When Is A Home Not Home?
Courtesy of Jughead, HSM guest contributor
Online socializing has become the way to meet people for millions all over the world. What started as a bevy of faceless chat logs has transformed into a virtually real world of seemingly never-ending social opportunities.
Before avatars ruled the net, there were chat rooms – text based social lounges with laughing emoticons to add character to an otherwise emotionless environment. Once logged in, one could select a chat room to meet people who shared their personal interests. After settling into the right atmosphere, there were participants of many age groups, from all over the world, ready and willing to talk about anything and everything – and talk they did! Endless nights of text chatting became endless nights of playing games in places like Yahoo and MSN, with games like cribbage, spades and pool.
A few years later, along came a video game that would revolutionize the way we would socialize online – The Sims. The Sims was a life simulation game with an “avatar” whose life you would live by planning its daily events and carrying them out, so that its success or failure was completely in your hands. It was easy to see that this was a far better way of socializing than the way that the Internet-based experience had become. The interaction wasn’t with real people, but the player could control how the experience was going to be, making it more fun. There were expansion packs that allowed the player’s sim to have pets, date and perform magic. The more expansion packs that were released, the closer to a real life experience the game became.
Subsequently, there came the release of The Sims 2 – an updated version of the original Sims, both graphically and technologically. The sim could buy, sell and run businesses, adopt children and even hire a dating service. With the advent of The Sims 2, as well as the most recent version, The Sims 3, the online social experience began to parallel these games with sites such as Second Life, IMVU, Habbo and, with the advances in console gaming, Sony’s PlayStation Home. These experiences seemed to be mirroring The Sims, with avatars having living spaces and going out into their own virtual neighborhoods to meet people and have direct social interaction with someone else’s avatar. The Sims also had a short-lived online game of its own – The Sims Online – but it ran aground with the same problems that have been experienced in the online gaming community. The serious Sims Online players were being harassed by others who made a game of their own by ruining the experiences of others with distracting antics.
In all of these venues, meeting people is the simplest thing to do. Each of them has a “lobby” of sorts. Whether it’s a main meeting place, like the old Central Plaza in Home, the Hotel Lobby in Habbo, the Welcome Island in Second Life, or the search feature from your own personal space in IMVU, making acquaintances can be as easy as walking up to another avatar and saying hello. There are also a variety of clubs and rooms setup based on the specific interests of its members; where avatars and their owners can make new friends, as well as many places to gather, dance and play games. Any of these will offer its members a rich social experience. Where the difference lies is the types of people that you can meet there.
PlayStation Home, which is exclusively on Sony’s PlayStation 3 entertainment system, caters mostly to gamers – hardcore and casual. Anyone with a PlayStation network login, internet access and a PlayStation 3 can partake of Home at no charge. The world and its activities are free to all, as well as some of the items developed by Sony and its participating companies. One can enhance the Home experience by purchasing new personal spaces and a vast array of items from the mall located in Home, but there are enough free items that come along so that fun can be had without a large investment.
Each of its public and private spaces is designed for a variety of interests. They are predominately aimed at the gaming community, but there are a number of spaces that do catch the eye of those that are looking for a more casual social experience. Visitors to Home can range from early teens to into their seventies. Their backgrounds also vary throughout the spectrum. One can meet someone in junior high school or someone who has retired, someone who is a part-time worker or the owner of a large company, someone who has never played a game before or someone who has been playing games since the early days of gaming. You never know who you are going to meet there. The one thing that everyone you meet seems to share is a hunger for meeting people and having fun.
Home has three regions where their members access their services: Japan, Europe and North America. Although the Home experience is very similar in all regions, each region has unique aspects to it to reflect the specific interests in that area of the world, such as its culture, games, movies and sports. The content for PlayStation Home is designed by Sony and co-branded partners and is sold, given away, or rewarded to the players of Home in a variety of ways. Players can be rewarded with an item of clothing for their avatar or a decorative item for their personal spaces by visiting a promotional event, playing mini-games or even visiting friend’s personal spaces. Most of the events – like the items on Home – are created by Sony or their co-branding partners, but individuals and groups have created their own custom events through official clubs they have started or by association with people they meet in the community. Live events are held in virtual convention areas with streaming content for all in Home to be part of and enjoy.
Second Life is developed by Linden Lab. Their users are called residents and they explore a world that is called the grid. It has a sandbox-styled social experience, with mostly user-generated items for your avatar and personal spaces. There is no charge for the basic membership, or “residency” and premium services run about $72 per year. With the paid premium service, residents will receive a $300 weekly stipend for use in their virtual world. With the purchase of Linden dollars, residents can buy, rent, sell or trade land, items or services. Second Life has even made the experience more inclusive with modifications that make it accessible to the sight impaired.
All residents have worldwide access from the main grid, but there are areas specifically designed for many countries such as Brazil, Germany, Japan and Korea. Residents have created “translators” programming to allow cross-culture text chatting.
Second Life is, by far, the most expansive experience in the online virtual world business. They basically have their own economy. Residents can own land, which they can build on or rent to someone else. Land can be bought from Linden or from another resident. Large parcels of land can also be purchased at Linden auctions. A vast majority of the content is designed by Second Life users, which they make a profit from the sale of said items.
Businesses and organizations have found Second Life a very worthwhile venue to do business in as well. Business is conducted in many forms within this virtual world. Educational entities, such as colleges and universities, hold classes and events for those who are enrolled in their programs – although you may sit in on many of these classes, even if you aren’t enrolled. The arts are celebrated through exhibits, live theater and music. Religion is practiced through ceremonies and masses held in virtual churches. Virtual workplaces allow companies to meet, train and communicate across time zones, represented by their avatars. Governments also hold session in Second Life. Embassies can meet with residents about visas and other related issues. The possibilities are endless.
As long as the list of things to do in Second Life is, also is the list of ways to meet people there. If you have the basic access, there is a “beginner’s point” called Welcome Island. This is a starting point to help show new residents the basics on how to use Second Life. From the map, one can find just about everything there is to find in this world, go to a location and meet people from all over the globe instantly. For those with the premium membership, friendships can be made through contact with others by invitation to one of their properties or through the sale of merchandise or properties in the grid. The endless array of events and functions held are also a terrific way to make acquaintances.
Second Life is also, by far, the most adult of all the online social experiences. There are a large number of areas and shopping locations designed specifically for a strictly adult experience – with everything from nude body enhancements for avatars to sexually explicit animations for the avatars to use in the privacy of their properties.
IMVU is perhaps the most social of all of the online social communities. It is built primarily as a virtual meeting place. Although it is inhabited by people from teenage years and up, IMVU is more designed for adults. There are personal spaces for a private social experience; but most of the socializing takes place in the many public spaces. Interaction between avatars gets a little more physical in here because of animations that allow you to have contact with each other in the form of actions, like hugging.
This world is also full of very interesting hotspots to meet and greet. The socialization in IMVU takes on the closest thing to a virtual dating service that you can probably find online. The experience is very flirty and, although there are some unwelcomed advances to be seen in IMVU, the forward attention seems to be more welcomed here than in other similar sites. The overall experience isn’t quite as explicitly adult as Second Life can be, but it is still definitely more driven to the adult audience.
The content is also mostly user-designed and you can earn points towards shopping by taking part in a vast array of telemarketing opportunities. It is a worldwide experience, so one can run into almost any type of conversation in almost any language. The events that can be found seem to be centered on companies looking for marketing information. This is a very difficult space to do anything in if you don’t want your personal info out there because it is so Partner Company driven. It is an enjoyable experience but it can be really difficult to find intelligent conversation because of the dating atmosphere everywhere in its world. One can find discussions that are cerebral, but you really need to look for it.
Habbro is the most intriguing, and one of the best, experiences of all of these. It is definitely designed with the teens and younger in mind. It is set in an 8-bit world; which is what makes it so appealing to adults. Although there isn’t as large a presence of adults in Habbro, it is larger than one would think simply because of the look of it. The conversation, of course, sways to the much younger set, but can still be a lot of fun.
The concept is very simple – Habbro is a large hotel and there is a party on every floor. When you get to the party, because the inhabitants are generally younger, it harkens back to your junior high school days. You walk into a room and everyone is standing around. Nobody is talking. The boys are in one area and the girls are in another. It’s really quite charming. They are so awkward at this sort of thing that it takes an adult to get a conversation started sometimes. Therein lies the problem. Most adults wouldn’t enjoy the conversation so they won’t get involved, but some of the most enjoyable conversations can actually be had in there – believe it or not – because they are real, honest conversations and not so much of the flirtatious variety. Habbro is a really fun place with quests and games being held constantly by game developers, like Maxis (The Sims) coincidentally. The co-branding is very creative; like getting a free monkey for your personal space when you play a mobile game. Who wouldn’t want a free monkey, right?
Habbro content is also user driven and there are tons of things to buy and earn to decorate your room and clothe your avatar. Events can also be setup by users, so they can throw a party to raise awareness of a charity or just to celebrate your birthday. If you want to unlock the inner kid in you, Habbo is a great little place to visit.
It’s impossible to try to fully explain, or properly rate, these experiences because they are so similar in their basic nature, yet so different when it comes to their content. There is so much out there, that you really need to see some of it for yourself and decide what you like about them. If you ask a hundred people who have experienced them all, you will probably get as many different opinions. One thing is for sure – everyone will get something different from each of them. So if you want to find out for yourself, I would definitely encourage you to try them.
I have frequented them all over the years and, although I do think that for graphic quality and technical possibilities, PlayStation Home does it best; overall there are some things that the others do that I would love to see Home incorporate into its experience. I would really love to see Home bring a bit of the “museum” vision that Second Life offers. It would be really nice to have a place to go where we could see artwork hanging on display to enjoy, or buy for our personal spaces that change on occasion. An area where we could dance to new artists’ music that changed on a regular basis would expose us to the new and up and coming acts, leading to cd and download sales for the bands and Sony. If we had a space dedicated to actual exhibits like at the Smithsonian, then Sony could enjoy some new co-branding possibilities – much like the NASA shuttle launching that we all were glued to this past summer.
The world has changed since the internet came to be and the way that we use the net has also changed. What the future holds, nobody knows. Whatever comes forward out of the technology that we have seen come along to this point, undoubtedly will be exciting – and I for one, am looking forward to the ride.
December 20th, 2011 by keara22hi | 4 comments
Keara is also known in Home as DarthGranny. She is a wicked little old lady with a wild sense of humor.
Wow! Fantastic article! Thank you for the over-view of all these places and your insights into them, although for me “There’s no place like Home”.
I wish I could take credit for this but all the research and the writing was done by jughead8u. All I did was take advantage of his great generosity by asking him to do it.
Interesting article on places I know little about. Got me thinking what if Home had an elected government (SONY is the constitution and in reality the benevolent Dictator), roads with cards speeding by (I just saw a news shot on road in a winter storm), wheeling and dealing with spaces (trading with others) but in some way that SONY would profit, a jail (I don’t know why except why not), and a farm.
Nice article.
It does show us some interesting possibilities that aren’t currently on Home.I’m not sure how many of them could ever be used on Home but it does show that,at least in these other virtual worlds,there is a profitable market for them.In virtual reality the options for ideas are really only limited by the imaginations of humans and the capabilities of the technology used for the virtual world.