A Two-Dimensional 3D World
by BONZO, HSM guest contributor
Home has been developing and evolving since it first launched into open beta in 2008. It has seen more expansion and more changes in the last year than it has in the first two years of its infancy. Most of what has become the Home core users recognize the potential it has, and just about everyone has an opinion or an idea on how it can evolve. How often have you purchased or won an item or a space, and thought to yourself, “This is pretty awesome, but it would have been better if they had done this…” or “I wish they had pushed it a little further and done this…”
There are limitations in Home. In a virtual world that could potentially do anything, there are constant barriers — but why? There are limitations to the software, the development time and resources, and the potential for profit. So there are several contributing factors to why Home content seems to exist behind so much red tape.
So many new spaces have been introduced, both public and personal — and finally an alternative to club spaces in the last few months. As well designed, aesthetically at least, as they have been…I haven’t really been blown away by many of them. They are pretty, but so few spaces have really pushed creativity or suspended reality. Ironically the one space that has forced the camera to a 2D perspective, Ansada Fone Apartment, pushes our idea of perspectives. The “Novus Prime Officer Quarters” is the only one that suspends the idea of gravity, and with in this virtual world gravity is just that…an idea. Yet every other space screams, “The world is flat!”
Suspend Reality!
Should it be any different though? Why not? Push the limits of reality. Every new update that introduces a new personal space or new public space makes me feel like I am walking through a Disneyland theme zone. Here is luxury-land, here is future-land, space-land, war-land. There is no denying that there are some fantastically designed spaces in home. Lockwood, Loot and nDreams are among the top developers to really push the limits of the content in grand design — but beyond the pretty textures and the aesthetically pleasing design I am still walking on terra firma, and bumping against invisible walls.
Avatars by design already have limitations. You can walk and run — although “jog” is more accurate a description — but you can’t jump, swim or fly. I love the fact that alternative locomotion methods have been explored with the hover board, skater, and mechjet flying options, but even when you fly you are grounded. Home could be a HUGE open world but as many bugs as we encounter now, just imagine the bugs and the glitching that would produce. Most spaces in home are bordered, and only visually interconnected. Even within the casino you can’t simply walk up the stairs to the poker tables; you have to travel to that section of the casino.
Compartmentalizing into independent zones is easier to maintain than a continuous open space, but spaces like Mui Mui Island, Sodium, LOOT Sunset Yacht and the recent Journey promotional space have shown us how big a space can be. Yet these spaces are still limited. Mui Mui island doesn’t allow you to go in the water — a major flaw — and doesn’t allow you to decorate the beach, or any place outside the interior of the tree or the top platform. Meanwhile, at the Sodium Hub, which is one of the largest spaces in Home, you travel far enough into the desert in Sodium lounge, and you reappear back in the main core.
I'm Not Hydrophobic
I love the Lockwood Dream Yacht’s aesthetics, and I personally prefer the LOOT Sunset Yacht. Compare the two, and the limited space of the LOOT yacht pales in comparison to the Dream Yacht’s amenities. However…it moves. I can not emphasize how much I love the fact that it circles an island and the landscape changes. I don’t know how they shoehorned all of that into the memory restrictions Home has, but it’s brilliant. It makes the space seem so much grander.
The other two major perks are the un-lockable wildlife and the fact that LOOT so brilliantly included the personal theater into it. My personal favorite, of course is the whale. Although you can not interact with it, the fact that it is its own entity is amazing and I never tire of watching it breach. It was also one of the first spaces to allow you control of the atmosphere by changing the time of day — something which still remains a limited commodity, but I gladly sacrifice area quantity over the quality of that space.
Never Gets Old
When you consider other games, though, they pretty much all do the same with few great exceptions. You always walk on the ground, and fall off edges, and bump into walls, visible or otherwise. Most modern games, though, don’t compartmentalize; they provide a huge open world. Home is perfect for a sandbox game experience. Games like Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed, and Grand Theft Auto provide this expansive world to explore. Games like DC universe online and City of Heroes allow us to fly. Of all the spaces that have come and gone, few have really been imaginative in design.
nDreams’ Aurora, with its floating islands, has done a great job of suspending reality while still keeping you grounded. Hudson’s Dolphy discs have done a similar task but failed to provide the underwater atmosphere. The dolphins seem more like they are flying than swimming in comparison to your avatar being fixed to the virtual gravity.
The LOOT Space Apartment is amazing. It isn’t the first outer space-themed setting in Home, but it is the best so far. It is one of the spaces I looked forward to the most after hearing its announcement. To an astrophile like my self it was a Home space dream come true, and the first thing I envisioned was something like the artificial gravity ring centrifuge you see at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 
So what could be wrong with it? Beautiful design, no doubt about that, but one giant missing element was definitely the Moon. I love the orbital view of the rotating Earth. Kudos to LOOT — but really, when I think space I think the Moon, and I miss it but understand the limitations of the space and development time and resources.
There are great amenities to this space also. Of course the personal theater is top of the list, twitter feeds, and flikr access on 14 screens rotating pictures is fantastic. What is missing are what the limitations of this virtual gravity forces on you; if any space could use a zero-gravity simulation it is this one. I would pay extra for an astronaut suit that would let me spacewalk. The pool at the base could have gone all around the perimeter and made it grander by being a full ring rather than a section of it — or, better yet, suspend reality and gravity and it could have been a sphere pool like the one in Final Fantasy X at the center of the station where you could interact with the aquarium life housed at the center of it now. Even with the limitations I was greatly disappointed there is only one window in the pool area. I love the star field in the background, but it would have been so much more beautiful with a texture map of the Milky Way.
Blitzball Anyone?
The core users and the casual users all want more and more and expect even more from Home, but it’s a smaller base that wants or is willing to pay for it. The flip side of that argument is that developers have to make it worth paying for. There are a lot of entertainment options fighting for my disposable income, which in this economy is getting smaller and smaller. So in order to make me chose Home every time over any of them I have to be blown away and LOVE what I see. Rehashing the same old stuff and remapping it and calling it new and sticking an elevated price on it isn’t going to cut it. I implore developers to push the limits. Don’t give me undesirable quantity, but the quality that burns a hole in my pocket.
There is a place for grounded analogous realism in Home. The glam and the luxury is popular, but we crave a push of the boundaries of reality. This is a virtual world, where anything can be. If we can have underwater apartments, let me swim with the sharks; if we can have space stations, let me walk in space. We played for decades in worlds that tied us to an X and Y axis; 3D was supposed to introduce the Z axis, not replace the Y.
Does this require a complete overhaul of Home at the core? No; it can completely exist with the current content and limitations by using its current content creatively. Create a limited space that would allow free roam, similar to a Spore-like planet. Create more spaces that move through a changing landscape. Suspend gravity and allow avatars to fly. Bring Escher’s or Dali’s impossible landscapes into Home. At the very least break all the rules of architecture and bring more impossible design into the buildings you expect us to buy. The payoff is there for those willing to invest in it.
March 30th, 2012 by BONZO | 5 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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WOW, and BRAVO!!!!
Well said Bonzo.
Replying to myself… this feels weird.
LOL. Anyway:
Considering the “landscape” of Home. I really think Home has grown into something they didn’t think it would. We see this time and time again with the content that is released within Home. I think the foundation of Home just doesn’t lend itself to the more open world model of other games.
Games that are sandbox are designed from the ground up with that core concept. Home was designed from the get go to be smaller segmentations of an interconnected world. I have long wanted Home to be a more cohesive experience. This is one of the reasons I miss central so much. Hub and Pier Park with Sports Walk do a good job, but I really wish I could explore the entirety of Home without ever visiting my navigator. Space location? There’s the Shuttle… Sodium does well with Portals but I would much prefer if it was some guy in a beat up hover-taxi that asks me “Were you wanna go, mate?” Same result but with more personality than an teleportation orb.
I just don’t think Home is technically capable of having a thriving, pulsating, breathing, open-world.
Someone prove me wrong on this point… Please.
Even if the system resources are there to have a HUGE Home space, what’s the developer’s motivation for doing so? What MORE do they get if they build a large space in comparison to a smaller space? More time spent in development so more money has to be spent to get just about the same return? I’m sure that would go over well with investors.
Speaking of investors (and in case you’re wondering, yes… I did indeed attend the North Hampton Institute for Transitional Conversation. I majored in Segues.)
I think the “SAFEness” of reality is a byproduct of the business model of modern gaming. While I completely agree that we need more “reality bending” Home spaces (just IMAGINE what a Matrix themed space could be like) I think a developer is taking a chance with a space that could end up being a niche purchase. How many would ‘actually’ buy an Escher Space? How many own the Ansada Fone Apartment you mentioned in your article? I would venture to guess most found a friend that had it and just visited it instead of buying it. It’s better to make a “sure seller” than make something out of artistic curiosity.
This is the reason so many developers take it safe when making a game. For every Psychonauts (if you’ve never played this game: Shame on you!) we have two dozen first person shooters with “realistic-future weapons”. This is for a reason. That reason is green… well it used to be green. Now it’s more varied in shades with an orangy-beige background and greenish black print… and that’s just in the US. In Canada and Europe the reason is brownish… or red… there’s blue ones too…
Money. Ok. The reason is money.
Also… I never really minded I couldn’t go into the water of Locoroco Island. I figured that’s where the MuiMui go PuiPui. Hehe.
Ok. Thats it. I’m done.
(Sorry for the abrupt end of the response. I got a C- in “Closure and Resolution Theory” at NHITC.)
LOL, well said, valid argument, and one I recognize and understand completely. I think that’s one of the reasons I miss Central Plaza as well. It was big and open, I don’t care much for the ceiling in the Hub, and the Pier Park is at perma-dusk at least personally I’ve always found dusk a bit depressing. I miss the sunshine of CP, and the fact that i reminded me so much of a campus courtyard. I don’t think all of Home could or should be open space, or a full sandbox but there is potential for a public or personal space in the like. That’s probably another reason why irem beach is missed so much, there was a brightness and open appeal to it even though you eventually reached an end to it, and hit invisible walls. Granzella is a cove, and even though it has other tributaries if you explore enough they are disconnected and uninviting. I love that time of day changes there but it never feels quite sunny. I love sodium hub in design but honestly it reminds me of Burning Man after the party is over, and that’s not cheery at all. Like the end of a good time and now you have to sober up and get back to reality. It is a gamble on developers to try something out of the box but then again so was Home from the beginning, and it would be a welcomed change to see avatars gain more freedom.
I agree on the avatars getting different motions and things, they have been concentrating on things that generate cash, and changing our avatars basic functions won’t give them that. We do need some new dance moves for one though, and some additional motions like mutual hand holding or a hug would be nice as well. It has been proven time and again by the gaming experiences we have had that our avatars can do more than they do regularly. Great article, well written and thought out!