LOOT Ups the Ante
PR courtesy of Sara Stephens, LOOT Production Coordinator, with commentary by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor
“When in doubt, go flat out.”
Sometimes, you just have to pull out all the stops, you know?
The past two years of Home – and specifically, the past year alone – we have seen an exponential amount of growth in commodities, not just in quantity or variety, but growth in an evolutionary sense. Of course, if you’re a parent – like I am – you know just how fast a couple of years can go by. My son’s in preschool now; it doesn’t seem all that long ago when he was still small enough to sleep in a crib.
As I sit here writing this, I am about a month away from marking three years in Home. Sure, it doesn’t have the same “ooh-ahh” factor (for those who believe that seniority is the end all and be all) as, say, being in Home since closed beta. Yet even that many months into open beta, there hadn’t been that much available. Diesel and Ligne Roset were as close as we got to premium items. If you wanted a personal estate, it was the lakeside log cabin or the summer house. Heck, you couldn’t even hang up pictures yet.
And then somewhere along the line, we went from a rather static environment in Home with updates added here and there, like so many bones thrown to the dog, to what we have now. Which is like comparing drinking from a water fountain to drinking from a fire hydrant.
But as mentioned in the beginning, it’s not just the sheer amount of items available that has increased remarkably. It’s the features these items are beginning to have. What’s interesting to note is that the concept of a “feature” varies from item to item. For a bed, it may be the ability to lie down. For a personal estate, it could be the bundling of furniture.
That’s exactly what LOOT is planning to release upon those who own the Space Apartment:
“When the following items are released in a few weeks, they will be FREE to anyone that owns the Space Apartment:
- Comfort Bundle – 10 items
- Space Cubes (4) Bundle – 15 items
- Sleek Space Bundle – 6 items
- House Plant Bundle – 12 items
- Space Apartment Bed
- D.O.G. Red
Total = 45 items! They’ll be available in the LOOT Store and we’ll create a link to them in our EOD, just like with the Hollywood Hills House furniture. So, play-play-play! And let us know what you think!”
Boom.
This is certainly going to be intriguing to watch, as there’s a lot of different factors to consider here.
When it comes to that area of Home commodities known as personal estates, it’s not enough these days to feature a basic space with a room or two, with pretty scenery and simple architecture. Something else has to ignite the desire within people to buy it. Up until now for LOOT, it had been their EOD screens that are available in the Sunset Yacht, Hollywood Hills, and Space Station estates (and the Twitter feed/Flickr capabilities for the latter-most of the three). For Lockwood, it has been the tabletop Salt Shooter game, the randomly appearing thirty free furniture items in the Dream Yacht, and the Midnight Glade, which you got free for purchasing the fireworks bundle. Even relative newcomers like Hellfire and Juggernaut get that if they want to produce a successful personal space, they have to give people a reason to buy it that is more than just “it looks nice.”
The only proper way you are able sit on a furniture object such as this in Home.
This goes for furniture as well. I don’t have access to the official numbers, but from the random rumblings in the community, it’s rather easy to see that bundling furniture has had quite a fair bit of positive reception. Now this is a market that is even more saturated than the personal estates; I mean seriously – just how many chairs do you really need? I’ve never been much of a furniture shopper in Home to be honest; I have a hard time justifying purchasing something the likes of a lounge chair or a couch, especially if upon sitting on it, my avatar looks as if she’s got a cattle prod stuck where the sun don’t shine. It doesn’t matter how aesthetically pleasing the piece may look. Sitting ramrod straight on a sun lounger looks ridiculous.
When a developer adds complimentary furniture to a personal space free of additional charges outside of the initial purchase of the space, they’re adding value to their product. And this is a good thing; it makes that more-than-$4.99 price tag easier to justify, both for the developer selling the estate and the Home user buying it.
Should this be as big of a success as my gut is telling me it will, will this potentially affect the sales of standard furniture? It’s not impossible, but this could also being a new market trend, where the design and creation of furniture becomes a loss leader in the realm of Home commodities. Think about it – if you buy a personal estate, you’re going to want to furnish it. How many times have you not purchased an estate, because you knew you’d have to turn around and buy furniture to go with it, and more often than not, end up spending twice as much buying furniture for it than what the initial investment on the estate itself was? For these premium spaces, this concept of offering free furniture items just makes sense.
Three years ago, I can recall being on Home wishing and hoping that one day – maybe – we could play music in our personal spaces and hang pictures on the wall. What a difference three years makes.
February 17th, 2012 by Terra_Cide | 3 comments
Terra _Cide is the former Community Manager for Lockwood Publishing and Editor Emeritus for HomeStation Magazine.
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I agree, I love to decorate, I look at the personal estates I buy as empty canvases waiting to be filled. I am very particular about what I buy, and I put a lot of thought into where I think the furniture will add to the beauty of the spaces I own. I like my spaces to look lived in as well.
Loot is on the right track here I think. Even if they had offered these furniture pieces at a greatly reduced price for owning the Space Station they would sell I think. This is a much better way to reward the owners than the occasional Easter egg. For one thing these are useable in other spaces.
I am excited for Home! I love to decorate too. The LOOTerprise will be remodeled as soon as I get these items. Maybe we can go on a voyage at that point. How many want to go, “Out There?” Gotta love LOOT! Thank You!
Wow, cant wait to remodel my space station, and u make an excellent point about furniture, nice article