The Scavenger’s Run
by BONZO, HSM guest contributor
“You have received a new item!”
One of my favorite alert messages within Home. Nothing thrills me as much as that little flag popping up across the top-right corner of the screen. I promptly press the Start button and scroll down to Rewards to find out just what it is I have received as an award.
A social hub like Home can provide a great environment for socializing and spending time with friends and a community of likeminded gamers, but as a game — or as a collective of games, rather — it provides a constantly evolving and persistently growing challenge to a collector. There are many games within Home that reward users; some are easy and take no more of a challenge than simply showing up within that space, but others are a real frustrating, head scratching, wall punching, time consuming pain in the neck. Such effort, though, only makes the reward that much more significant. After all, reward by definition is something received in return for hardship.
Gold star, Gold VICKIE, same thing, right?
However, it is more than just that. It isn’t just some “thing,” particularly when we discuss items in a digital realm where the substance is only perceptual. As the PlayStation has trophies for games that support them, rewards in Home are achievements. In elementary school I always worked hard for the coveted “gold star,” knowing full well it was just a simple metallic gold colored sticker that I could purchase a stack of for about a dollar at the time. We can buy a trophy ourselves but it is meaningless, because it isn’t the item itself. It’s what it represents. The achievement. The recognition for something accomplished.
There are various motivations for working towards rewards, and various types of rewards with in the Home universe. Among these are avatar rewards which are wearable items, some simple clothing or costumes. Some are decoration and furniture items for our personal spaces, and within the Total Game Integration rewards are in-game upgrades. Of the best attainable rewards are avatar companions, and the mother of all rewards are full personal spaces.
At the very bottom of the list, and probably the most common, are the avatar t-shirts. Personally I have enough t-shirts to fill a warehouse. Some are fantastically designed and are great for expanding your wardrobe if you can’t or simply chose not to purchase more clothing. Other wardrobe items like accessories, hats, bottoms, alternative tops to t-shirts or shoes are a welcome change as an expansion in the options for customizing your avatar to suit your personality. Of the wearable options, costumes rank higher as they are full-themed customizations, as we have seen recently with the Street Fighter X Tekken rewards.
Decorative items are great for customizing your personal spaces, and to show off trophies or awards earned for in game achievements. These are generally small, but a nice reward to earn for sure. Furniture items are a nicer reward since they do give more options for decorating a space, and like the avatar wardrobe, the way we decorate our spaces are often (though not always) a reflection of our personalities. Companions have always been my favorite rewards, since the companion becomes an extension of your avatar itself, and follows you wherever you go.
The rarest and often the most rewarding are the full personal spaces. There haven’t been many of these, but they are the best reward as they provide a personal private space all your own, to decorate to your liking and where you can invite friends. nDreams and VEEMEE are two companies who have both recently offered personal estates as prizes for completing games.
Rewards are a great marketing tool. It is a great motivator for someone to purchase your item if a person believes they are getting more than they pay for. As much as I like Subway already, I know I personally purchased more Subway items during their Treasure Hunter promotion for the Home rewards. I am not a fan of Dr. Pepper, but I switched from buying Pepsi to Dr. Pepper to get for myself (and gift to others) the codes for the Battlefield 3 costume.
Dr. Pepper Battlefield 3 costume
To a collector like myself, beyond the social aspect, Home as a game becomes about collecting rewards. As a kid there was no activity I enjoyed more than the scavenger hunt. I loved the challenge of collecting all the items on the list, and in the end longing for more items to collect.
Home isn’t like any other game. There are no goals. It demands nothing of you. It is purely up to the user to do what they want. There is no goal, no task, no journey, no winning or losing of the game. It is a playground, that has many games where you can either take part or not. When I don’t log on to socialize, I log on to earn rewards I have not yet earned.
I work on orb collecting to level up in Aurora; I race in Sodium2, or play SodiumOne, to earn Sodium credits; I play poker; I earn pickories; I shoot bots in Novus Prime; I play whatever game I haven’t earned a reward in until I earn the rewards, even if it is a t-shirt I don’t generally want or will wear. I want it. Simply because it is there for me to earn it. If that sounds familiar, it is because my favorite quote — and one which has become somewhat of a motto for me — is George Mallory’s response to being asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest.
His response: “Because it’s there.”
Admittedly there is an almost compulsive need for me to get the rewards, but there is also the challenge. I loathe to give up, or to concede defeat, but as with the PlayStation trophies in games, it gives a reason to come back. There are many games I have played over and over again to earn the trophies because anything short of 100% completion has not been satisfactory enough. Though video games are nothing more than an elaborate means of interactive entertainment, and arguably trivial, to the goal-oriented user it can turn into another challenge to overcome.
March 21st, 2012 by BONZO | 7 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
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I completely Agree wholeheartedly with this Assessment of Home & what the ultimate Goals are.
Though I am not much of a trophy hunter myself, I do enjoy getting the rewards in Home when they are given. When it comes to clothing I wish they would give more then t-shirts though, more variety like pants would be nice. It seems like the companions have taken over the rewards systems lately, between the Winter space and gift machine I think I got like 7 of them during Christmas season. Of all of the rewards I have had to fight for, my Salt Shooter level 50 was the hardest I think, an done that gave me a great deal of satisfaction and sense of achievement like you speak of here. Great article!
I, too, love collecting rewards. Even if it something I know I will NEVER use, I just HAVE to have them. If for no other reason than at some point in time I can whip one out and say, “I was here when THIS was given out. Before your time, kid.”
And like so many others, I have enough tshirts to cover a small nation. Many of them serve no purpose other than to clog up my wardrobe storage when I go looking for something I rarely use.
What bothers me even more than getting a “bad” reward, is when you discover that some, or even ALL, of your coveted rewards have suddenly gone missing. Sometimes they simply disappear because of some glitch in the matrix. Other times it is nothing so innocuous, they have been purposely removed from your account for some unknown, unexplained reason.
Regardless of the reason, I worked hard to obtain all those tshirts and assorted flotsam in my storage, please stop stealing them.
I haven’t had that problem yet, but i may have just forgotten about some old reward that is gone now and i just haven’t realized it. The Tester hoodies have been clogging up my storage as well, but I still get them, the hoodies are actually the only reason i even sit through the show. I never really have been a fan so it was smart to include a reward for collecting and a reward for collecting all the hoodies. I know i wouldn’t watch otherwise, so i am sure it has drawn other collectors just for the sake of the reward. ironically I am not a pack rat in real life but i seem to be one in Home.
I read the article about whether spaces in home needed rewards or not, and some spaces really have been very successful at keeping the user interested and returning without them. nDreams has been very smart about updating their rewards and using the leveling up system. It is because of their rewards and the leveling up incentive i even purchased the Aurora island space at all. I could have gone with the golden clock or hoodie but i preferred to have a full space to help me level up. The level 100 reward is my next goal and i cant wait to get there. Only 15 more levels to go, but it seems interminable. There was a chamber apt. that was a giveaway sometime ago and the Batcave was also another forgotten space that was a giveaway for playing Batman Arkham City. Rewards aren’t absolutely necessary, but it helps to draw interest. I stopped racing in sodium 2 for a while till they updated the tracks and introduced the rewards. I’ve already collected them all but i still play to earn credits, and I am very anxiously anticipating the arcade mode and wonder if that will have its own rewards as well.