AlphaZone4 2011 PlayStation Home Awards Results
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Virtually every Home fansite brings something of value to the table. Yet if you were to ask what the most important Home fansite out there is, I’d have to go with AlphaZone4. And considering that it’s almost certainly the most heavily-visited Home fansite on the planet (and by a fairly significant margin), I’d say that’s a fairly safe assertion.
So what happens when AlphaZone4 throws an awards competition? People pay attention.
Awards ceremonies are interesting critters. People can say that they don’t matter, or that it’s an honor just to be nominated, or that you can only win if a guy named Weinstein is behind your production. But the truth is that they do matter. It matters when Shakespeare In Love beats Saving Private Ryan. It matters when Pulp Fiction loses to Forrest Gump, and The Shawshank Redemption is left in the cold. These things matter to us.
They matter for two reasons.
One: PlayStation Home is a very, very competitive marketplace. Most social games follow what’s known in social economics as a power-law distribution: namely, that most of the real money is coming from a very small percentage of users. Chances are a decent number of those users, because of their customer engagement, might seek out further information about Home online. They’ll stumble into the deepening cesspool known as the Sony forum (which desperately needs to purge the trolls), and/or discover satellite projects. So the chances are good that voter-determined rewards, if structured correctly, provide some decent feedback as to who’s doing what correctly.
Two: We, all of us, live for those moments where we shine like a boss. Those moments where we just do something or achieve something awesome. Could be anything. Winning a street fight or winning a spelling bee. Doesn’t matter. And whereas any Home fangroup can put together an awards show, AlphaZone4 matters because of its size and importance. So yes, it’s a big deal.
Let’s first dive into the results, and then discuss.
BEST COSTUME: Lockwood Mechjet
BEST COMPANION: Sackboy
BEST ACTIVE ITEM: Lockwood Gift Machine
BEST REWARD: Underwater Apartment
LEAST REWARDING REWARD: UFC Cutout
BEST APARTMENT: The Lockwood Dream Yacht
BEST FURNITURE: Animated Cherry Blossom Tree
BEST MULTIPLAYER GAME: Sodium2
BEST PUBLIC SPACE: Aurora
BEST MINI-GAME: Sodium TankTop
BEST GAME SPACE: Aurora
BEST EVENT SPACE: Uncharted 3 — Fortune Hunter
BEST HOME DEVELOPER: Lockwood
Let’s cover the obvious first. Lockwood owned this competition. While the Active Item category was more or less a guaranteed victory, and I doubt anyone seriously expected another developer to take the top honors for last year or win the Best Multiplayer Game category, it’s somewhat surprising that TankTop won for best mini-game, considering it’s built into a personal estate and yet it still earned enough votes to beat much more accessible public mini-games such as Cogs. I’m also frankly a little surprised that the Dream Yacht won for Best Apartment; don’t get me wrong, it’s a great space, but I would have expected the price to have been a voting deterrent. Can we expect to see more premium-priced estates in 2012?
I’m rather glad to see Lockwood win for Best Costume with the Mechjets. Yes, it’s a ten-dollar outfit, and yes, they never bothered to divulge that it has no bipedal locomotion built into it, but it’s as close to Robotech as Home has gotten so far, and Lockwood is to be commended for experimenting with customized avatar emotes with their Iron Fusion line. Besides, as HearItWow has observed in the past, the Mechjets are quite valuable to anyone who shoots machinima in Home.
As an aside: were it up to me, Best Apartment would have gone to the LOOT Space Apartment. There’s just so much functionality packed into that estate that I can’t think of anything even close to it in terms of value. But it may have been released too late in the year to earn enough votes, which is a shame.
Beyond that, it’s good to see Aurora win for Best Public Space and Best Game Space. Most public game spaces don’t offer anything more than just the game, but Aurora is that wonderful combination of social gathering spot and gaming space. It also saw periodic updates over the course of 2011, which helps to make it feel like a dynamic environment rather than a static one. Though I absolutely hate having a gaming level involuntarily strapped to my avatar’s back (a horrid practice picked up by Lockwood as well with Sodium2) — it just riles up my inner Patrick McGoohan, and it makes me want to shout to the heavens that I am not a number, I am a free man — I have to admit that OrbRunner is quite a catchy game. And Aurora itself is one of those spaces that teasingly hints at a story (or at least a loose narrative), which is one of those delightfully intangible elements that makes a space feel more alive.
I do want to briefly acknowledge Hellfire Games for a moment, and not just because they were in attendance at the ceremony. If you read our recent interview with Hellfire Games, then you know that they are responsible for bringing poker to Home. Yet because Home Hold ‘Em isn’t known as HELLFIRE GAMES HOME HOLD ‘EM A HELLFIRE SHINDIG DIRECTED BY HELLFIRE GAMES, they may have been overlooked a little bit, despite reintroducing one of Home’s most beloved games. Also, if you haven’t picked up the Novus Prime music player, we strongly recommend it. It was playing during the awards ceremony, and let me tell you: all formal events in Home should take place with that music in the background. PR videos should have that music in the background. And real life events are made so much more interesting with that music in the background. A mundane trip across the living room to feed the cat turns into an epic Carmina Burana lightsaber battle for Middle Earth when that music is playing.
What can we expect for 2012? Will Lockwood continue its dominance? Or will the crown be wrested from them by LOOT or nDreams, both of whom have exciting projects in the works? Or, perhaps, will some other developer come in out of nowhere and lay it down on the Home community?
One thing is for certain: 2012 will be a year to remember for Home. Congratulations to the winners of the AlphaZone4 contest for 2011!
January 7th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 13 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’s ironic the Space Station didn’t earn Best Personal Space due to its impressive functionality and for the fact it debuted the same week as the Dream Yacht. That might be the pertinent factor for the Yacht’s victory. If two $9.99 spaces release the same week and money’s tight for most users, chances are only one would win out in the end -- and given Lockwood and LOOT’s reputations, it really could’ve gone either way. Personally, I would’ve voted for the Station space as well, but that doesn’t demean the value of the Yacht.
Beyond that, as you said, there are obvious winners in the remaining categories. lol Sodium2 and the Gift Machine? Both unsurprising victors. Aurora? Also unsurprising. The inclusion of the mechjets suggests we’re willing to pay premium prices for premiums items, especially when coupled with the Dream Yacht. The Yacht and mechjets also have a fair amount of work placed in them, not to mention being Lockwood offerings, which only shows Lockwood really knows what we want (and therefore knows what it’s doing).
If Home’s economy is driven by a small number(relatively speaking) of Home’s users who are spending massive amounts of cash that would indicate to me that these people have deep pockets and therefore are willing and able to pay for higher priced items that they like.As long as items have some kind of extra functionality or some other appeal I really see no ceiling limit on items,which I consider a good thing.
Yup.
Check this out: http://gigaom.com/2012/01/06/whats-this-about-zynga-and-whales/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%3A+Tech%29
Home, I suspect, is much the same.
I wholeheartedly agree. If the current general trend regarding premium items continues (which I hope it does, plenty of them are fantastic) the pricing strategy is that much easier to implement/justify. It would benefit Home to offer both premium and standard fare in the long run; here’s to another mechjet quality suit. lol
Mechjets by Lockwood winning Best Outfits is no surprise there.
And didn’t anyone mentioned the biggest hiccup in a Home Outfit; the censoring of the SCRE4M outfit.
No real surprises here. Lockwood and NDreams and are both becoming real innovators in Home. Loot is also in that club now it remains to see if new developers like Juggernaut can keep up and surprise us this year.
I am very disappointed that no mention is made about LOTT CRACKLE…
It’s still a function sought has horns and cries for 3 years by all users?!
LOOT!!!!! grrr^^
You aren’t the only one. Funny how people -- once they get what they want -- don’t scream and cry in celebration as nearly as loud (or as often) as when they were complaining about *not* having it.
Perhaps next (this) year?
Loot Should have Been in there somewhere this year! I mean with the release of the Loot Space Apartment and the addition of Crackle to it’s line up…LOOT and LKWD are Home’s Golden Boys in my opinion…
If we get a portable Loot EOD this year, I’ll be shocked if that doesn’t take Best Active Item. As it’s baked into a space (and two of those spaces released in 2010), it’s easy to overlook that. And the Active Camera, brilliant as it is, probably has limited usefulness for many.
I’ll also suggest that the Taunt feature was what put Sodium 2 over the top for Best Multiplayer Game. Novus Prime is an excellent multiplayer game as well, and in many ways stronger than Sodium 2. Try beating the higher levels in Novus Prime without some skilled players around.
I think the Mech Jet is the most shocking win here. Not because it isn’t awesome, which it is, but because the Bloons and Urban Camo outfits are so much more common, and also offer great custom animations. Perhaps there’s something about the Mech Jet pricing, which makes it a bit rarer than other costumes, that adds to its appeal.
Portable EOD might just be the most important personal virtual commodity ever developed for Home. It instantly raises the value of owning a private estate, and helps to justify any private estates someone already owns. It’s a social improvement to Home which can monetize and be easily measured, encouraging other developers to think along similar lines.
The taunt feature in S2 is an interesting wrinkle, and I have to wonder if the graphical superiority of S2 also played a factor in the voting results. I love Novus Prime — it’s a thoroughly enjoyable game which I’ve spent between twenty to thirty dollars on already — but S2’s easily the more graphically impressive experience.