The Hub: First Impressions
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
On Wednesday night I went to a party hosted by my friend and fellow staff writer, Gideon at the Central Plaza. It took place at two in the morning on Thursday and was meant to be a final goodbye to this icon of Home as we have now entered a new phase. The bench glitchers showed up in droves, dancing the last few minutes of Plaza away.
I wasn’t in the closed beta for the new Hub and associated districts as many of my friends were. The non disclosure agreement they agreed to didn’t allow them to tell me anything either, so everything I had garnered in information was what was given to me in the media outlets that Sony had condoned. Therefore when I stepped into this “brave new world” on Thursday morning, it was with a childlike wonder and new eyes; like a kid seeing Disneyland for the first time.
What I saw impressed me a great deal. I went to the Hub itself first after downloading all of the districts and games on the pre-screen before entering Home. I always find this to be a quicker way to do this, that or going to my Harbour Apartment. The Hub reminds me a bit of the huge Eaton Center, that is literally a mile long, in Toronto, Canada. I have been there before a few times and this place impressed me much the same way, it gives you the impression that it is much larger than it truly is because of the design of it.
The Cogs game in the center drew my attention immediately, as I have been wanting to try it ever since I heard about it. I went through the first three trial levels, without much of a score of course, and found it to be a great learning phase for the game itself, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like the way that the major Sony stores are laid out right in the Hub itself, as well as a new store they are calling Games. This is a great way to introduce newcomers and help them with their initial forays into Home, they have made this new space very user friendly.
The teleporter system is a great touch as well because it allows new people to go to any of the districts, and the mall, without having to fumble with their navigators. The dancing area is great, it has good music and I loved its light, airy feel, and the fact that it has a glass wall to give it an open yet still private feeling. All in all I was very happy with the central Hub.
I went to the teleporter at the end of the Hub and selected the first floor mall, it is a very cool concept they have established here. I like the way they have divided the stores up into separate entities. Sidekicks, Shears and the new Games are all new storefronts and very well laid out and easily accessible. I think doing this simple thing will increase sales tremendously, as it gives the user an easy way to look at these products.
Moving up to the second floor using the elevator/teleporter, I found another nice area to congregate and shop. This floor seems to be dominated by the major third party developers like nDreams, Lockwood, Loot, and Mass Media. I love that Billabong, Veemee and Konami – just to name a few – now have their own stores instead of having to search for them in the navigator. There is even a new Music store that has me thinking they will be expanding our capabilities in this direction as time goes on; something that many have been clamoring for for a long time. This is again great marketing strategy I think, making it readily available to a whole new group of users as well as those of us who have been around awhile.
My next stop was the new theater lobby and I must say it was a total surprise to me. I loved it! It made me feel as though I was in a real theater, with all of the posters and the screens separated by a bit of space instead of being grouped together like they were before. It has that modern, open feeling like the rest of the spaces I visited, and the ease with which you can find the different trailers and movies makes it a very pleasing environment. Though the old theater was all right, I didn’t spend much time there as it felt closed in and a bit stuffy to me.
This lobby doesn’t have that feeling at all, I can see myself spending some real time here as there is a very nice seating area in the center of it. I like that there is a theater guide here that allows you to pick and download whatever theater you are interested in. There is a cordoned off area that I found out was accessible only to mansion owners, but it only leads to direct connections like the helicopter and Jeep did, so no worries for me. The theaters themselves are well rendered and look like real theaters all the way down to the projector with its beam of light shooting onto the screen.
I went to all of the new districts one by one, the Action one is very cool. I was even able to get into one game of Bootleggers before I moved on, which surprised me as I expected all of the games to be full.
The fact that they have brought back a lot of the major Central Plaza take overs is truly wonderful. One of the big downfalls of this type of marketing is that there are people, like our military users, who miss the opportunity to do them. This has been taken care of by this wonderful integration into this district.
Dancing area - Pier Park
The Pier is a nice area as well, I love the whole concept of a boardwalk environment and I liked the Ferris Wheel immensely, though I agree with Norse on the visualization capability. I like the set up and it is obvious from the turkeys running about that this is going to be the place where small events take place. The dance area is good sized and has some nice upbeat music playing in it.
It is great that they have added more than one dance floor in these areas, as dancing is a popular event in Home. Now if they would just upgrade out dancing choices it would be a perfect combination.The integration of the RC rally and theaters here is the perfect choice, as is the direct connection to the last place I went, the Sportswalk.
Though I am not really a sports fan I was also very impressed with the Sportswalk district. The addition of a sports bar was a great idea; it gives you the feeling you are right outside a sporting arena. The ability to act as though your are the bartender or a patron is cute, and the availability of poker and a trivia game is an added incentive to come and visit, even if you are not a sports fan like me. I think this will be an exceptionally popular area, as people can come here and discuss real life sporting games with the feed of scores that they are supplying there. It is a smart addition to bring the Home experiences we have closer to the real lives we live.
I am not sure if the Adventure area has been finished as the only game listed there is the same Uncharted 3 game we have been playing for three weeks now, I hope it will be added to soon for the people who like that genre, personally I would love to see some form of RPG added to the mix. But I must say that this new generation of spaces is going to change the face of the Home we have all known for so long and I welcome it with open arms. Thank you Sony for hearing us and bringing this to our shores, it is much appreciated.
November 4th, 2011 by Burbie52 | 6 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Asia is once again left out from this update!
Really, I don’t understand what is going on in their minds.
Here are a couple of my 1st impressions:The R/C game is pretty good but would like to see more tracks and upgrades.The Sports Bar:the score ticker is a very good idea,the quiz I found had some rather dubious sports questions,things like how much an athelete made in salary(which in my mind would be a financial question not sports) and the computer picking which topic the questions come from almost guarentees that you won’t be getting all the rewards anytime soon.Lastly I come to poker,actually I went there 1st only saved it for last.It looks great visually and you can see the cards quite well,it also had some of the feel of the old days in the communication department but it has real problems(which I hate to even bring up because I’m glad it’s back but here we go anyways)1st anyone can walk up to the table and enter it at anytime,this means you usually end up playing against ppl with the starting max.(meaning on the low stakes game 6ppl have $800 and 1or2 have alot more) and the game doesn’t end til’ you leave at which time any cash I won was lost(hopefully that was a malfunction as the place is still a little buggy).2ndly these rewards are almost entirely luck related,a reward for bankrupting a certain # of ppl or playing a certain # of hands without a break would’ve been a good addition.This feels almost exactly like the poker table for our personal spaces except we can now play with randoms.It’s better than what we had a week ago but still not as good as what we had 18 months ago.
I too enjoyed the new areas, Likewise yesterday was my first adventure into the new Home. The theater lobby and the addition of scribble shooter game was a cool surprise. Also NO client download, I was expecting another download/ update beofre I could Log in- I was so happy that was not the case. To jump into home and be a part of the New world is very cool.
I really enjoyed the attention to detail, and cant stop wondering ” whats behind some of these closed doors? I hope more spaces in the future find themselves attached to the new core spaces.
which brings me to my One critique: I would have preferred to have more points of entry (like the door between the sports Walk and Pier park)then teleporters -- As When I step into a elevator I would expect to only go UP or down. Or how fun would it be to ride the tran in the Hub to a new location?
All and All, the new re-imagination of Home is awesome,its good to be Home again.
My first impression was intense. I was quite scared to see what it was going to look like.. I said my goodbyes to Central Plaza as I cried, I know I am a wuss. Central Plaza had a lot of memories though. One very good thing that came out of the new re design was the music! It is so enjoyable to listen to, I love it so much. It’ll take some time getting used to the new things, but it’s a lot of fun!
I was lucky enough to be a Beta for the new hub. As excited as I was to get into the new area and thought they were great, I found most of the space empty. I am happy it’s opening. It will be so much better with people!
Awesome article Burbie. Great job on describing all the new spaces. I wish I could articulate like you do…