at best. Sony’s failure is in not executing this strategy properly. If they’d done it right, they’d have far less pushback from all but the most hardened anti-capitalists.
Example. L’Oreal charges a pretty substantial price tag compared to a lot of other cosmetic lines. Their marketing tagline isn’t, “Pay more so you can look down at others.” No, their tagline is “Because I’m worth it.” The looking-down-at-others part is the subliminal. Sony hasn’t done much with subliminal marketing and advertising, I’m afraid.
So let’s look at some of these community objections.
1. The value doesn’t justify the price tag.
The Gold Suit is a gaudy piece of trash to me. But its novelty justified its price tag. Some people absolutely love the thing, and since there was nothing else like it at the time, it sold quite well. The problem is that you can only go to the well with that strategy so many times. Reskinning the suit as a different gemstone theme and selling it a premium might work once, but after a while it must fall prey to the law of diminishing returns. Is it a developer being “lazy” as such? No. But it’s an obvious attempt at trying to make lightning strike in the same place twice, and they’ll keep trying to strike in the same spot until it no longer justifies itself on paper. The one thing I will say, in Sony’s defense, is that considering how stingy the majority of Home’s population is (if my calculations are anywhere close to being correct, a typical product deployment might only see about five-thousand transactions on average, and a megahit might see about twenty-thousand transactions), I’m certainly not going to blame them for going after low-hanging fruit as one facet of their revenue generation plan. I’d do the same thing.
2. Interlinking personal estates is a “hard sell” approach.
No it’s not. The problem is that Sony, again, went half-assed on it. Limiting features such as the Jeep and the helicopter exclusively to the Mansion is just silly. Imagine if they were linked to a selection of other personal estates as well? How would that improve their sales figures? And heck, if you have to placate the plebs, throw in the Hub as the default choice for all users. As it presently stands, it’s not a hard sell. It’s a stupid sell. There’s a difference.
3. An exclusive “members only” area in a prominent public space, where access is linked to Mansion ownership only, is divisive, morally outrageous, bad for business, bad for the community, and the worst thing since the 1918 flu pandemic.
Good lord, people! The Hub offers insane amounts of free stuff to enjoy – which Sony could have easily charged money for – and you’re getting all verklempt over ONE restricted-access area? Do you stand outside airports and protest commercial air travel because some people get first-class seating and access to the first-class lounge?
Did some citizens stand on the staircase and taunt other users? Sure. That’s no different than public bench glitchers in the old Central Plaza, as far as I’m concerned. That’s a problem with the community, not the developer. Just hit Ignore on those people and move on. To me, it’s no different than watching some of those insipid bench glitchers in the old Central Plaza stand there and get their jollies by staring down imperiously at others. The mistake that Sony made was in forgetting that there are some very, very immature elements of this community.
I don’t buy the argument that publicly roped-off areas somehow negatively affect new-user retention. Keep in mind that, in real life, we’re used to not having access to areas. You can’t get into the carpool lane on the freeway. You can’t access a first-class lounge at an airport. You can’t park in a restricted parking spot. The list goes on. A new Home user doesn’t know any better, and thus just assumes that there will be multiple restricted areas (which, to an extent, is true). And it’s not like the Theater is even the first public space you enter, unlike the old Central Plaza.
Again, the flaw here is that Sony had a great idea but didn’t cast the net wide enough. Creating a social class divide in Home is a valid way to sell product. And, keep in mind, Sony could make everything free and there would still be class division in Home. But from an advertising standpoint, it would have made more sense to create a class divide that would have been easy for a wide cross-section of the community to get behind, so that they could then turn around and sell it to everyone else on Sony’s behalf; setting the Mansion as the division point was a narrowly-focused delineation which had a low probability of success. GlassWalls’ question in the Sony forum, regarding what users would be willing to pay a premium for, was a huge step in the right direction; whether those forum responses are used or not, it at least creates a sense of input.
Is it necessary to win them over? No. But if you treat them like a focus group, it might have been a good idea to try. With the negative response that rolled in, Sony either had to ignore them or give into them – and they chose the latter, which frankly was rather magnanimous of them.
There is this growing belief I’m seeing from some that in Home, commercialism and community are mutually exclusive; that Home, in order to foster community, should limit itself to selling virtual commodities at a limited number of commerce points, that there should be minimal to no advertising, and that pricing should somehow be artificially capped at certain levels. These steps will somehow magically make Home a better place.
That’s utterly ridiculous. What it’ll do is drive Home out of business. Would you go to your local amusement park and ask to enjoy all the rides for free? No. Would you expect your favorite restaurant to simply give you food for free? No. Then why is it that people have such a hard time accepting moneymaking ventures in Home, which – I would remind everyone – is a free service?
Home exists for one purpose: to generate revenue. If it fails to do so, it dies. Home’s underlying architecture is more than five years old, and it’s been in open beta for about three years. That’s positively ancient in computer gaming. And I really do believe there’s a bell curve to average revenue per user in Home; some – not all, but some – of the most prominent long-term Home citizens may be on the far end of that bell curve, where the talk outweighs the money. Home, like any business, needs to find the sweet spot on the tennis racquet and then enlarge it as much as possible.
Now, does that invalidate dissenting opinions when Sony tries something? Not at all. The best business decisions are made with social dynamics in mind, and the theatre rope was a clear example of how this wasn’t taken into account. Personally, I had no issue with an exclusive area (which, as a reminder, I had no access to). I simply believe that they went about it the wrong way. The correct approach would have been to build a truly fantastic “members only” environment with attractions, games and music galore, offer it to a limited number of people who agreed to help virally promote it, and then sell access to it like crazy.
If Home itself is to become something of a social game, then it logically should have restricted areas which can only be obtained through extraordinary means. Lord knows, you and I have both played any number of video games that don’t let you into certain areas until your level is high enough, or until you’ve obtained some sort of special token/charm/bracelet/sword/wand/rectal suppository/et cetera.
Sony forum users: you can’t have something for nothing. Home gave away the house for so long that you’ve come to expect it to always be that way. It ain’t. If this somehow makes you feel like the community experience has been diluted, then do your part to help build the community. In video gaming, everything is handed to us on a silver plate; in Home, what we get out of it is what we put into it. And remember that when you’re criticizing, try to do so constructively; businesspeople have little use for whinging and crying, but they most assuredly are looking for ways to improve their products and services in order to generate more revenue and create a more enjoyable experience for you.
Sony and other developers: remember that you’re dealing with the legacy of what you’ve built. Home isn’t a subscription service, and you spent years giving away the store to build up as much of a revenue-generating userbase as possible. As much as elements of the community may at times sound like a bunch of spoiled kids, remember that they care enough to voice their opinions, and there are valuable insights to be gleaned from such feedback, even if it does require wading through pages of hurtful and inappropriate commentary to find them. Be wary of being so focused on what you want to sell that you forget what people are willing to buy.
So now then. Nearly four-thousand words in, let’s get back to Home Plus.
I talked about this concept earlier in the article, but here it is in a nutshell: create a subscription-based service within Home’s present architecture (with different membership tiers at different pricing levels). In return for a monthly subscription amount (say, perhaps, a base of five dollars), virtual commodities are available at sharp discounts. In addition, certain “members only” public spaces would be made available, similar to the Sodium VIP lounge. These public spaces would have to have some nifty features in order to avoid becoming ghost towns, such as dedicated moderators offering strict control of public decorum – I know I’d pay a premium to enjoy a Home without the trolls – as well as various minigames and other attractions in order to justify the price tag.
In such a setup, Home Plus members could have extra functionality in their private estates – such as the Jeep and helicopter – as well as their own private section of the Sony forum. If it’s possible to build a different queue system for Home Plus members – in effect, letting them cut to the front of the line or somehow minimizing wait times for games – that would be a strong bonus, as well.
The beauty of this setup is that it creates a premium service tier in Home, but it’s open to anyone willing to spend the money. It’s not tied to anything specific in Home, such as the Mansion. Thus, no one is penalized for refusing to own a specific commodity that they find distasteful.
The only counter-objection that’ll come up – and trust me, it will – is the concern that nearly all of Home’s future developments would be geared towards Home Plus members, and that the regular Home would largely stagnate. Such an argument, however, has no basis in logic; it would be akin to an airline ceasing all economy-class services and only offering first-class level. The fact that Home Plus requires a financial investment would eliminate the majority of the Home population from considering it, anyway.
Of course, that’s when a savvy marketer offers promotions such as “Home Plus for a day” and other sneak peeks in order to entice more people to sign up. But that’s another article altogether.
When it comes to Home, what will you spend a premium on? What will drive you to pull out the wallet and help support this virtual world that we all inhabit? Home Community Management has specifically solicited such feedback, so now’s the time.
November 15th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 31 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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It doesn’t matter how any Premium Program is set up, someone will always scream “No Fair!”.
If VIP Access/Memberships bother you, it’s not for you in the first place. Carry on and get on with your normal and virtual lives.
Good Day!
LOL guess I missed the rectal suppository game.I’m not too sure your $5 base price for a plus membership would be high enough to cover the discounts you listed which would then lead Sony to lose cash instead of make it but the idea is a good 1 IF Sony and the developers put in some good bells and whistles.1 thing many ppl have been waiting for,in some cases years,is increased functionality.We want more options,IMO you can keep the steep discounts on items in your plan if they gave us more interactive options between users for the membership fee I’d buy in immediately.This is probably because I view Home as more of a social setting than as a mall for my avatar and only buy items that enhance social aspects of Home.But I also realize that not everyone sees things the same way so I’d encourage a diversified approach and see what works best,meaning this.In your Plus idea why not have all these things?The discounts on items,the personal spaces available to members only,for a price a new skill set/sets for our avatars,concerts for members only or for everyone but members get reduced prices and a ride in a Limo to the show,early access to new Home game/personal spaces(where we could also act like beta testers).I’m sure there are many other things that could be added to this list but these are some of the things I’d pay extra for.Like I said before I’m greedy,I’m also not a communist by nature so I don’t view all commercialism as bad but I have to be offered the things I want before I open the wallet.Your right Home is getting old in console time so it really is way past time to take the training wheels off and see how far this virtual reality can go.Everyone says it has potential to do many more great things and I agree but if I’m expected to pay extra I want to see some of them at the time of payment(“coming soon” won’t cut it) or I’ll be content to use Home for free.If all these things were included I’d probably gladly pay more than the $5 you suggested,heck I’d probably gladly pay $10 just for the extra skills/functions,but I have to see some substantial value to me before I’d buy in.Any of the other functions I listed probably wouldn’t be enough on their own to entice me to pay more than the $5 you suggested but I fully realize my opinion is just that,my own.I don’t claim to speak for the community,in my view the Home community is quite diverse and I doubt 100% of them feel the same about any given subject.I think ppl that do claim to be speaking on behalf of the community project their own feelings about any given topic onto the community and then if needed find others to voice similiar views.I seriously doubt they’ve taken a survey of Home users or even asked random ppl on Home about their views.I really think Sony is missing out on vital info. by not conducting voluntary surveys in Home.All they need to do is set up a booth in the Hub and they’d get some honest answers from ppl that actually use Home which would help guide them to what “the masses” really want and would pay extra for.On the Sony forums I’m sure there are some ppl that don’t even use Home who offer their opinions about it and there are some Home users,like myself,that are unable to use the forum because of technical difficulties so why not go straight to the ppl that are certainly using Home and see what they want?After all it seems rather odd to me to conform to ppl’s views about Home who may not even be using it.Then the survey info. could be correlated to the forums and other info.(like prior sales numbers) and a more complete picture might be had.Of course they might all contradict 1 another but it would cost Sony next to nothing to get this info.
I don’t really have time to comment on this story right now, but I would like to make one observation. In the very first article which I wrote for HSM, I pointed out that the percentage of people using virtual worlds is very small, ranging from about 8% for Millenial teens to about 4% for Boomers. And extrapolating from data publicly released by Sony, I estimated that of the 77 million registered accounts claimed in early 2011, approximately 20% were active users (taking into account region hopping), which would give a population of about 3.4 million Home users.
Now I haven’t had time to research this, but on the NA forums it was claimed that, according to HearItWow, only 2% of the people regularly using Home actually make purchases. If that’s true, that gives us a population of about 68,800 people who use Home consistently enough to actually “buy into” or financially support Home, with the remaining 98% making up the population of default-wearing trolls which plague the NA Home like biblical locusts.
The point I wish to make is this: an active population of 2% who financially support Home is already a very “elite” segment of the NA population. Yes, we have our divisions based upon socio-economic factors, that is unavoidable, but with such a small population to work with, does it really make sense to try to introduce artificial class structures into Home based upon nothing more than purchasing patterns, or worse, specific item purchases? This is a point-of-view of which I am not at all convinced.
It’s certainly a great question, Aet.
Both of our calculations point to a fairly small active userbase in Home, and only a fraction of that which spends money with any regularity. This, I believe, is why Home is making a concerted effort to broaden its active user base with high-cost ventures such as the Hub (that are completely free to enjoy), and at the same time exploring premium pricing strategies. After three years of open beta, they’ve built up a core of repeat spenders, so now it’s a matter of trying to increase the revenue per available user.
Introducing a loyalty program makes a lot of sense to me. It does create something of a class structure in Home, and the mistake Sony has made so far is that they didn’t set it properly to begin with (limiting it to the Mansion wasn’t the best idea). It should ideally be something that anyone can buy into, with clearly defined and lucrative services/products available to those who join.
Great topic and article Norse, and very well laid out strategy as well. The only issue I have with it is that there are many people, as Aeter just stated, who use Home all of the time but have very little money to spend there. I believe that the premium space or system should be two tiered, the first being based totally on user participation and the second on that plus their ability to buy stuff. I made some of the same points in my forum posts on GlassWalls question and I think it is a much fairer way to handle things. If I as a user go into Home regularly and do all of the quests that are presented in the Hub, I should be rewarded for my loyalty, not just my pocketbook.
I like the idea you presented of a points system for the monetary end of things.That is smart thinking and would be an easy way for Sony to keep track of what people are spending before and after.
As you stated there will be divisions and classes set up in Home irregardless of Sony, it is really the people involved in Home that do this, Sony is only using it to their advantage.
That being said I would still like to see those people who use Home all the time rewarded somehow as well.
An added feature to help insure good behavior in this premium area of Home could be this, one ban, ok u made a mistake, 2 bans, you are out of the premium program forever, no if, and’s or buts. They could also look at those working to get in and try and make sure trouble makers never get in in the first place, but I am not sure that is feasible.
Great article! It will get us all thinking.
Great article and I agree with Burbie and Aeternitas on the issue of money. It must’ve felt like a decent idea to Sony at the time but ultimately it rewards the wrong idea they have in mind for Home.
Also, just a reminder to anyone out there, remember this old adage: “Don’t attribute to malice what can instead be attributed to stupidity.”
I doubt Sony intended on fabricating a social class issue with the Mansion; if anything, they’re exploiting human nature. I suspect, instead, that the Mansion must’ve sold well enough that they felt they could experiment with it -- if badly in this case. They must’ve felt this would work, otherwise they wouldn’t have attempted it, but they decided to tie the VIP space to a personal space that at best makes little sense to choose.
Not everyone cares for the Mansion and they rather not have limited access to a Core space based solely on conflicting taste. Really, they should allow for a wider variety of tastes if they ever decide to revisit the VIP concept. The points concept eliminates the feeling they’re forcing us to choose what they thought we’d buy.
Here is the summary of the recommendations made by Forum members regarding what should be the ‘qualifications’ required for entry:
QUALIFICATIONS:
HearItWow: Locust and Glass have both expressed an intent to create some sort of loyalty program to reward Home’s big spenders. That’s not a bad idea…Sony runs a bunch of them, and I can’t think of many stores that don’t have them.
Membership Criteria
Entrance should be allowed to all Mansion owners, and expanded to include other items of high-value content as management decides. A loyalty program focused on overall purchase volume may be too restrictive; where do we draw the line? $100? $1,000? Ultimately, I think it’s better for the program to have multiple methods of entry; own all of the Mansion spaces, own all of the high-end suits, own a set of spaces that haven’t been released yet, etc. The Mansion/Gold aesthetic is a turn-off to some users, so allowing entrance through some less-gaudy, high-value content would be good for membership.
Aeternitas33: I’ve been wondering if a private club space would be a workable idea. Put in on the Navigator, and possibly charge for admission on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis; possibly award monthly memberships based upon total PSN and Home purchases for the preceding month; possibly even award monthly memberships for notable forum contributions or to reward good behavior? Put an exclusive game in the clubroom that awards clothing or furniture items for limited times only (3 month periods max) -- that would really appeal to the trophy hunters. Exclusive access to special events or early access to content are also fine, as long as you give everyone advance notice of what the upcoming rewards will be (to the extent feasible) and give everyone an equal chance to participate/buy into the program if they wish, instead of arbitrarily excluding people based upon past criteria which they weren’t even aware of.
Burbie52: If it is based on something that anyone could accomplish, say finishing a certain amount of the quests you will be adding to the Hub on a regular basis, rather than the ability to buy things, then I think it could be a fair way to give an extra reward to those who really participate in Home activities. If it is based upon what people can afford to purchase it is an altogether different thing.
MaliceMizer: In terms of exclusive rewards or access? How about delivering these rewards through exclusive quests? Stick them in the Quest list, clearly indicate they’re a part of the exclusive access program, so people can see the quest and go “Hey, that sounds really cool! Maybe I should go see what this club’s all about”.
DJTenchu: if you’re going to make the entrance requirement be cash money, then more cash money should go into it’s development. That should make both sides happy. For those who don’t just want to buy in, you could set up weekly contests or easter eggs, since you mentioned those, and give the first 50 or w/e (just throwing out a number here) users free access to said club for a month. that way you’d have a good chance of turning some of the free loving users into revenue, by showing them what they COULD be part of.
Stevev363: A member would have to hold themselves to a decorum unlike the runners who got behind the rope and acted foolishly by taunting others in the vicinity. If an entrance to the club spaces is publicly visible and people on either side are able to act out in such a manner than I’d rather not see a visible entrance anywhere other than the navigator or from my Exclusives spaces.
It should stay connected to the Exclusives store, it’s exclusive to US Home so you can’t be any more exclusive than that.
Pyrodragon: Instead of limiting to just one thing (PS+, money spent, quests completed), how about using them all. The space could have multiple levels with each level used for a corresponding prerequisite. (i.e. plus club level on second floor, quest completers on the third floor, and rich folks on the fourth floor).
The space could be available to those who spent a certain amount, plus members, or possibly buy a special item. a special quest would also be made and made available once a month for 1 week. after completing the quest the player would then have one week to enjoy the VIP space for 1 week after completing the quest. the quest can be played once each month.
Musicman1234: The Home Owners club is the answer for an all around loyalty program for Home. I also think it should be tied to the exclusive store. Does not have to be the mansion but should be tied to estates and the closest thing we have to this already built..is the mansion and it’s components with it being the single most expensive to own and has different areas hooked to it for further integration. Musicman1234
Kid Fleetfoot: There have been VIP areas before, SingStar and Guitar Hero come to mind, which were both accessed as I recall simply by providing an email address and choosing a password. Without the email address and password, the areas were exclusive or VIP. Is this what is wanted now? Or a different form of access?
Options to access are many. Using the above method, paying directly for access, open to anyone, entry by funds spent when the funds reach a certain level, and others.
Ichibanluckycat: I did like the idea of a country club that someone threw out. Maybe to appeal to those that spend money but don’t want a mansion it could be based on how many personal spaces someone owns in general. Padded to allow for free spaces given out if you really hate the riff-raff. Or tier the membership; 10 spaces for a junior membership, 20+ for a senior membership. Whatever it is that gains people access should be very clearly defined and specific.
Archangel: There are all different types of Home users but since we are discussing an exclusive area, two groups stand out to me: time and money. Many of us have spent a ton of both while others not. Maybe a couple of restricted areas would be of pertinence here
Hibana: So far, we have:
1. Doing what EU Home did by making the two doors upstairs into theater rooms
2. Reserving it for special events such as special video screenings/debuts held by developers and etc.
3. Using it for two exclusive pay-per-view theater rooms featuring movies that are being featured in PSN
DarthGranny: If I boil down all the recommendations and eliminate all the personal attacks that were in that Forum thread, here’s the bottom line:
CONSENSUS:
Multiple ways to qualify for membership:
1. Money: buy membership on a monthly or annual basis
2. Quest completion
3. Ticket basis: pay for specific events/quests/shows
4. Loyalty program: combination of purchases in Home and participation in Home games/events/quests
And here are the ‘features’ that the Forum members asked be included in this new space:
GLASS WALLS: What would you find of value that should belong in an exclusive access area? Would it be a private (as in public, but with restricted access) space, a club that gave exclusive rewards on a somewhat regular basis, exclusive access to special events, early access to content, etc?
Hibana: I still don’t fully understand why that area is there, but in the meantime, instead of complaining about it — why not offer suggestions on what we can do with that Exclusives Access staircase area and the two doors upstairs.
So far I suggested:
1. Doing what EU Home has done by removing the rope blocking the stairs, and making the two entryways connected to theaters
2. Reserving that area (blocking off access for everybody) for special official events/promotions held by developers, such as special debut screenings for trailers
3. Integrating PPV screenings for big screen movies that are available on PSN (So you buy a ticket, and can gain access to watch a movie for the whole week until they rotate new movies around every Thursday content update for example.
Also, you can have the movie as a ‘rental’ if you don’t choose to watch it in the theater, but watch it directly from your PS3. The theater is just a way to integrate a ‘real public movie screening experience’ with other people in the same room watching the same movie.)
Keara22hi: A private theatre for special events that are fee-based is a good idea. You want the concert -- you pay for the tickets. Simple solution.
• THEN: Pay the talent! Use the gate receipts for user created entertainment to pay the users who create and perform it. Sony would of course get their % off the top, but why not reward some of the hard working video makers and musicians and actors, etc. who populate Home? For example, if DOD did a remake of Space Balls casting the PStalent actors and utilizing their existing crew, why should they be giving it away for free?
• Offer a sliding scale on prices -- buy one event for one price, a month pass to all events for a higher price, and an annual pass for what you might pay for a Netflix subscription.
• You want to boost personal space sales -- find a way to make it pay to stream the private theatre performances onto the big screens in such spaces as the Hollywood Hills home, the Mansion, the Amaterasu yacht, etc.
Conrad Max: At some point, this area will very likely play host to exclusive events such as limited time games, visits from the gaming/entertainment world, contests or even more betas and/or “sneak peeks”. I think that’s a good thing.
And it may not only be Sony related events happening behind the rope, but maybe something from Lockwood, nDreams and other Home partners. Perhaps there may be certain requirements in order to participate or view these events? For an example, for nDreams it may require an upgrade to an Aurora game.
DJTenchu: a coming soon theatre would be nice too, featuring upcoming content to NA PSN & Home. With that, people could know what’s coming and plan their purchases. I think home would find that people would buy more on update days if they could anticipate the release with a week advanced notice. Sure, that would require home devs to step up a notch, but i believe in the long run the revenue increase would be worth the first few weeks of crunch.
…a VIP section would be cool, though I don’t think 1 single space would do the job. maybe something along the lines of a nightclub? music on a dance floor, streaming TV by a bar, pool n darts over yonder, a splash of home arcade cabinets, and some booths for socializing, even an outdoor patio with a nice day/night cycle or something. if your going to make the entrance requirement be cash money, then more cash money should go into it’s development.
Kitty Pyra My only addition is a quest that would open the rope and allow access for XX days to a very nice VIP room. This room would be co-designed by all the content designers of HOME each developing a certain aspect. Such as nDreams making a theater section with guy and girl dancers at random intervals, Mass Media designing the room layout with Sony providing the music, etc. After XX days the user will have the option to pay a nominal fee to gain a week, month or yearly pass. At which time they would be given a estate item and clothing item unique to the VIP room. The would also be given the option of giving a friend on their PSN a code to give them a ticket … and allowing the cycle to continue.
Aeternitas33: Put an exclusive game in the club room that awards clothing or furniture items for limited times only (3 month periods max) -- that would really appeal to the trophy hunters. Exclusive access to special events or early access to content are also fine, as long as you give everyone advance notice of what the upcoming rewards will be (to the extent feasible) and give everyone an equal chance to participate/buy into the program if they wish, instead of arbitrarily excluding people based upon past criteria which they weren’t even aware of.
Burbie52: I think a nice club with different music than is available elsewhere in Home, perhaps music that changes out at regular intervals, would be a nice touch. People love to dance in Home, that has been proven many times, so something like this would be very popular I think. I think the mansion owners have been compensated enough at this point, so why not move on to something else, not everyone can afford nor wants the mansion.
If they wanted to add some extra rewards to be won within this club structure that would be good as well, but I think rewards should have to be won, not always just given, as we are all gamers at heart and a good challenge is always welcome.
MaliceMizer: In terms of exclusive rewards or access? How about delivering these rewards through exclusive quests? Stick them in the Quest list, clearly indicate they’re a part of the exclusive access program, so people can see the quest and go “Hey, that sounds really cool! Maybe I should go see what this club’s all about”.
Stevev363 A luxe lounge area with members only sale kiosk and mini games with prizes would be good,.. I like the over-the-top high end appeal of the exclusives items so whatever you do keep that in mind, keep it high end haute coture not Vegas nightclub.
Archangel 73: how about access to a private beach or island with a lagoon and waterfalls?
HearItWow:
Setting:
Think James Bond movies. French Riveria, perhaps, an oceanfront bistro with a patio and a two-story interior, with games on one level and a lounge on the second level. Use this space to test new features in Home, such as day/night cycles, weather cycles, etc. Make it clear from the start that this will be a purpose of this space; that you’re essentially using the VIP club members as part of an ongoing private beta to test new Home functionality. After all, high spenders are pretty good at figuring out what will sell. Maybe even give them a separate Forum thread, like the one we had during Private beta.
Content:
There should be three tiers, all of which can be marketed to boost the value of participation:
General free rewards: Make some items available to all VIP members throughout the year, and limit them to those who have access to the space. Seeing these rewards will encourage other Home users to want to get access.
Merit-based rewards: Have a set of rewards that is reserved for those who spend more money in Home. For example, spending $100 rewards an exclusive outift, spending $500 rewards a companion, spending $1,000 rewards a personal space, etc. These items should have broad-based appeal and unique elements; taste and preferences being subjective, you may need a couple of items at each level. This will give people an incentive to spend.
Giftable rewards: Allow users to buy a set of exclusive rewards, separate and distinct from those available for free through the program, and gift them to people on their Friend lists. This will allow people who aren’t currently in the program to benefit, and encourage them to join it. As these are paid items, it also becomes a way to monetize the VIP program itself, above and beyond its existing methods of monetization.
Ichybanluckycat: This hypothetical space should definitely pull together people’s favorite things from various places. A water feature (beach or pool), games, dancing, a bar like in sodium, daily points to earn prizes to keep interest, etc. Even a special event for members, after an open house as a reward for being hospitable. Or a big yearly event you can only get to via a helicopter in the country club like The ****ing Catalina Wine Mixer.
Pyrodragon: I somewhat based the lower (public) section on the gamers lounge, but would preferably have more color or at least a better atmosphere to it. i was aiming for a club type space that anyone could enjoy while those that are able to get into the VIP/exclusive area are far enough out of range so as to not catch the typing of those in the lower section and vice versa. the stairway would work in a similar fashion to the teleport pads from Lockwood, the teleporters in the Neptune suite or nDreams teleport “tube gates” in Aurora.
The public portion would be mostly seating, possibly a dance floor. The stairway to the VIP section would be clearly marked with what is available up there and requirements to gain access The VIP section would consist of 2-4 player games, a dance floor, a “DJ booth” with a different/early selection of music, a kiosk with early, discounted and/or exclusive items for sale and either a teleporter to one’s default space or the mansion (I’d personally prefer teleporting to the user’s default space). I’m sure a few more chairs or sofas can fit in that mostly blank area to the left
(my apologies, Pyrodragon -- I could not copy/paste your sketches)
KidFleetfoot: A space with perhaps four different rooms each with a small dance floor and also some seating of which each room would have a different style of music say jazz, classical, pop, rock (early or latter years), or whatever. Come to think of it maybe one room will do if you build in the music players at each corner (assuming a square room) and there could be four music players as described. There’d still be room for a dance floor and seating if programmed correctly.
I don’t think Home is ready for a public “premium” space just yet. The new re-imagine design of Home I imagine was not to just satisfy the online Home community that frequents the program, but to attract new users, and new accounts.
Everyone associate’s the public Home as being a free service, as it has been advertised as such since the beginning. The addition of a public space that would require a purchase or transaction of funds for admission will only be received negatively, especially from new comers. Note the velvet rope in the theater.
To ask the community what type of public premium space they would pay for is, I think is a mistake -- that will only lead to more unhappy users. With so many opinions it would be impossible to satisfy everyone. Even IF they could make everyone happy for the grand opening of this space, how do you keep the people coming back?
chances are, like any New space there will be a Honeymoon period, but as this space would cost money ( of some sorts) chances are Sony will only get a small % of registered users in the beginning to pay , and if the space is not frequently updated chances are usage of the space will die off quickly -- and word will spread that its not worth the investment.
I think the answer lies with the clubs, as this is a semi public but private space. Sony Home management should re-look at the club system, and make it so the owners can choose from a selection of themed club houses that offer a high degree of customization.(going much beyond the placement of decor and furniture) If Sony gave its users that ability with in Home, I think allot of people would pay for it plus a monthly or yearly service fee as well.
The key to a sustainable “Premium Home” is User customization.
The whole idea about asking ppl what they would pay for is for Sony to get an idea what ppl want and will pay for,to say it’s a bad idea is kind of saying that ppl don’t know what’s best for them to spend their cash on.This is something I couldn’t disagree with more,if not the ppl then who is the best judge of how and on what they will spend cash on?Which is why I like the in-Home survey idea.”How do you keep ppl coming back to the space?” you ask.Well for starters you make it interesting which is why I think the Dance bar/Beach idea would work quite well as long as there was a wide range of quality music available(I know,it then becomes what is quality music?But I think songs that have sold well in the past or currently would be a good starting point) and IMO only,would look alot like “Studio 54″ from the 70’s,minus the drugs of course,in order for ppl to have a light show while they dance.Singstar does ok for a public space even with a mostly malfunctioning video feed and any dance place on Home is almost sure to have a few ppl at it which indicates to me that music is a wanted feature.The problem with clubs is that you must be on good terms with the owner to get in,if you think the upstairs Theatre idea was exclusionary I don’t see how this is any different if offered as an alternative to V.I.P. areas and IMO is worse as there is no guarantee that many ppl that already own the clubs will then decide they don’t want them any longer if this were forced upon them which if I read my purchase agreement right would allow them to give them back with Sony possibly having to refund some cash.If Sony and users want a club upgrade,and really who doesn’t?,go ahead and make it but I don’t think it would work as an alternative for semi-public V.I.P. areas.I agree that customization is 1 of the keys to success on Home but I believe the powers that be should talk more with the ppl on the streets of Home before going forward too much in any 1 direction or go slowly in many directions and see what sells best.I see many similarities in the answers given above and think they are a good starting point.Of course there is no way to make 100% of the ppl happy but you don’t really need to,if you satisfy a high enough percentage Sony can make it profitable but they must give us some substantial improvements in order to justify the additional outlay,again IMO only.
Nice article.
I enjoy the occasions when I see the gold suit. I think it’s humorous which I assume it was meant to be. (I have the Elvis 50,000,000 Fans Can’t Be Wrong album cover on which he wears that gold suit which I believe he only wore once in a picture frame in my one of my Home.) Some country stars wear fancy suits flashing suits like a Rhinestone Cowboy & rock groups and singers like KISS use crayons and lipstick to get fancy looks. Others wear jeans with holes in them. It’s all good.
I have the mansion which is also all good. I have it but it was too expensive for me until the free garage and price glitch made it affordable at $20 total. Rock on Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers!!!
As far as expensive stuff whether gold or diamonds (is copper next?) let SONY put it out. If people want to buy it they’ll buy it.
I’m more concerned with broken things getting fixed than I am on the price of items.
The idea of an exclusive area and/or exclusive benefits is all right and it too is all good just as long as SONY doesn’t slap anyone in the face. Bad scene. I do get it that people didn’t like the rope where it was.
It’ll work out. The customer isn’t always right but we do have a voice and often it’s listened to even if a bit late.
Nice article, but I disagree with you on point 3. Having the rope in such a prominent space like the middle of the theater is not the same as the bench glitch in CP since I rarely saw jerks up on the benches taunting people. Anyone could get onto the benches if they took the time to learn the glitch.
I think that if there is a VIP area it should be open to anyone that has spent over $1 and visited Home over 30 times.
Norse,I appreciate your passion with all this.You stayed objective and open in your thought’s and ideas while yet not being pushy at all with your opinion. Great job Norse!!
I’m genuinely grateful for all of the kind words and feedback on this article. I know that my writing doesn’t always contain a lot of populist sentiment — to the point where I’ve been getting some thinly-veiled “whose side are you on” letters to the editor in my inbox — but what I’m trying to do is help bridge the gap between consumer and developer.
This doesn’t mean that everything the developers do is perfect. Far from it. But one of the things I believe in is that before you try to change someone’s mind, try to see things from their perspective first. Speaking as someone who’s worked in resort development for a long time, I can tell you point-blank that what I’m always looking for is constructive criticism. Compliments are wonderful, sure, but I’m constantly on the lookout for how I can improve.
The problem is that “You suck and this is stoopid what were you thinking” feedback doesn’t give me anything to go on. And the same holds true for Sony. I know it might feel good to dogpile on “the Man” — I’ve seen users doing that on the forum to, in essence, earn some sort of street cred — but it doesn’t accomplish anything. Oh, sure, it might bring a rope down, but it doesn’t give any insight as to what to do next.
I take a fair amount of heat for writing stuff which is viewed as egregiously pro-Sony (which is somewhat amusing, considering how much criticism I’ve directed towards them over the last year), but the reality is that we should *all* be rooting for Sony to succeed — because the only way they’re going to do that is to compel enough people to spend money on quality products and services. The best thing that we can do, as Home citizens, is to help guide the economic engine and business strategy of Home, because ultimately it is we who benefit from this.
I hope to never again see the bitter, angry ugliness that developed during the rope debate on the Sony forum. The conduct from some of the people involved really surprised me. There’s nothing wrong with disagreement and discussion — hell, HSM is Home’s version of Firing Line, after all — but we must strive to remember that famous line from Lost Horizon: “Be *kind* to one another.”
It worries me that there’s a growing “us versus them” sentiment on the Sony forum from disenfranchised users who somehow feel that Home has let them down. It’s Sony’s responsibility to actively (and continuously) solicit feedback in order to keep these people engaged — GlassWalls’ recent inquiry was a perfect example of this — but it’s also the responsibility of the community to build itself and also take an active role in helping to shape the future of Home.
If HSM can have some small part in this process, then we have done our jobs.
As one of the leading proponents of the fight against the velvet rope in the theater, I find the reaction of some of the leading voices in this community to be rather disheartening.
I would suggest that those alleging “bitter, angry ugliness” take a step back and ask themselves what it was that was being fought for: A section of Home that is open and available to all, freely, in keeping with the tradition that Home has established.
Such a debate is likely to arouse passions on both sides, but at the core of it lies a simple question: Do we want a Home that excludes or a Home that includes? As a percentage of the userbase chooses to be in Home to escape the nonsense that permeates the everyday world, I believe that inclusion is the better path to success.
How many official forum bytes have been occupied with complaints of harassment and trolling, all sharing the same, single underlying message: This shouldn’t be happening -here-. Throwing an arbitrary divide into the community, in the form of a velvet rope, only exacerbates that frustration.
There is no harm in a loyalty program, but as you pointed out, Norse, it should be based on merits other than the purchase of a particular personal space. It should also be reserved for those who have earned it, not flaunted in a common area beyond the basic need of explaining its existence.
I truly fear that someone’s trial balloon has been popped, and that certain forces are railing against those who held the pins.
Someday I may disagree with you, HearItWow, but not so far. I too come to Home looking for a better virtual world than the one I live in here in reality. And I firmly believe that Sony can give us a better world and still make a profit. I read all 39 pages of the “rope” discussion on the Playstation blog last night and I was dismayed that anyone stood FOR it. Yes, we all want to feel special, but does anyone need this at the cost of other people’s feelings?
For what it’s worth, HIW, I thought you had some of the best (and calmest) arguments against the rope. You took a principled stand against something you felt was wrong, and while I personally didn’t have the same gut reaction against the rope that some people had — the first time I saw it, I just shrugged and moved on — I can definitely see the points you brought up.
The feeling that I keep getting is that Sony had a really good idea pitched to them, and then completely messed up the implementation. There’s a sociological ripple effect when something new is introduced to Home, and perhaps they’re just now starting to take this into account when they make business decisions.
The fallacy in the thinking that I’m seeing is that they treated the Mansion experiments (the rope, the jeep, the chopper, etc.) like how a game developer would treat downloadable content packs, and completely overlooked the much more complicated permutations that go with administrating a virtual society.
Hopefully, the insights from all of this recent activity will produce a superb rewards program. I’m enthusiastic for what they might come up with.
To expand upon what HIW is saying, there is nothing “kind” about a velvet rope in a core public space. And complaints from certain quarters that “lines were drawn” ring hollow to me, because, as I’ve already observed, the first line drawn was the velvet rope itself. Likewise, exhortations that Home users need to provide positive solutions also ring hollow to me, because my recent experience has been that Home management tends to invoke Home users in the same way that primitive societies invoked their gods, i.e., as justifications for their per-determined actions.
No one asked Home users if they wanted a Home segregated by game genres. No one asked Home users if they wanted a theater segregated by a velvet rope according to Mansion ownership. The amount of double-talk from the HCMs (and yes, I realize they’re just messengers) on this issue was unbelievable. And although I haven’t commented publicly on this before, I fail to understand why there would be a need to develop a theater “sans a rope” when in fact the original theater design is “sans a rope” as can be seen by merely visiting the Euro or Asian Homes.
As I’ve already observed on the forums, when you deliberately set out to create artificial class divides in Home, when you deliberately try to stir the ugly emotions of arrogance and superiority and jealousy and resentment just to push product, you lose all moral credibility to complain about a worsened forum environment. It’s not as if you weren’t warned. I and a few others have been complaining about the jeeps, the helicopters and the velvet ropes for precisely this reason, because we know it creates a coarsened social environment in Home, and the coarsened forum environment is just yet another consequence as well.
Yesterday marked the four year anniversary of a loved one’s death, reminding me of the reason why I first became active in Home to begin with. As HIW commented, many of us turn to Home to escape the nonsense of the everyday world, and so, when I go into Home and I find that nonsense (in the form of red carpets and velvet ropes) there too, it turns Home from an escape into a twisted reflection of the real world, thereby nullifying my reason for being in, and using Home at all.
I would like Home to be available as an escape for anyone, without having to make any purchases to justify one’s presence there. The original vision of Home included the use of Home for social communication for all gamers, and that vision is being obscured by this new “Sonyland.” It shouldn’t be that difficult to devise means of distinguishing between those who choose to use Home as a free service, versus those who choose to use Home for trolling and harassment. But is Sony making any efforts along these lines?
I would also like to point out that this serves Sony’s interests too, because people are not going to bother to explore Home in the first place, especially those who are new to virtual worlds, if every activity in Home carries a price tag. This is why I commented during the recent VIP space debates that there needs to remain a compelling experience for all Home users. People may “need” to take an economy flight to get from NY to LA, but no one “needs” to use Home. Sony has to give them a reason. Saying that Home has been free for three (or however many) years now, and that things need to change, is wishful thinking completely divorced from reality. Societal attitudes regarding virtual worlds and their uses (or non-use) aren’t going to be changed in just three years of Open Beta. Nor are they going to be changed in just three more years of “Sonyland.” As I’ve pointed out before, we are dealing with generational changes here. Just witness the adoption of computer technology over the past few decades.
These past few days, I’ve been thinking back about all the HSM articles I’ve written, and many of the forum discussions I’ve had, and it’s become crystal-clear that there’s a handful of voices who have been consistently trying to oppose anything I’ve had to say about the NA Home and its future development. Not that I’m the only one of course. HearItWow has also made some wonderful critiques about the direction of the NA Home, and so has Joanna Dark. And in my opinion, the Home community would be better served, if the decision makers over the NA Home spent less time trying to impose their view of things on this new service, and spent more time listening to those of us who have been trying to inform that there are other approaches which might be usefully followed.
And just to be clear, this also is not a formal response. The above are just a few thoughts upon which I’ve been dwelling these past few days.
you find the words than i haven’t,ty aetenita
Merci.
Again I point to the V.I.P. lounge in Sodium 1 and ask where was the concern about class divides before the recent discussion.It wasn’t a velvet rope but a laser wall which is much more obvious and wall looking.Some ppl may want a Home where everyone has equal access to every area but then complain about the “trolls” who are allowed in which I find to be rather odd.Idk squat about what transpired on the Sony forums as I can’t read them because of technical difficulties but from what I’ve seen just on this site I think some ppl believe everyone should live their lives the same way(like believing in the same ideas as they do).Well it is entirely possible to disagree with someone in a heated way and then have a virtual beer at the sports bar afterwards.Another words just because someone disagrees with a cherished idea of someone else’s doesn’t mean they will disagree with everything they will ever say.It’s possible for ppl to remain friendly after they’ve each “pissed in each others cheerios”,to steal a line from somewhere in HSM’s remote past.The fact is Home is a widely diverse place,populated with ppl from all over the world and not everyone will see things the same way.It’s 1 thing to disagree with someone though and an entirely different thing to try to shame them into seeing things your way,which is what I’ve seen in some cases to a slight degree.I find it odd that you would ask Sony to leave real world class considerations out of Home but say nothing about how some ppl have attempted to influence others views by using shame(a real world tool of influence).I’m not saying your responsible for the actions of others here,I guess I’m just asking where do you draw the line about letting real world “nonsense” into Home? Because I’m sure everyone has different ideas about what constitutes “nonsense” and ppl complaining about being blocked off from 1 area while singing the praises of another place that does the same thing is nonsense to me.
The more I think about this topic the more odd the idea of all access to everyone in all areas is to me.Are not personal spaces limited access areas that keep some ppl out?Just because the barrier to entry is invisible doesn’t mean it’s not there.And again,there was no outcry about exclusion until just recently.I’d say rather than a “Home that is open and available to all,freely,in keeping with the tradition Home has established” Home has always been about excluding others to an extent.1 of the draws of the personal spaces is that they provide a place to go that is free from other users so to say Home has always been an open and free,access to all areas places is a fallacy.Sony was just doing the same thing they’ve always done,it’s just that this time they tied it to the Mansion.
The presence of private spaces and clubhouses is all the more reason why roping off part of a core public space is absurd. There are no shortage of places people can go to get away from the rabble.
Sodium was discussed at length. It’s not a core space. No one is suggesting that there should be no VIP areas in Home, only that they should not be in the core spaces that Sony has defined. No portion of the previous Home core was off-limits to anyone (Central Plaza, The Mall, Gamer’s Lounge, Movie Theater), so why should some part of the new core be roped off?
It’s not my place to comment on how others choose to argue. Throughout that debate, I did my level best to remain civil to everyone and to try and defuse arguments with reason. I also kept that thread going when people attempted to tell those against the rope to shut up and move on.
Here’s a bit of reality: It is a big deal, not for what it is, but for the precedent it sets. You validate that point in your own posts by bringing up the Sodium VIP area. If some members of the community hadn’t taken a stand against this, there is no doubt in my mind that many more roped-off areas would have followed in other parts of the core.
To assert that the way it’s always been done in the past is the way it should always be done is a sure way to not progress very far.If you are happy with never progressing then it works out fine but I would like to see Home do some new and bold things.If having limited access areas for a price is the way to get some of the things I’ve wanted for a long time then fine,I’ll do what needs to be done to get in and have fun once I’m in.Your right though,this COULD be a big deal if taken too far but it’s not that way yet and until it gets to the breaking point I’ll gladly help in any way I can.However if it does go too far I’ll gladly squawk about it,I just think it’s too early.Furthermore I don’t believe any stand taken against Sodium 1’s V.I.P. area worked too well or the Theatre V.I.P. thing wouldn’t have happened.The problem with clubhouses and personal spaces is that you won’t be meeting many new faces in those areas,generally you already know most of the ppl already or they are friends of friends.Part of Homes draw to me is meeting fresh interesting faces on a regular basis and the V.I.P. areas wouldn’t hamper that much.Differing opinions are what keeps Homes blood pumping IMO so any insinuation that we all must think alike on this topic(not by you but others) makes my head hurt.
I don’t think it was too soon. Once the precedent is set, it always exists. Keep in mind that we’ve come a long way from the vehement opposition to the Plus space last year, when a larger portion of the community said no to the idea.
We’re at a point where the community is willing to accept a VIP space, and even a portal to it from the core spaces, but not the segmentation of the core spaces themselves.
Ultimately, that’s the best direction for Home, because it gives new users a chance to look around and get their feet wet before someone starts tapping them on the shoulder and asking for money. If the first impression is one of a divided community where money buys access, that will alienate a portion of the userbase, a move that Home can ill afford at this point in its development.
There was a rather interesting thread on the EU forums commenting on this topic as well. Nearly every respondent was opposed to the idea of roping off part of a core space. Worth a read if you can access it.
Precedents can be overturned,it may be harder later on but not impossible.I don’t think new users would get alienated if they were offered an upgraded experience for a price.If this were true for everyone I wouldn’t have paid my internet provider until I had a chance to use the internet enough to know if I wanted it.”Trying before you buy” isn’t always necessary to make a good purchase,a new user could ask other ppl on Home about the service before buying or Sony could make it easy and list the perks along with the price so they could make an informed decision.As for the EU forums 2 things.1st not every European idea or consensus is a good 1 nor are they always applicable to N.A. 2nd I can’t access the EU forum either but I’d like to see how the question was asked.If I were asked if I wanted a roped off public area I’d probably say no as well but if asked if I was ok with the rope if I were given increased bells and whistles for a price or qualification it would depend on the bells and whistles and the price and/or qualifications but I wouldn’t be against it inherently.
I have noticed that too, Aeternitas. And you are not alone. Conrad Max, Jersquall, and several others seem to be “targets” in the Forum. No matter what the topic, here comes the “Barroom Brawlers” whose day is not complete unless they can find someone to attack verbally.
I had to plow through more than 400 posts in that thread until I found viable suggestions on how to implement a rewards program in Home. All those personal attacks! I know HearItWow objected to Norse describing it as ‘bitter, angry, ugliness’ and pointed out why they were so upset -- but this time I agree with Norse: it is ugly when people use personal attacks to try to make a point.
But I sincerely hope that you (and the other reasonable voices in the Forum) will not give up and move on. Let’s continue to do what was discussed in staff meeting: ‘take the high road, don’t stoop to that level, offer constructive criticism, look for solutions’. If others choose to attack, just ignore it and keep going.
There’s a point you raised here, Aet, which I think is very important: that the disenfranchisement amongst certain members of the community stems from what they expect Home should be versus what it actually is. A general undercurrent of “Home needs to be like this or it is wrong” absolutism in some of the feedback.
The rope itself isn’t the issue. It really isn’t. Neither were the jeep or the chopper. The real issue is that all of these things cumulatively feed into a *fear* that Home will turn into a place which requires financial investment to enjoy.
Home is a free playground. I suspect it likely always will be free, because that way there’s no barrier to entry for the tens of millions of registered users. There’s no economic incentive to move the whole thing to a subscription service. Thus, the core Home experience for the more socially-minded, like you and I, will almost certainly never be truly impacted by various commercial ventures implemented by Sony. The PS Plus space in SCEE Home and the Sodium VIP lounge are two excellent examples of ghost towns that didn’t impact the community.
That said, I think it’s futile to expect Sony to not experiment with different means of revenue generation. Some of them will work and some won’t. All of us at HSM have spent the last year clamoring for social improvements to Home (with some really well-written articles to that end), and that work hasn’t gone unnoticed. But that’s not the only method to generate more revenue — and let’s face it, were we in charge of Home, like any business, that’s the first and foremost concern we have to look at.
(Before anyone jumps in and says that revenue trumps community satisfaction: that’s a false argument. The more satisfied the community, the greater the likelihood of them spending money and recommending it to their peers. The key is figuring out *how* to get everyone to spend money. Home has been the gaming industry’s equivalent of a free lunch for three years, and I’m amazed by a certain entitlement attitude that’s developed as a result.)
Thus, when various ideas are proposed or implemented — and particularly when Home officials blatantly solicit feedback on what the community would like to see in terms of premium programs — the point that I keep trying to get across to everyone is that simply planting one’s feet and saying no to all of it isn’t going to be very effective. Strategically, it makes far more sense to try to steer their ventures towards what we want to see, or what would at the very least be minimally intrusive.
I don’t ascribe any sort of maliciousness to what Sony’s doing (even if some of it has been rather boneheaded). They’ve got an aging application that had little to offer at launch, played catch-up for years, was written off by the press, and has a very fickle (and small) core population that bought into the concept of what Home *was* and is now trying to adapt to what Home has to evolve into if it is to survive.
That core population has half the equation. Stamping one’s feet and saying no to every new venture doesn’t give much insight as to what Sony *ought* to do instead. Home can’t continue to be such a free playground. The only way to cover the cost of the core updates required to introduce more dramatic social enhancements to Home is to find ways of generating additional revenue and attracting more developers to the platform. Commercializing Home, at least in contrast to what it was three years ago, is thus a necessary evil.
(The “SonyLand” charge that was coined over on the forum amuses me. Why does everyone seem to overlook the fact that all of the Hub elements are free? It cost a fortune to develop, and it took *years* to put together. I was fully expecting Cogs, Bootleggers and Poker to be freemium experiences, but they’re all completely free. This astonishes me. And has anyone bothered to say a simple “thank you” to Sony for reintroducing a proper poker application to Home *and* making it free? Oy.)
We can best serve our own interests by saying no to stupid ventures (such as the rope) *and* offering feedback on what to do instead. The latter half is critical, because it gives the developers a clear understanding of what people are willing to support. And the clearer the picture, the more accountability there is to bring it to life.
When I managed sales operations at a couple of (hotel brand withheld) resorts, what I used to look at were my CSS (Customer Satisfaction Survey) scores. Negative scores where someone puked about everything that they expected and didn’t get were fairly useless to me, and did little to alter my business plan. The scores that got my attention — and got the attention of my superiors back at corporate — where the ones which had detailed analysis of what was functionally wrong or could be improved upon, with suggestions of how best to do it. Even if those reports were very harsh, I at least had something to work with. And those reports made a huge difference.
Catch is, most people don’t have the patience or discipline to bring a solution as well as a problem. But that’s exactly what we need to do if we’re to improve Home. And the voices which will have the most impact are, in my opinion, the ones who put in that extra effort.
Home will never revert to the same quaint experience it was three years ago, when there were few games, few commodities, few people and a more or less homogenized experience. But I strongly doubt Home will ever turn into a full subscription service, or that Sony would be stupid enough to force users to spend money in order to enjoy the basic social aspects of Home that have remained essentially unchanged (or improved upon, such as group voice chat) since the beginning. It’s logical for us to expect various moneymaking ventures in Home, and prudent of us to try to help guide such things for better satisfaction.
Will this negatively impact the sense of escapism from aspects of the real world we find distasteful? That’s a question each person has to answer for himself. It might ultimately drive you out of Home. Or it might be far, far less intrusive than you think.
I’m really tempted to start a new article series under the theme of, “Here’s What Home Should Be” — and try to solicit Home’s most vocal detractors to put together their vision of what Home should be instead, with supporting arguments of how it could monetize and be feasible. I doubt many would have the patience to write such a thing — and some of them probably don’t have the business acumen to put it together to begin with — but it could be a remarkably insightful series that would really benefit the Home community in the long run.
Jumping back to the VIP lounge at Sodium 1: Here’s my experience. I met a small group of people at Sodium when I was fairly knew to Home and they seemed to be interesting. We were (I thought) enjoying our conversation and making new friends, when one of them suggested we move to a quieter spot. So I followed them to the opening of the VIP lounge and there I was barred from entrance. They stood inside, pretending at first that they didn’t know why I couldn’t enter and then making fun of me for not be “important” enough to enter, until I left (as quickly as I could when realized what was happening). If I had known of a way to protest about this to Sony or anyone back then, I would have. This was one of my (fortunately) few really bad experiences on Home in my early days, or I’m not sure I would have ever returned and subsequently spent all of the money that I have in the last year plus. I seldom go to Sodium now and I have never bought “entrance” to the VIP lounge. I never would buy my way into an area that excluded my less fortunate friends. I have no desire to spend time with people who think they are important because they have money.
So what I think you are saying is that because a few ppl will behave badly everyone must atone for their sins by not being able to enjoy a limited access space.If that’s what you are saying I would respond by saying I don’t want to pay for other ppl’s wrong-doings by not being able to enjoy certain types of spaces.If someone wronged you please take it up with them and not take your feelings out on the Home community or other ppl by trying to limit their fun.
Wow. I guess I missed all the commotion. I rarely go in the theater lobby and never saw the velvet rope. LOL. I still have not been there to see what all the big deal was about. *shrugs* As far as VIP areas and inequality and jerk acting superior, I don’t see what the big deal is. There is already inequality in gaming and Home. There will always be someone who will act superior because they have something you don’t. I once asked a guy why he was glitching on a railing and he said it was because others couldn’t do it and of course he would not tell me how it was done. I just shrug and go on my merry way.