A New Oasis: the Desert Haven Clubhouse
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
When I came into Home for the last update of 2011, I was amazed and delighted to find that Sony had granted every club owner’s wish for Christmas: a new “skin” for our old, tired clubhouses. And it is a very nice new look indeed.
The space is nothing short of miraculous to me. After having the old basic clubhouse for so long, being able to have a space that is not only aesthetically superior, but also at least three times the size of the previous one is fantastic. The only thing missing, now that we have the space, is the ability to have a larger club capacity to fill it with. When you have a large (and growing) club in Home, having a larger capacity would be most welcome. Grey Gamer parties, for instance, have been taking place in public for months now due to the fact everyone can’t fit into one clubhouse — and bouncing around from club to club to cover all of the ones my friends have contributed is frankly getting very burdensome.
The Desert Haven is a wonderful idea for a clubhouse. I have friends who have now bought it– even though they don’t have a club to use it — just for the space itself. It is set in a desert area reminiscent of Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s a large open area in the building, with a built-in bar that was just begging for a dance floor; you can tell from the way the lighting is hanging above it that it was meant for this activity. I can just imagine the balls and parties the Grey Gamers will throw in this space, and for the club owners reading this, I’m sure you’ve already thought up a bunch of different ways in which this new clubhouse can be used to your advantage. It is a great step that Sony has taken to giving us more social choices.
The Chapel of Love, on my other account, has also benefitted immensely. People can now use the outside chapel near the pool area, and then the inside of the clubhouse to have their reception afterwards. This wasn’t possible before; now it is, and has made the whole process easier for them and for me.
The clubhouse is large and very user friendly; there are a lot of options here for clubs owners to decorate. Because it is so open and has nice high ceilings, you can use walls to divide it if you like, or just leave it open and add whatever furniture you want to it. Having a built-in bar area is very helpful as well if you wish to put out some refreshments for your guests. Behind the bar are two panels with a water animation to them. They look like they have water streaming down them into the rocky beds below; a very nice touch to the decor.
Chapel of Love, outdoor version
There are huge windows looking out onto both the front and pool areas of the clubhouse. The pool is very nice, though I do wish they would give our avatars a swimming motion one of these days. It feels rather silly just walking around on the bottom. There are three animated fire pits distributed around the pool, where you can place either seats or rugs to sit on. There are also many lounge chairs with umbrellas, and these are one of the coolest features in the club. You can actually lay down on the loungers, and you assume a very relaxed pose when on them, unlike the new beds that are active items.
I can’t wait to have a few pool parties here this coming summer. It should be a real boon to ideas for new entertainment at our clubs. I also know there are going to be new “skins” being added to our choices as time goes on; one that I know of is the “War Room” that nDreams has been talking about. Since we are only allowed to own one club per account we have – something I truly wish they would consider changing – I believe these will all work like this one has and just be an additional choice in our club repertoire.
Another really nice added feature to all of this is the fact that since this is a “skin” that you basically place over your existing older club, you can decorate them each differently and the decor stays for each instance. I was worried about that when I first got this for my group. I wondered if decorating one would negate the decor of the other, but it doesn’t. This actually adds a whole new facet to our uses of these clubhouses. We can set one up in one manner for a game or some other event, then have the other one set up totally differently. There was also a nice furniture pack offered with the clubhouse which you can pick up.
No matter how we look at it, these new clubhouses are an amazing addition to the socialization aspects of Home, and though there are many more things that they could do to increase club usability and functions, this is a great start on the right path for Sony. We have been asking for this for a long time, and they have given it to us in spades.
- Phenomenal new look!
- It is huge!
- Increased usability.
- Ability to keep both types of clubs furnished.
- Lay down loungers!
- Would like to have more members allowed.
January 15th, 2012 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.
Great write up.
The Desert Haven looks nice and has a relaxing atmosphere. Its definitely good to see Sony create a new clubhouse. However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done as far as the tools that are available to club owners. The message board system that the clubs currently use are archaic and only allow you to post messages for less than a month. Instead of the current message board, they should replace it with a PHP style message board or a Facebook or Twitter Feed.
Its actually a chore to keep in contact with other club members about events and meetings because we still have to manually message them through the XMB. We seriously need a built in feature within clubs that allows us to easily mass message each member with important club news, information, events, updates and meetings. Sure, a club can have a separate web site outside of Home but that doesn’t really fit well with the idea of Social Media where information is easily shared and integrated into one single source.
I’m all for new clubhouses but like I said in a response to another article, a new “skin” is just like a new release of Windows. It looks prettier but no major functionality has changed. Club owners need more tools at there disposal to better organize things. It would be nice to increase the limit of members but a bigger limit combined with the current communication system would just make things even more unmanageable. We don’t just need a facelift, we need to rewire the interface. When that happens, clubs would have made some real progress.
So is this automatically available to all club owners or is it something that needs to be bought?
And there’s NO functional upgrades? What a bummer.
You pay $5 for it Gideon then you have to go to your old clubhouse and look under clubhouse in the start menu and it has an option to change to the new one.
Thanks, Burbie. I would love to be able to arrive in my Club upon entering Home. It would also be awesome if we could have the XMB displayed on an in club screen. Just as we can see our friends off the Xmb, we might also see club member status and locations on screen. Just a thought..
I decided to buy the Desert Haven Clubhouse on a whim, as I had been entertaining the idea of creating a club for mature, laid-back users. Not knowing anything about clubs or how they operate, I purchased the space.
At first, I figured I had just flushed $5 down the drain, because the space simply didn’t show up in my list of personal spaces. It took me a week to finally clue into using the “Clubs” tab.
It turns out that purchasing the Desert Haven space automatically gets you the Clubhouse as well. Two spaces plus a club for $5 is a great deal, no matter how you slice it. Now I just have to decorate a bit and send out invites.