The Starship LOOTerprise Video
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Ask a Home citizen what his favorite personal estate is, and you’re bound to get a variety of answers.
It wasn’t that long ago that Home only had one personal estate — the Summer House — and that was that. Like Henry Ford’s Model T, which you could have in any color so long as it was black, there just wasn’t a whole lot of choice.
Those days are gone, however. Home now has more real estate to choose from than Las Vegas after the bubble burst a few years ago. And now that there’s such a diverse array of choices, Home developers are really experimenting with new features and different marketing strategies in order to set their products apart. Whether it be interlinked estates (the Mansion), diurnal controls (Dream Yacht, Sunset Yacht), bundled with an item purchase (Midnight Glade), given away as a freebie (the Hotel Room, Darla’s Den), equipped with unique features (the Officer’s Quarters) or awarded as a gaming achievement (Apartment of Champions), there are some fascinating ways in which the competition for your dollar is intensifying.
That said, people are simply going to like what they like. The Log Cabin is still my favorite estate in Home, and it’s got no special bells and whistles. I’m sure there are people out there who bugnuts for Primarch’s Vigilarium or the Anime Apartment. Everyone has different tastes. And thank god for that; if we all thought like me, we’d all spend our days watching the History Channel and the planet would officially run out of high-fructose corn syrup. So diversity is good. Oh yes.
Step aboard the Dream Yacht.
Asking someone what the best estate in Home is, however, is a very different question. Now, yes, Lockwood won this award in 2011 with the Dream Yacht — which, to be fair, is brilliant. When you step aboard the Dream Yacht, you officially become Gianni Agnelli if Gianni Agnelli had been a modern-day Russian petrochemicals billionaire. Of course, that’s if you’re male. If you’re female, the Dream Yacht automatically morphs you into Grace Kelly.
Don’t question this. You know I’m right.
Just as you know I’m right when I say that the LOOT Space Apartment really is the best personal estate in Home right now. No, it may not be to everyone’s aesthetic tastes, but in terms of sheer technical wizardry, it stands out in much the same way I imagine a flamethrower would have been slightly conspicuous at the Battle of Gaugamela. It’s just that far beyond what everyone else is doing.
You all know the drill by now. The Flickr API that lets you run hundreds of photos through a slideshow. Up to five Twitter streams. Controllable lighting. That roof animation. And does the Space Apartment have EOD hotspots? Like a fat kid has Fiddle Faddle.
Where the hell did LOOT find the RAM to power all of this? The PS3 only comes with 256MB of the stuff. My cat has more than that. If there’s one reason why I’m hoping the PS4 shows up sooner rather than later, it’s because I’m fervently hoping for a clean-sheet redesign of Home, with all the lessons learned from the first go ’round, and sufficient RAM to hold Moore’s Law at bay for longer than, say, Planck time.
(You know, if the PS4 unveiled a super-duper version of Home, shouldn’t it logically be called…Mansion?)
Regardless of what sort of demonic pacts LOOT made in order to pull off the Space Apartment, the end result is more brilliant than Fiorella Terenzi. And that’s why we’ve written about it so much here at HomeStation. Because it deserves your money.
Buying the Space Apartment sends a message that you want to see more innovation and features in personal estates. I’d rather have developers pack their estates with these sorts of social enhancements and try to upsell me on a higher price than see more Creek Falls, Nebula Airships and Gothic Manors. Lovely though those spaces are, it’s sort of like test-driving some eco-friendly toot-toot hatchback after you’ve just done a hot lap in a Koenigsegg. Unless you’re George Monbiot, you really don’t give a damn about your carbon footprint at that point. You just want more of that jaw-dropping experience that reaches deep into your happy places and goes all Loma Prieta on them.
Sometimes, though, even a really great apartment can be enhanced by top-notch interior design.
As a rule, HSM avoids publishing “look what I did!” interior design articles. That said, when Godzprototype introduced us to his Space Apartment layout — affectionately dubbed the LOOTerprise — we all kinda dropped our jaws like we’d just found dad’s “special” stash of VHS tapes. The Space Apartment, which was already brilliant by itself, had been convincingly transformed into a Federation starship.
Yes, we already featured the LOOTerprise in a recent article. But the problem is that the photos just didn’t do it justice. Trying to describe the LOOTerprise is like trying to describe the first time you saw the Tantive IV being chased by that freaking huge Star Destroyer. Some things just have to be seen to be experienced.
So, while a bunch of us were goofing off at the LOOTerprise after a recent HSM party, we decided to film it. And the end result gives you, we think, a much better idea of what we’re talking about. Many thanks to all who participated in this recent round of lunacy!
January 25th, 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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love the video!
That was great fun and a surprisingly good video considering it wasn’t planned for. Great music choice it fits it well, you are getting good at this Norse. Glad we capped off our one year anniversary party with this, it kind of completed the night for me.
O.O!!! There was a party????
*checks e-mail* Oh, for crying out loud…. I should check that more. -_-
Oh well. Looked like it was fun! and it was a great video! Well done Norse, everyone else involved. Bravo!
As a rule we try to avoid fluff pieces, except when Norse writes it…:)
(NorseNote: Suck it, Geo.)
Hey! I write the fluff pieces here.
Great article Norse! Yes, Godzprototype has done an amazing job decorating his space and it does look like a Star Trek enterprise. That was so much fun hanging out and playing around on the ship after the anniversary party and a great idea by you to make a video of our experience there. Your right, only video could illustrate the experience properly. Wow, I am very impressed by how you editted all the footage you got of us and put it together. Just like Burbie said, you ARE getting really good at this. I likey!
I agree that this personal space is definitely the most technilogically advanced one on Home today. It shows what is possible within the memory constraints of the PS Home platform. I know that we all experienced some lag there due to the memory required to display all the furniture items on top of everything that already comes with the space. I think this should inspire other developers to do more with spaces beyond just the aesthetics and offer more functionality like the LOOT space station. LOOT has definitely set the bar quite high and I can’t wait to see what they and other develerops come out with next! Thanks again Norse!
That was a great video Norse! It was alot of fun! I can’t wait to see what LOOT brings us next! Thanks LOOT! I’m glad everybody had fun too. Maybe we could all get a script together and take it to the next level.
What should we call our characters in this film? Godz referred to his as Captain Curtis (any reference to Curtiss Wright?), and for some reason I keep picturing Jersquall’s character as “First Officer Blarg.” Did you guys think up any names for your guys?
starship Looterprise… and the Homelings are very Borg like.
Theres a whole star-trek parody brewing… isn.t there?
Of course there is, Gideon. I am writing a spoof called “Space Belles” about Capt. Kork, Spork, and an all -female crew -- plus some troubles with tribbles, er, I mean doggies. Of course, I will have to pass the script by Norse and Terra who will undoubtedly cut out some of the raunchier scenes (after laughing themselves silly) so it may take some time before it is finished.
Use of EchoChrome uniforms on the invading alien Dorgs will be purely coincidental….
I guess I could be Ensign Starla Trekker lol
Chief Science Officer Llewellyn.
Very nicely done, Norse. It was fun to be in a completely impromptu video.