The Hub: The New Noob Central
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
You may have heard – or were under the assumption – that the re-design of Home with the Hub was going to reduce trolling because without the old Central Plaza, trolls wouldn’t be congregating and offending.
The idea went something like this: from this new, central area, new users would find activities and games, but mostly, other areas that would attract them. In these other places they would find like-minded gamers to befriend and game with. With friends made and games to play, there would be no boredom and therefore, no trolling.
So much for that idea. Welcome to the Hub, the new troll zone.
One of the first things I saw when I originally arrived at the Hub was a user dressed in default clothing, making the comment, “Wat u do here?” I’m guessing the activities and places to go are not as obvious to people (new or otherwise) as Sony thought they would be. Adding music and a large space in which to dance is not a valid way to keep people moving on.
The second thing I saw was a female avatar lecturing some guy dressed in default clothes on how to treat girls on Home. She was making comments like, “Girls are real people, with feelings, and should be treated with respect.” To which the guy replied, “U sexy. I love u.” The third thing I saw was a default dressed male dancing on a large-breasted female avatar. I felt like advising him that “she” was likely to be a male, but I didn’t bother.
I used to try (to quote a friend) to “improve Home, one noob at a time.” Well, I’m tired of fighting that battle. I think most defaults of this type enjoy being trolls. That’s what they come to Home to do. I guess it’s part of the Home experience and always will be. As my reporting them to Sony will continue to be part of their experience.
In trying to find if my perceptions were correct, I responded to a default who spoke to me. After initial greetings our conversation went like this:
KM: Do you come here often?
RP: yes
KM: Why is that?
RP: its fun
KM: What is? Cogs? The dancing?
RP: all of it
KM: The Cogs game has its own space. Have you played there?
RP: yes once.
KM: Have you ridden the Ferris Wheel at Pier Park?
RP: yes
KM: Have you played RC Rally?
RP: no
KM: Are you aware that you can win truck companions there?
RP: yes
KM: Do you spend money here?
RP: no
At this point we were interrupted by two trolls. One stated rather incoherently that I thought I was “all that” – apparently because I spell correctly and use proper grammar. The other person, who decided that I was talking to my boyfriend, was making fun of us having a relationship on Home. Immediately after this, he made fun of the male person that I was talking to for not knowing that I was, according to him, a “tranny.”
You can change the space, but you can’t change the people – welcome to the new Home, same as the old Home.
What would we really miss if the Hub was gone? All of the stores there are already in the mall, which is a very nice modern addition to the new Home. The Cogs game has its own public space, with plenty of room there for it to change, develop and grow. You can dance at the Pier, Sportswalk or other old favorite places like Sing Star or Ratchet & Clank. That leaves advertisements, the current Axe quiz, a teleporter, the Mall Entrance and the activity board. We have advertisements at all of the other places already. That said, I do like the new “Coming Attraction” signs and suggest that they be shown on a larger format at Pier Park and the Sportswalk. The teleporter and a mall entrance? Is there really a huge need for these items here? A friend mentioned to me that he sees people use the teleporter once and then the novelty wears off. That leaves the activity board. I hesitate to suggest where this could be moved because the most likely place, Pier Park, is already overcrowded.
However, Sony is unlikely to remove the Hub, the center – perhaps the essence – of the new Home. There is already a view of it from the Harbour Studio, so I suggest a tweaking of it instead.
Let’s keep the Activity Board, but put it in the center of the space, with two screens facing in opposite directions, one of which is directly facing the arrival spot. The quest integration was supposed to be a large part of the remodel of Home, wasn’t it? You may not have even noticed the small activity boards at the other new Core spaces yet either. The four store entrances could easily be changed to entrances to other areas like the Sportswalk, the Action District, the Adventure District and Pier Park. They could even add entrances to the Theater and Bowling Alley from here, in line with the Hub being a place to move to other areas from. This would also serve to free-up some room at the Pier. I would love to see the Pier expanded and less physically crowded. I have a lot of suggestions for Sony about Pier Park, including putting speakers on either side of an enlarged dance floor, but that’s another article.
In conclusion, it seems as though in Sony’s attempt to make Home a larger, more accessible place for people new to Home, they seemed to have cramped out those of us who are incumbent to the service. It’s understandable that attracting new users is paramount to Sony’s goals for Home, but is it really worth it at the risk of ticking off the regulars? No matter what content you throw in there, or how you choose to dress it up, a troll’s gotta troll, and throwing some confused new kid into the mix would be like throwing chum into shark-infested waters. It’s a shame, really, because – on the surface at least – it wouldn’t take much to make Home even more enjoyable for everyone.
December 13th, 2011 by Kassadee Marie | 31 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
First I would like to say that I do not like to use the term “Noob” because it is used to often in a negative sense. We all had to start from the beginning when we started home and as you stated there are a lot of new users who Troll and have very bad and disrespectful attitudes so Troll seems to fit those people. I find that a lot of people who have been in home also seem to develop very large egos because they can glitch or own a lot of clothing, etc. You said that you used to help the new people and I still try and do that because if we all give up on the good ones then all the negative people win. I refuse to let those small minded people to rule something that brings good people together, but we also have to demonstrate intelligence and kindness to those who deserve it or we are not better than the Trolls.
My editor removed the following form my story: Author’s notes: 1. The word ‘default’ refers to both the clothing provided for free by Sony and to the people who wear them on Home. 2. A troll is a person, usually male, often dressed in default male or female clothing or with an unusual appearance (in ways to numerous to list) traveling around Home, talking to others and/or taking actions with intent to cause pain. 3. If the term noob (in reference to people that are “new” to Home) offends you, substitute “male, likely to be dressed in default clothing, wandering around Home for the first few times without a clue” in the following article.
I have no idea, if this seems better to you in any way. And, actually, I still do try to help newcomers, I just gave up trying to improve trolls.
I was simply stating that a lot of people who are not new to home seem to use the term in a hurtful and degrading manner towards others. I have been on home for a long time and have seen both sides, from the new people and from the the people who have been here from the beginning. I was just saying that we all need to try and keep a positive attitude towards one another. I personally was attacked verbally yesterday by a new user trying to make them feel big and this does happen and I don’t like it anymore than the next person but I just ignored him and moved on. We all know there are going to be users of small character and intelligence from new and old. Thank you for not giving up on the ones who are worth helping.
I remember the sales pitch. I thought the Home redesign was snake oil from the first time I heard of it, and nothing has changed that opinion. As I’ve said before, the new Home was designed for the benefit of devs and bean counters, not actual Home users. The Hub is useless, and worse than useless, it’s inferior to the Central Plaza which it replaced.
Sony wanted to attract more gamers to Home. Has that plan succeeded? Well, I’d like to see some figures. Has the gaming media taken a stronger interest in PS Home? Not that I’ve noticed. Has the wider gaming community changed its opinions about PS Home? I don’t think so. Personally I’ve almost completely stopped using Home since the redesign, and I’m not the only one.
It never made much sense to me to begin with. The old Home was supposedly unfriendly to noobs, and made it too difficult to locate games. So now we have Sonyland, which puts games front and center, but I guess not everyone got the memo, because trolling and sexual harassment are still going on; meanwhile those on my friends list who are real gamers seem to be spending even more time playing disc-based games and less time in Home.
I don’t think Home should cater to the lowest common denominator. And I don’t think that trying to attract competitive gamers, who have the attention span of a tsetse fly on crystal meth, is the way to encourage the growth of a platform that is ideally suited for cooperative social activities.
In the NA Home, everything is about scarcity and competition and class snobbery – just witness the roped-off VIP area in the theater lobby which still hasn’t been removed. It’s like a cultural disease. What other Home consistently gives away prizes or promotions based upon how many questions you can answer within a fixed time period? Or requires you to hunt down a certain person in a certain interval? Or gives out limited use codes?
But I don’t play games to compete; I play games to have fun. I’m an RPG player, and things like trophies don’t add anything of value to a game for me. Online play is OK if it’s cooperative, but competitive death matches really aren’t my thing either. And so naturally when I get on Home, I’m looking to enjoy myself, not try to make myself superior to someone else by acquiring some virtual trophy, or beating them out on a leaderboard.
The NA Home has so many negative associations for me now. It just isn’t fun anymore.
I agree with you except when it comes to the class-snobbery.IMO classes are exactly what Central Plaza had and what the Hub lacks.CP had 3 classes,bench glitchers,dancers,everyone else.Anyone could move between these classes but once in those areas there was a feeling of togetherness with the other ppl in that area.The Hub feels way too sterile and soul-less to me,CP had a lived-in feeling to it which the changing scenery for gimmicks helped enhance.It’s certainly a new Home and it’s not for the better,mostly.I can get better games on disc’s and the quiz’s certainly leave much to be desired.Poker crashes more often than it works for me and it seems like all the interesting random ppl I used to run into have disappeared.Now the only time I go on Home is to meet up with my friends,otherwise it’s Skyrim(incidentally a game full of classes) and Blk-ops for me.
It’s just not in the Hub that you see the Glitchers and so on….You travel over to the Sodium Hub and enter Scorpio’s….AT ANY ONE GIVEN TIME You will see possibly more than one Avi getting their Coyote Ugly on…Which sometimes is very irritating because I like to play the “drinking game”… and it makes it difficult to concentrate when a set of legs are moving about …Ugh!…But those people Will never and I mean NEVER take away from my enjoyment of Home….
It’s not so much that ppl in the Hub take away from my enjoyment but there isn’t much being added.In the Central Plaza I could count on having at least 1 interesting convo. a day,in the Hub I’m guarenteed to get 1 convo. a day that goes like this.”How do I get out of here?”(random person #1)”Turn off your PS3″(me)”Troll”(random person #2).Not much added enjoyment there.
On class snobbery: I must have a different experience from you on this topic. I’m not disagreeing with the competitive gamer angle necessarily -- more on that later -- but it feels like we’re tackling simultaneously a significant issue and fighting windmills. Assuming my experience is average (no guarantees there obviously), here’s what I’ve noticed. I haven’t see anyone give that big a toss about the Mansion. I have yet to see anyone ask, or even imply (purchasing habits aside perhaps), “Give me more because I’m a mansion space owner!” I’ve seen no one even imply they’re better than another because of the mansion space.
A lot of that seems just as much Sony’s issue as ours, if not more so, reasoning behind it aside. Of course classism is human nature and Sony’s attempt to give Mansion Owners a VIP room, among other perks, isn’t helping. But if what I’m seeing is typical behavior for Home, it feels like it’ll take more than that to make people classist. In fact, I’ve heard more people say don’t than please do when it comes to the mansion.
Of course this is my experience; I won’t say I represent everyone else. It could easily be I’m not seeing the people who think it’s a good idea to make Home “Mansion Owners Ltd.” It could also easily be, though, that Sony pushed for the money here and the consequence is they ignored the possibility no one appreciates missing out because of their purchasing habits.
Ultimately I side on the issue like this: the VIP room, among other perks, gives the wrong impression of Home and of its users. Home obviously isn’t supposed to be exclusive to any group and we can/should keep going against that trend, but it doesn’t seem true that people were asking for it in the first place. The class snobbery issue seems oddly an exception rather than the norm for Home, if a pervasive one alongside trolling and sexual harassment -- they won’t go away unfortunately though fortunately it also seems to be a minority of people. Again, if what I’m seeing is typical.
On ‘real gamers’: That’s a little unfair, isn’t it? I mean, I’m a cooperative gamer as well and it seems a bit callous to wash all competitive gamers as ADHD-riddled individuals. It comes off a bit awkward to me as well when we discuss class snobbery in Home. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but we shouldn’t call Sony out without noting our own natural tendencies to argue who is ‘real’ and who ‘isn’t’ in the process.
Bear in mind, I don’t necessarily think it’s good to pull in competitive gamers alone either. We need social improvements because Home is, undeniably, a social program. If we can to game competitively, we can do so outside of Home. We need us as well to keep it alive.
I just think it suggests Unfortunate Implications if we start calling one group ‘real gamers’ and not another, even if that wasn’t the intention, especially in light of the topic.
On The Hub: I’ll agree that I’d love to see the numbers. Is it working? We don’t know, so I’ll hold off judgment on the Hub until we see it. It may be succeeding for all we know -- although I agree the media isn’t in a Home frenzy (not yet, anyway, and that can still happen if Sony steps up).
It’s worth noting that The Hub barely a month old (I think, I may be off by a month). Central Plaza had three years to make an impression in Open Beta, longer if you include Closed Beta. Certainly the Hub has its faults -- god knows the poker rooms crash and people are losing chips, among other issues. However, one month could be a bit early to tell long-run benefits, though this would require some numbers so I’ll just repeat the ‘give us numbers’ bit.
What the timeline means, though, is the Old Guard of Home is so used to the original design of Home that it occasionally produces a Chicken Little effect when the river suddenly changes course. Obviously this doesn’t affect everything -- Sony does make errors and we’re seeing changes to their plan as the audience reacts -- but sometimes we lose focus of key factors.
We had three years of Open Beta (ignoring Closed Beta for a moment) to figure out where the original river flowed (and if it actually got where it desired to go) but now we turned a sharp curve and need to adjust. We’re used to those three years of user-generated snobbery, Central Plaza, and Sony’s typical pricing strategy. In psychology, we would have a field day figuring out what our subconscious would say about us during that period.
What will happen in three years of the Hub? We may no longer think the Hub’s useless. It helps easy newcomers when they see this new world and want to adapt; the Core Spaces, namely, allow people to seamlessly (comparatively speaking) walk from one Core space to another without requiring the Navigator. It should encourage exploring, though obviously this would depend on user retention (of which, again, we don’t have numbers). Plus, as mentioned, it places games up front and center, giving people the benefit of seeing interactivity from step two, if not step one.
As for ‘not everyone getting the memo,’ it could instead be some individuals don’t care about the memo. If people are trolling and sexual harassing, it’s possibly due to the General Internet Anonymity Principle: give some people anonymity and all sense of decency, if not intelligence, is slapped clean away. They won’t care what Sony’s doing; it doesn’t mean they don’t know. You can argue until you use up all the oxygen that ‘this isn’t in Sony’s mission’ or ‘they shouldn’t be doing it’ but likely they heard it before and know it well -- we just inadvertently assumed they didn’t.
This basically harkens back to Kassadee Marie’s articleL anyone that dedicated to being a troll or sexual harasser isn’t going to consider ‘little things’ like mission statements or human decency. They will troll you and if we assume it’s because they don’t know the rules, we’ll be shocked.
Bottom line: we both want to see the numbers on the Hub’s effectiveness (and lord knows the rope wasn’t making a case for the theater) but I’d also like to see numbers on class snobbery. I’ll paraphrase one of Terra’s comment in October: I see no concrete evidence that anyone is getting classist over the Mansion, though I am seeing evidence people do it just fine on their own in other ways. There will be exceptions but I don’t see the behavior being anything but an exception.
This article exemplifies the greatest criticism I certainly have of Home: that its weakness isn’t the people who develop it, but rather the people who populate it.
The Hub, as far as I can tell, is designed to help retain new users. As such, we’re coming at it from a very different perspective, as we’ve been in Home for years. The difference for the long-term social users of Home is that now the space with the highest visibility has a “go explore” message instead of a “stay and chat” message. Given the years of negative feedback about Central Plaza on the forum, coupled with its less-intuitive format for new users, the Hub makes perfect sense. Social users (such as you and I) will congregate in places like Pier Park or Sportswalk whereas new users may find it easier to assimilate the Home experience with the Hub.
There’s no question that trolling and sexual harassment are still rampant. The behavior in the Hub is no different than the old Plaza, and that’s because the people are no different. That’s a reflection on the users, though, not the developers. I think we got our hopes up that Home’s new emphasis on gaming experiences would cut down on the amount of visible poor behavior, but it certainly doesn’t appear to have done so.
So now we have long-term social gamers who feel displaced by the developers *and* see no improvement in the community. Hence the bitter words.
To be fair, though, if other Homes are more pleasant social experiences than SCEA Home, that’s probably more of a reflection on the real-world people inhabiting those Homes. Yes, it can be argued that SCEA Home offers elements which cater to this distasteful mentality (an Exclusives store and so forth), but if that’s the culture we’re in, I’m not going to fault Sony for catering to it, as I would personally criticize the American culture that spawned such people before criticizing a for-profit enterprise which is capitalizing on it.
We need to be very careful when we talk about class warfare in Home. Home isn’t a classless society; it never was, and it never will be. Even if every single item in Home was free, you’d still have people segregating into different social strata. It’s inherent to the species. By stating that Home shouldn’t cater to the lowest common denominator, that *itself* is a classist statement — because the flipside of that statement implies that there are higher denominators (which, of course, is true), and Sony should cater to them instead.
And, ironically enough, I agree with you on that point. I have no problem with stating that Home’s biggest drawback is the utter and total idiots who inhabit it and make it unpleasant for the rest of us. I’m also an RPG gamer who prefers cooperation to competition, and I have utterly no interest in trophies or leaderboards or FPS deathmatches or any of the other juvenile headbanging that passes for gaming these days. I freely admit that what makes Home enjoyable for me are those rare encounters when I meet a kindred soul whom I can share a fun conversation with for a few hours, and it takes a lot of wading through the dregs of humanity to find those people.
(This, by the way, is why HomeStation is what it is: a mature and literate publication devoted to the social aspects of Home. Because just as water seeks its own level, people naturally gravitate to like-minded people. And HSM has dramatically increased my enjoyment of Home, because now I get to interact with a whole bunch of really cool, intelligent people who have *depth* to them. On the last Home publication I worked on, I was told point-blank that Home was full of lowest-common-denominator kids, and that we needed to cater to them. Bull. Home is full of mature and literate people with brains, who use Home for social interaction with some gaming — and HSM is sort of the Diogenes lamp of Home, serving as a beacon for anyone searching for more than just the shallow “hey bby ur hawt” facepalm interactions which are all too prevalent in Home. Its surprisingly large audience numbers — for a Home fan project — demonstrate a socioeconomic bloc to Sony and other developers, which hopefully they will pay attention to.)
There *are* two ways in which Sony could really make Home a more pleasant experience for our particular social strata — one of which will likely never happen, and the other I sincerely hope *will* happen.
The method which won’t happen: Sony turns Home into a subscription service and really steps up the moderator presence. A monthly subscription would eliminate the vast majority of the trolls and other miscreants, because now they’d have to have skin in the game. The constant and predictable revenue stream might also reduce the economic pressure on Sony to meet its budgets through sales each month. And a more draconian police presence (which, to be fair, I *really* want), where Sony hands out suspensions and bans like candy, would stamp out the stragglers. This is the utopian Home that I’d love to experience, but in reality will never happen. By stamping out the darkspawn horde and leaving just the Grey Wardens, I fear that Home’s remaining population would be insufficient to maintain a sustainable business model.
What I *do* hope will happen, however: Home needs to become a game.
Don’t give me that look. I’ll explain.
Home has no purpose. Oh, sure, it has business objectives to achieve, but the application itself has no *purpose.* It exists merely to exist. This is why people enter Home, wander around, and complain that there’s nothing to do. Then they grow bored and start trolling or glitching, since those are Home’s two primary sources of user-generated activity. And since Home is free, there’s no barrier to stop these people from flooding into Home (particularly if they can’t afford to spend the money necessary to pick up video games). So we end up with a cesspool of humanity with nothing to do except turn on itself.
Home was already catering to the lowest common denominator of the PlayStation Network. Yes, there’s a healthy percentage of people such as us who embraced Home for what it was originally designed to be — a social network for gamers — but clearly there haven’t been enough of us to sustain the business model. And thus Home has no barriers to entry, in order to spread the revenue-generation net as wide as possible. You and I are looking for the experience of a Bugatti Veyron, but it takes the broad base of the entire Volkswagen Group to support that.
If Home had a *purpose* — if it was a game unto itself, and not just a platform for games — it would be a remarkably different experience. And we know this because it’s already happened: Xi.
Xi is still, nearly three years later, viewed as the high-water mark of Home. It was the one time where Home itself became a game. Home had a purpose. People were really and truly engaged in the Home experience, and were returning to Home daily to keep up with what was happening.
Why haven’t we seen another ARG like Xi in all this time? I suspect it’s cost. nDreams’ last ARG, involving Lewis Hamilton, must have cost a bloody fortune. And considering that a huge chunk of Sony’s budget for at least the last eighteen months (possibly longer) went into the Hub, I can see where there just wasn’t any money to commission a new ARG.
Home is practically screaming to be turned into a game. It has the foundation and architecture of an MMO, and I keep praying that the next major overhaul of Home will take advantage of this. Home citizens should have various “jobs” to choose from, guilds to join, a developer-established economy to conduct basic trade, and so forth.
If this sounds far-fetched, keep in mind that one developer has already done this (albeit in a scaled-down version) in Home: Lockwood.
Go back and look at the Sodium Hub. It has jobs — scorpion stomping, bartending, action gaming — to pick up Sodium credits which can be used for resource trading. And all of its various elements loosely tie together into a larger narrative structure.
Lockwood so far has done the best job of making Home itself a game. I’ve been waiting for two years for Sony to scale it up and implement such an MMO template across Home in general.
Jack Buser’s right on the money when he says that Home is becoming a game. He has exactly the right idea. Being a game platform isn’t enough. Home itself must become a game. Because when that happens, *that* is when you’ll be hard-pressed to find trolls running around complaining that they’re bored and there’s nothing to do. And *that* is when you’ll find the gaming community at large take notice of Home once more.
You can never change every Home troll into a respectable Home user.Lately though,I’ve been hearing the word “troll” used to describe ppl that I’m not too sure are “trolls”.I believe there is a difference between being a “troll” and being a garden-variety jackass.It seems that whenever anyone says anything on Home that differs from somebody else that just stated an opinion the “troll” term gets tossed around.Personally I don’t find any of these terms,jackass or “troll”,to be all that offensive but I am kind of curious as to what the difference between a “troll” and a jackass on Home really is.Would someone that came up to a full chested female and said “I love you” be considered a “troll” if that were merely his ice-breaker and he then tried to start a semi-cohesive convo.?I ask this question because in my early days of Home I approached a female avatar I didn’t know and said”I love(her user name)” and when asked why I said because she was hot,I guess you had to be there because it really was wittier than it sounds.Anyways,we became friends for quite awhile after that.Had she immediately decided I was a “troll” and not a jackass we may never had become friends.I guess what I’m asking is where or what is the line between trolldom and humorous jackassery?
@cthulu93 I guess it depends on the perspective of the one saying it!!!.
I guess so but how are we to know what everyone’s troll/jackass line is as I’m sure it’s probably different for everyone if your right.I guess there is a fine line between trolldom and jackassery,maybe it takes a real artist to know the difference.
My comment about “class snobbery” was made in conjunction with “scarcity and competition.” That’s because, unlike Norse, as time passes I’m increasingly of the opinion that the trouble with the NA Home is the culture which produces it and inhabits it, meaning, that SCEA and its second/third party devs are just as much to blame as the trolls we all love to hate. When NA Home gives out prizes, the usual through process seems to run like this: “Let’s make everyone compete for prizes that are scarce so that the people who win them will have higher status.”
The gold suits, the Mansions, the Diamond furniture, the jeeps and helicopters, the roped-off VIP areas, all these things represent an attempt to create a artificial class which you can buy your way into (to Sony’s financial gain) as opposed to earning status by contributing to Home in some way, by being helpful to others, knowledgeable about Home, skilled at Home games, etc. Unfortunately, there are a few people on the official forums who seem to think this is a good idea.
Regarding “real gamers,” I don’t like the term myself, but I was using it in a sarcastic way. According to Sony/public perception, “real gamers” don’t use Home. And the point I’ve made before is, why would a “real gamer” use Home when they can find superior gaming experiences on a disc-based game? Yes, the technology is evolving, and I believe cloud-based gaming is the future, but for now, if you’re into single-player, competitive, or FPS gaming you’re probably better off looking at disc-based games. But I tend to believe that a persistent virtual world such as Home would be better served by developing games that are social and cooperative, my reasoning being that people who are simply looking for a “quick fix” can easily get that offline, and people who don’t care to socialize wouldn’t make the best additions to Home anyway.
I disagree that Home has no purpose. People who want to game online need to have a place, a way, to meet like-minded people who share their gaming interests. And once people start gaming together, the inevitable next step is that they then start buying games together, and even start buying games that are outside of their comfort zone simply because they want to share that gaming experience with someone else. Isn’t this what the original vision of Home was all about? Not artificial classes based upon virtual mansions or rare virtual items.
Perhaps one theme which I haven’t repeated enough, is the extent to which this dysfunctional NA culture has been the result of the commercial activities of “for profit” enterprises, and isn’t it past time we acknowledged this and stopped doing things which exacerbated existing problems even further?
I’ve been of the attitude that both sides aren’t helping matters to some degree. Sony causes one issue, we cause another -- ‘we’ being Home users in general, not any specific segment therein. You tackle on issue, another needs be addressed, else things will get worse.
This seems to jive with what you’re saying, though if I’m mistaken I’ll admit my fault on that one. My viewpoint differs a little in that seems to me that Sony’s drive to figure out what we’re willing to pay for and for what price produced an unintended consequence from both sides. Our spending habits convinced Sony that a $15 estate will see enough to return investment (and beyond!) and Sony sees that as an opportunity to advertise it more, if in questionable methods. It’s something we all need to work on and sooner the better.
As for people who want a ‘quick fix,’ that’s something seven generations of video gaming have taught us ironically. Up until this generation (last generation if we’re being generous), the idea of a pervasive, social program wasn’t practical. Home is the bellwether into uncharted territory from a console market’s perspective; people who grew up on video games and not PC games have a very different perspective on the issue and we’re almost just seeing kids grow up on this and last generation products, as opposed to our generation.
To elaborate: think about it. Home’s adapting to a console game market -- while there is some overlap with PC sensibilities, obviously, in my experience people approach consoles differently to PCs. We hadn’t this idea of a ‘PC-like’ world to play in, socialize in for consoles for effectively forty years.
PCs hit that milestone earlier, which is an understatement. That market had time and people devoted to ironing out wrinkles; Home is five years old maximum, if you include Closed Beta. It has PC ideas to work with but it’s like comparing Mac to PC but up to eleven: even if the technological bits aren’t that different, people’s perceptions are.
This is not to diminish your overall message, mind you. I wholeheartedly agree that Home needs social improvements because it is still a social program in some fashion. But I see Norse’s argument in this light: we have a quasi-precedent for making people consider Home a game.
Nintendo made people think of the NES as a toy, with its R.O.B. ‘robot’ (Your Plastic Pal That’s Fun To Be With) to seal the deal. Granted this was in response to the crash that nearly sent the video game market over a cliff but my point is that it faced a challenge and overcame it by making people, particularly parents with techno-hungry kids, think something else first. Once they’re hooked, then they treated it as a video game machine.
Home doesn’t face the same type of event, obviously; it isn’t in the position of saving virtual realities as we know it. PCs have them in spades and the market isn’t dying, thank-you-very-much. The connection is that perhaps what Sony is doing is convincing gamers that Home is a game and letting the games act like a Trojan Horse, out of which stampedes the Trojans, the stilted metaphor for socialization. With swords.
It’s sneaky but it can work. After all, compare the amount of users of Home to the amount of registered accounts. Okay, there is the fact that there are duplicate accounts but chances are over half don’t use Home and Sony wants to change that.
And what’s the sticking point? I would imagine it’s we as a society are still treating the PS3 as a gaming console, not a socialization tool. It’s a shame too, as Home proves we’re capable of making it a global communication Goliath. So long as we don’t get stoned by a David, we’re golden.
Is Sony doing this? Well, they’re trying. I won’t say it’s been a perfect ride -- lord knows there have been ups and downs and they both need appropriate addressing -- but that’s how I looked at it. Sony is attempting to create a market for a new idea for consoles similarly to what Nintendo did to revive a dying market.
The crash in video games back in the day was basically caused because the games got boring.I’d credit the revival that nintendo brought about to Mario Bros. and other good games rather than any promotional robot.Also it was the Greeks that popped out of the Trojan Horse but on to more important things.I’m not too sure that the best way to make Home a socialization tool is by adding the types of games they added.Actually at the moment the only thing I’m using Home for is socialization,I think I’ve made my view of most of these new games clear,it was Sony that decided to treat Home as a gaming console when everyone that I know was and is screaming for more social applications.An MMO might be a way to go,although I seriously doubt it would magically solve the trolling issue,but there are many things Sony could do to make it more of a social network.It feels like Sony is putting the cart before the horse by hoping to build the user base of a social network by adding games.The way to build a social network is to enhance the social applications of that network.If you want to milk the populace of that network once it’s built go ahead and add games.But if you want to build your network on games then they need to have top-self graphics and/or a good story line or hook.Do Homes games have any of that?To some ppl maybe but for me they do not.
D’oh, thanks for the correction on the Trojan reference.
As for whether the ‘Trojan horse’ plan would work, the basic idea was pointing out that people that use Home regularly versus those that don’t have starkly different opinions on whether Home can support such a program as Home. I could imagine Sony targeting gamers who don’t use Home in this manner because it’ll be easier to convince them (hopefully) it’s more than a game once they’re inside. Once the user base is in, it becomes a chance for them to really improve the social elements, though they’ll still improve it as they always have (for better or worse depending one’s opinion on the matter naturally).
So they won’t simply stop the social improvements. Ideally they won’t, anyway.
I kind of view society at large as dismissive of video game consoles encroaching on this territory for some time, because MMOs only really appeared on console last generation and Home is the first non-MMO virtual reality we seen. We have nothing to compare it to and we’ve never had that type of social expectation on our consoles.
Don’t get me wrong, socialization has been and will continue to be a prominent aspect of gaming -- it’s just that when plenty of people think of non-MMO virtual realities, they think of PCs. It’s this audience Home wants to attract, it seems.
Why? Maybe the current audience is reaching a plateau; we’re the ones that didn’t need much selling on the idea but maybe we’ve reach the largest we’ll ever get. If that’s so, and even if it isn’t, Sony’s tackling a huge challenge: telling people who need more convincing to give Home a chance.
But that’s my conjecture and it really is conjecture at this point. Sony’s treatment of the PS3 as a gaming platform, at least early on if not so much so now, is with some justification if the general audience doesn’t view it the same way we do -- which might be worth figuring out. Are we representative of all PS3 users or do most not feel Home is ‘good enough’ to fulfill social needs?
As for R.O.B., I didn’t mean to pin it as the reason in and of itself. R.O.B. was a manifestation of the strategy that helped, namely Nintendo thinking (if memory serves) it needed to market the system less as a video game platform and more a consumer electronic product.
It did this because, as you said, video games became boring, along with the shoddy porting of certain titles and quality issues in general. People distanced themselves from the video game market either way and Nintendo knew not to let people think ‘video games’ initially with the NES. And it worked in their favor.
Once it got into houses, Mario Bros. and other titles took over and truly sold the system. I kind of think Sony’s adopting a similar strategy here, as stated above, if for clearly distinct reasons.
No worries on the Greeks and Trojans,it’s ancient history.Much like the Nintendo stuff,I remember Nintendo trying many different gimmicks back then such as “The Power Glove” and some giant mat looking thing that looked like a “Twister” game in which you would run on.This game approach could work to attract more ppl to Home but the games need to be spot on.Top shelf graphics are probably an impossibility on Home for awhile so they should probably shoot for social games.Poker is a good try but the only other game I saw that let me play socially was the R/C car game but there aren’t enough tracks there,just like Sodium 2.I’d like to see a few more card games with a game chat feature or possibly a horse racing game that allowed us to raise the horses,like the dolphins at Hudson’s gate,and allowed us to ride them ourselves while talking to the other racers.There isn’t much inter-action with other ppl in Cogs and there are a zillion other FPS’s on disc’s.
That I can definitely back. Home definitely needs another great seller; Sodium certainly worked, though I agree Sodium 2 needs more track, as does the RC game. And there does need to be more social aspects -- the poker rooms had the right idea, so something along those lines would help immensely.
And god yes, Hudson. lol They touched on that element nicely -- your horse racing idea would work well I think.
Some people specifically ask for and request things like the gold suit, the diamond suit and the Mansion. What would you do for them if you were running Home? Tell them if they want to spend money to go elsewhere?
The people who run Home have to balance their requests against your criticism. There are people who are willing to pay almost anything for exclusive items. I have pitched items a lot more expensive than anything currently in Home and am hoping to create bundles that may end up in the triple figures. The question is not whether they will sell, but whether the community will rebel. It makes no sense, but it is a fact.
Someone has to pay for Home. If there is no revenue to support it, it goes away. When you say “for profit” that implies there is a profit. I have no knowledge that says there is.
Be happy that others will pay for items that you feel are not worth the price. They are paying so you get to play for less. The more they are influenced not to buy expensive items, the more Home will charge for the smaller items.
Sony has to get the money from somewhere. Start thanking the people who spend the money instead of trying to change them. It is in the best interest of Home in the long run.
A triple digit bundle would be something I’d take a very good look at.Of course if it was full of things I already had I probably wouldn’t buy it or if it didn’t look like a good deal,but the option would be appreciated.While I do sometimes feel that some items are a bit over the top for me I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone to make their purchases based on my idea of good taste.Everyone has the right to spend their cash as they see fit and I for one really like the bundle concept as a whole.There are some really good bargains in some of these bundles,even if you don’t use every item in it.
Wow Kasadee way to start a firestorm of discussion. No way im reading all that. lol!
I never once for a minute thought changing central would change those in Home who are labeled “noobs” and “trolls”
I did notice that when you had that conversation, you sort of lead your results to an end. Your one word responses would have come across as crass and dismissive. How is someone asking about your experience in Home indicative of n00bery? I actually think this “n00b” did well with the conversation, especially considering the cold shoulder he was given. I mean, he asked you if you had been to the Cogs space, I think that’s a good thing to ask someone. It’s likely not everyone knows.
How are you supposed to make friends without making conversation? I know one of the major reasons I have spent less and less time in Home recently is that it seems like the community has become… closed off. Everyone is paranoid that everyone else is a n00b or a troll or some other meaningless label that the community uses to ostracize others that they are completely closed off to meeting someone new.
I think this “n00b” problem is just as much a problem with Home vets and snobs as it is with new members.
Ummm… Gideon? I’m KM. He was RP.
*facepalm* please disregard my earlier statements. wonderful job kassadee. lol I
When I wrote my “Goodbye to Plaza” article before the Hub hit I said the same thing Kassadee. I don’t know why people thought changing the venue would change the people inhabiting it. There will always be trolls in Home, it is a fact of life there. I always try to kill them with kindness and if that doesn’t work there is always report and ignore. I find that another persons opinion only carries as much weight as you give it. I rarely let anyone bother me too much, life’s too short to get upset over things that you can’t control.
Great job getting your points across as always.
Home is an experience. The people who fill Home are not just background, but are a core part of the experience themselves. The question that comes to mind is whether there is anything that could be done to influence the behaviors of those whose goal it is to make trouble. If the answer is yes, then Home could be made more fun by doing it. I just cannot myself think how to change those who want to be annoying. Schools have not figured this out and they have been working at it a lot longer than we have.
Anyone have any ideas?
How about a reward system that gave items of increasing worth the longer every account on a PS3 was well behaved,not seperately but every single account would need to abstain from mod actions.I’m not sure if misbehaving users are hurting Sony’s bottom line,or even how that could be proven conclusively,but IF Sony is serious about increasing good behavior almost any reward or punishments really have to affect every account on a PS3 in order to be truly effective.I’m sure this would cause problems in houses with children but it MAY help convince parents to watch their wee ones a little more and convince older users that misbehave to stop.As it is now ppl can act within the bounds of the TOS on 1 account and troll away on another specially made for trolling(meaning that they spent absolutely nothing on it so when it gets banned they delete it and make a new 1.)I know 1 person that claims,idk if it’s true,that they have 16 accounts of which 10 are currently banned.Only 1 of these accounts has any cash spent on it.I’m not sure this holding all accounts responsible thing is tech. possible but it would stop the multiple account troll jumping and possibly make ppl think about the consequences of their actions.
I agree with you on this one, just today I had to report an annoying troll in the Hub, something I really do try to avoid doing but this one was really asking for it. His retort was, “Oh wow I might get banned on my USA account, big deal!” So he obviously wasn’t using his main account. This is even more annoying to me, because essentially it makes the person being harassed feel powerless to stop this kind of behavior. We all reported then ignored him, so eventually he went away, but still there should be a way to permanently ban these types from Home.
I still say a three strikes you are out rule should apply in cases of extreme disregard for the TOS rules of behavior such as this.
Maybe we should call these people Nubs, for now on?
Trolls/Nubs Ftw !!
Great article Kassadee. I didn’t expect the problem with trolling to go away with the rollout of The Hub, but I think that other changes have helped with the problem. Specifically the new help system that is available from the menu within Home and is highly visible to new users in Home.
The question for me is whether the trolling problem is getting better or worse. My impression from spending a few hours a week in public spaces in Home is that there is less trolling happening now. Of course in certain places and at certain times the trolls can totally overwhelm a public space and make it pretty much uninhabitable for anyone that just wants to relax and hang out.
I think that doing the Welcoming Committee events has helped me to better cope with trolling and I’m better able to deal with it.