Free-Range Chicken
by ted2112 HSM team writer
Upon entering the Creek Falls space, I must admit I was a bit disappointed. Sure it’s a nice space, loft, deck, hot tub, the whole nine yards, but that view is simply cruel! This amazing river nosily makes it way along to destination unknown. A bridge with winding paths makes it way through an autumn wonderland, all of this, and the fact that you can’t get to them.
Damn you, glass walls! Wait, let me rephrase that: damn you invisible walls!
I have heard stories about inmates on Alcatraz who were forced to gaze upon the skyline of San Francisco. Being stuck in a jail cell with no means of getting to this beautiful place just beyond their grasp, they slowly lost their minds.
Okay, I know I’m being overly dramatic; it’s just that I would love to talk awhile about a free range or sandbox type of space on Home. Think at how fun that could be? How about an outdoor wooded place that you could get lost, wander and explore? How about a Myst-style island with a mystery waiting to be uncovered? Call me a free-range chicken, but I’m a big fan of the journey being the reward itself.
Sometimes that pier that you see from the Harbor Studio looks so inviting. You want to climb down and sit in the café a while and watch the boats, or move further down the pier and get in a car and head inland. Ah, the adventures you could have! How about those streets in the Santorini Greece space? Call me a rebel, but I want to hop that fence into my neighbors’ yard and head down the cobblestone way to see what the town has to offer. Even the loading screen with that adventure district taunts me as a place I’m dying to check out, and don’t even get me started on the Hub; slow down monorail train thingies I don’t know where you’re going, but I want to climb aboard!
I want to go there!
Now please don’t mistake my words as criticism; they are anything but. It is because they have done such an amazing job that I want to run down that hill at my Hollywood Hills House and have a drink at one of the Sunset Strip bars, provided I’m careful to avoid all that traffic down there. I have been writing a while now about the barrier being broken. That transparent set dressing wall has become a moving three dimensional world unto itself. It seems like the developers have been taking it more and more seriously, each one taking their turn outdoing each other. I say keep going! The further they take it, the more I see all the possibilities.
I think we are going in the right direction. Look the Midway and Midway 2 spaces. They are two different spaces, but connect seamlessly, or the Sports Walk connecting to the pier park space. In Little Big Planet when you reach the maximum saturation of a space you start with a new one and simply connect them to create an even bigger space. Is this approach right for Home?
Let’s take that thought a bit further. We have had room add ons for a while now. Like the Mansion, with the garage, pool and second floor, all different spaces have to be purchased separately, yet designed to fit together as one whole space. How about existing popular rooms that could be added on to? Imagine for a moment a boat on the shore of the Lakeside Log Cabin, one that you could explore the lake with as a fishing game, or a button on that Tycoon Penthouse elevator that would take us down to street level to check out that amazing city – car driving game anyone?
Home is by far the greatest hybrid of the social and gaming worlds. The natural progression of the blending of the two can only evolve to one place. Thank you Southern Hideaway for letting us go further. Granzella is letting us explore more and more of the island as time goes on, and we can circumnavigate the island via Jet Ski. See, it’s starting already!
Home Beta has held our hand and shown us the ropes. Sony and the family of developers have given us so much already and it’s amazing to see each “generation” of spaces – both public and private – expanding. Frankly, I don’t see any limits. So far in Home, it has been proven that people will pay for spaces that push the limits. I don’t think there would have ever been a LOOT Space Station if people didn’t shell out for the Hollywood Hills space before it.
Like the Merry Pranksters bus in the 1960s, I want to go further because I know we can. We play video games and Home because we want to get lost in different worlds. In Home not only can we do this, we can also take our friends along for that journey.
One of my favorite gaming experence of all time is Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. Not only is the game play great, but the real gem of that game is the sandbox world that Rockstar created. I have been playing it for many years, and most of it well after I beat the game. I love the open world to explore and the attention to detail. They didn’t have to design such a big game; they could have cut hundreds of corners, but they didn’t and it has paid off in spades for them. It’s a game that is the gift that keeps on giving.
In Home we have the luxury of sharing. It’s great to see something amazing in a single player game, but something different altogether when we can share that amazing with friends. The gaming world is expanding everyday and Home is getting bigger with it. There have been some epic failures of MMOs and Games that have only held our imagination for a short while. To last we need to go further. Let’s keep walking on this path we are on, and let’s get lost together.
February 19th, 2012 by ted2112 | 13 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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The things you like have been goals of mine to make happen. I think Home should not have doors that cannot open (unless they are boarded shut). I don’t like invisible walls. When they were going to put invisible railings on the Tycoon Penthouse, my suggestion was visible railings or none. In my new game space you will see the camera actually able to go out past the railing and not just pushed up against you by an invisible wall.
I am hoping for some dramatic moves forward with spaces bigger than anything that currently exists.
The problem is the cost to build versus what people will pay for it. The Mansion was a Sony experiment. If it did not make money, it would have been fine. Most third party developers could not withstand a failed experiment of that size. Having such a large vocal opposition I am sure made third party developers less interested in trying the experiment.
Since it was a success as far as I have been told, I am sure others are thinking about doing something similar. I know I am.
Yes, yes, yes!!! I too want to walk in Creek Falls it is so frustrating that I can’t it’s like that beautiful movie starlet one will never even meet. I am going to the Glade and cry but I don’t know whether to cry out of joy of beauty or the sadness of wanting and not being able to have. There’s two kinds of teardrops.
I wonder how much I would pay for the ability to walk the forbidden valley. I know I would pay, but how much? I did pay $10.99 for worthless chips which I lost quick enough but I did have fun.
That’s a good article it certainly is even if it made me frustrated. Oh well
Bye for now.
Yes, yes and more yes! Every single Home personal and public space that gives us a view of a world that will likely be forever un-explorable teases me to no end! I wish Home was fully explorable “on foot” where we could go from place to place experiencing all there is between.
Unfortunately, that’s not what Home is.
Another great article!
I agree that it is incredibly tantalizing to walk outside current boundaries. It teases us immensely to include a view we cannot explore, whether it is Santorini’s surrounding town or the landscape Planetland. It would be so grand to explore more of the environment.
I suspect there are technological concerns, which affect everything from lag to price of entry, of course. It’s still likely possible to amp up the capacity to explore in some fashion but it may come at a price, perhaps in way we hadn’t initially expected.
One issue might be: would it make Home seem more like a game to the general audience? The level of exploration we dream of may levy comparisons to MMOs and thus encourage discussions of creating quests to fill this landscape. The larger the area, the more we want to interact with (a potential Skyrim effect?).
This of course raise the question of: how much would they charge for such a thing? How about updates? For either, I would enjoy that Myst concept translated into Home. We could have a sandbox space that develops a mystery. It would be great as an experiment and if they’re wanting to adapt the space linkage to it, it could potentially work. Plus theu could charge just for that.
An idea, though. lol
A Myst Island personal estate for Home would be *insane.* Aside from the amazing atmosphere, there would be unlockable puzzles to solve. And upon solving all the puzzles, a portal would open up to the next personal estate (perhaps Myst’s Channelwood Age or somesuch), which would activate upon the new space being released.
*That* is how to do interlinked estates.
Now for all the people who look for the edges this suggestion would be an excellent idea, because it would give them somewhere to go once they reached that edge.
This is a cool article and is something I have thought about often. My favorite space is the Tropical Escape and I have often wanted to grab a raft and float around in the water along the beach. In fact I sometimes try to push myself and try to go in. LOL. It would be cool if there was something to unlock to allow you in. Also in Santorini Greece, I would also love to be able to jump from terrace to terrace. On the Santorine Yacht it would be cool to be able to go swimming off the ledge or even tubing. As for the Harbor Studio, I would love to be able to go down to the town. I sometimes use the telescope to see if I can see something new. In my Lakeside Cabin, I would love to be able to take a boat out and watch a sunset. I was thinking maybe in Hollywood Hills to be able to ride in the blimp or be able to actually swim or float in the pool, but at least you can walk around in the pool. Lastly on the new Sunset Yacht, it would be cool to be able to board the plane or the other thing on there and have a birds eye view. The scenery on there is so breathtaking.
But anyway, glad there are other people out there who think the same way that I do. I enjoyed reading your point of view on it all!!!
My own “wish list” of what I would like Sony and others (3P devs) to change in my private spaces would be almost 2000 words long. (I know because I wrote it.) But, as I said at New Year’s time, what I mostly wish from them is that they pay more attention to details. And a list explaining that in detail would probably be twice as long!
While I to enjoy exploring and would love to walk where ever my eyes may lead me, there is also something to be said for the stimulation of the imagination. If all my questions are answered on how something might look like up close then that is dealt with and the mystery is over. And what if it didn’t live up to what I had imagined, I think I would sometimes rather wonder than to be let down. The human body is a work of art, but often it is more alluring if not totally exposed. Letting ones mind fill in the blank has its rewards as well. Don’t think I don’t want to wander out of the ant farm and explore. But sometime I do that while safely trekking through my mind.
There are spaces in Home that I would love to explore more, notably the garden outside the Luxury Lakeside.
I think that is a body of water like the one in the Blasters Paradise or Tropical Beach is there you should at least be allowed to go into it, not be stuck at the shoreline staring into it. If just those small barriers could be extended it would enhance the experience of the space greatly.
“Damn you, glass walls!”
Nicely done, LMAO
We could do all this and more, until the day Sony decided to patch a harmless non-disruptive glitch. There is a way around that patch, but for anyone with any real money spent on Home, breaking TOS is undesirable.
I have 25 glitched spaces that I can explore.
I want to fly my Nebula Airship where I want and see other ships as I fly willy-nilly through the atmoshpere.This would be awesome. I want to walk on the streets below the Primarch’s Vigilarium, walk the catwalk outside the Treehouse Home, stroll outside the creature cantina in Mos Eisley…these are a few of the things I would like thought of as the creative teams develop new and more imaginative places. They are all great, but there is always a sense of “…if they had just done that…”