Reflections on Content Retirement in Home
by MJG74, HSM Art Director
Do you feel a sense of loss when a space is removed from Home? I assume, when PlayStation Home management announces that they will be removing older spaces, there will be mixed feelings with in the community. The recent announcement of the retirement of the Conspiracy, SOCOM, and InFamous spaces certainly stirred up some mixed feelings for me.
The Conspiracy space was plagued with its own community conspiracies from the start. Missing rewards, and the all-access pass not working, initially gave this space faltering reviews by the community. Aside from some initial glitches I found the space to be designed very well. I enjoyed the aesthetics of the underground intelligence base. I liken it to an action spy movie set, or something straight out of the golden age of comic books.
Let’s not forget the the game play; it plays sort of like a stealth-action game mixed with a mini-game collection. Each mission had the goal of getting through a variety of obstacles to collect a briefcase, and then get out quickly before time runs out. You’ll be confronted with locked doors to open, computers to hack, security robots and lasers to avoid, and more.
Conspiracy’s biggest setback was perhaps its timing; games like SodiumOne and Slap Happy Sam at the time dominated the attention of the Home community. If Conspiracy could have came out earlier, it may have been more appreciated. Regardless, Jet Set Games gave the community a unique experience in Home — one that will not easily be forgotten.
There was a time when the SOCOM space was the long awaited event in Home. SOCOM Tactical Operations Center was the first installment of the then SOCOM Home Hub. It was to serve as a “strategy post” where players could meet and strategize and enhance SOCOM game play. Regional leader boards pulled data from the SOCOM site, with such information as all-time ranking, kills, deaths and kill-death ratio. Those avatars who longed for military garb were pleased with the bandoliers, balaclavas, and other assorted tactical outerwear SOCOM brought to Home. Later, the second half of the SOCOM Home Hub, SOCOM OPFOR, came to Home. Once it did, the golden AK47 reward was the most sought-after item in Home. OPFOR offered Home users new mini games – five finger fillet, gun stripping, and then the golden AK47 scavenger hunt kept most of the community coming back for more SOCOM fun. SOCOM has a huge following – website, blogs, forums and even a webcast/podcast. Although the public space’s time has passed, SOCOM will still live on with the avatar rewards and garb worn with pride by those vets of a classic war game.
I was most saddened by the announcement of the retirement of the InFamous space. It was one of my first experiences in Home, and to this day, I have yet to spend as many hours in any other Home space that I had spent in the InFamous space. The InFamous space brought to us the docks of Empire City, the same burg that Cole inadvertently blew up in the InFamous game. There was rubble, wood, a beached ship, some strewn about shipping containers, and a whole lot of filth. At the time, it was unlike anything we had seen before in Home. Mini games and story-expanding tidbits pulled you into the world that Sucker Punch had created.
Besides all of that greatness, what made the space spacial for me was the graffiti wall. For the first time, Home users could leave their personal mark on a public Home space. Originally meant for tagging and traditional graffiti, the wall gave users a selection of letters, numbers, shapes and free form spray paint cans and colors to leave their mark. The challenge was the spray cans would run out of paint rather quickly; once that had happened, there were no more tools for your disposal. It was not long before many of us learned by using shapes, numbers and letters this gave us an almost unlimited amount of paint. With that discovery, what was originally simple graffiti became works of art.
Shortly thereafter a forum post was created in the official PlayStation Home community forums, where users — including myself — could (and did) post their recent graffiti wall creations. I was honored to learn that Outso – who created the graffiti wall for Home – showcased my creation on their web site. The forum thread still exists! So I able to do a web search and find many user-created InFamous Home Graffiti wall images from back in the day. I have compiled some of them in this slideshow:
“Out with the old in with the new” — it does not make sense to keep uninhabited Home spaces running on the Home servers and taking up valuable cyber real-estate. Yet when faced with the reality that these Home space will no longer be available to the community, I must admit I feel the sense of loss. There is nothing I would like more than to revisit the nostalgic Home spaces on a whim, although it’s not a luxury we currently have.
I’m forced to wonder if the fine people behind these spaces could possibly recycle them in some way? For instance: Home offers a public open house on a new private Home estates; could it be possible that these former public spaces be put up for sale, and reutilized as a private space, or a clubhouse skin? It might perhaps be a means of monetizing spaces which have otherwise had their day in the sun. We can but hope.
February 6th, 2012 by MJG74 | 9 comments
Michael Goss is the Art Director (emeritus) for HomeStation Magazine. In real life, is a normal member of the human species with some imperfections, but with a strength of ten as well, I kid ye not! He also has been know to exaggerate the details from time to time. His goal is to live fearlessly but finds that kinda difficult with current crop of republicans running for office.
wonderful read, hun. interesting the last little comment on recycling a space. the best example is the central plaza; probably one of the most missed spaces in home. but it can be revisited in a couple of ways. one is the destroyed version in the killzone space, another is the blood soaked version at the dead island space. you can even hide the fact its the same space. look at the new yeti/hunter space. for those not paying attention, its the central plaza. just the buildings are gone. funny, if you stand where the bowling alley used to be, you can still hear it. same as the aurora space. if you stand just right at the los penguini bros. space, you can hear the feed back from the speakers of the old musicality space. maybe they can have a guest apperance of old spaces, once a month for a week. with an announcement of whats next week. make it enjoyable to go to by adding a reward for showing. i think they would be pleasently surprised at the amount of people that would show up to these old dead spaces. i for one miss the beach and the square (most of you know what im talking about). i’d love to go to a ‘space of the month’! WOO HOO!!
There are issues of licensing that go along with the spaces. For this reason, the decision is not in the hands of one person or a group of people. Even if the game team (as in InFAMOUS) wanted to open it up for a week, then there are a lot of support issues dealing with servers and such. It is not like just opening the door to the attic so people can go inside.
These are great ideas, but the devil is in the details. Anytime lawyers and/or money get involved, there is a huge chance of failure. Most people avoid these and create something new with a higher chance of success.
I should have said “a higher perceived chance of success.”
well said. im just curious if only the name or game or even company is linked to that space. for instance, could they remake or reuse the infamous space by removing all advertising and bettering it, expanding. not that space in particular, but you know what i mean? and rename it. maybe even a parody, if the creators still hold the rights to the design itself. a parody would be funny as hell!! i mean we all would know what its supposed to be, unless this treads on toes, then drop the parody part. but still, if the design is liked….
All of those spaces listed I never used. Only SOCOM and that was because when I was in a fam we posted up there. I still miss central plaza I will admit. EA left and I was crushed, but I moved on..Great read Mike !!
Great read MJG. I can’t believe those were all created in Home! I always feel like we, the readers as well as the writers, get a special treat when you have the time to put finger to key.
I have actually mulled over the sale of past public spaces quite a bit. It’s just one of the many idea outlines that are nestled away on a document on my thumb drive. I think this is a concept that should be explored further and given its own article.
Would we want them to be personal spaces or clubs? Would we trade the ability to invite 59 friends over to a PERSONAL Central Plaza for the ability to be able to put a sofa in Listen at Home? COULD this be done with some of the spaces that are gone such as IREM beach?
Some of these questions I don’t know the answer to… All I really know is I want central back!!
The art you and the others made on the graffiti wall was amazing! It is always sad to see spaces go away, but we can only hope they are making room for something even better.
Great read MJG!
Drake’s Nepalese village…add it to the list. I like beautiful places & would return to Irem Square, Seaside of Memories (aka Irem beach) & the Village long after I had all the rewards, just as I still go to Muimui ship, even tho I have all I want. There are also some really beautiful & beautifully done newer spaces helping create memories.
Thanks for the article. Well done!
I’m always sad to see a space go, particularly one that had the promise of Conspiracy. That was a great game that deserved further expansion, and it’s a shame that its technical issues couldn’t be resolved.
I’m more ambivalent about the loss of spaces like SOCOM and InFamous that are tied to a particular franchise or game. Ultimately, those spaces are only relevant as long as the games they support are relevant, even though we may dearly love the spaces themselves. After a while, only the die-hard fans of those spaces visit them, or people looking for a quiet spot for a group gathering.
I think third-party developers would be better served by building spaces dedicated to their brand or their studios, with sections that can be updated to promote new titles, much like the Hub and Pier Park can be updated. The Lockwood Publishing Showcase generally has a good amount of people in it, because it’s constantly changing and offering new features. It’s a space that could only get stale if the publisher decided to abandon it.
I’d love to see a Sega museum in Home, promoting all the games they have in the PlayStation Store, or an Atari space with arcade cabinets of their classic games. I don’t know why more publishers don’t follow this formula, as its proven successful.