I rarely see Hudson empty and when I do happen upon an empty server I try to have an anchor so I can get back to that server, otherwise I always get back to the crowded server. During my time racing, there are some long time racers that still race or just hang out with friends in Hudson. I have seen some leave it for many months and then come back after six months of not racing to race once again. Of course, there are others who have completed everything or have tired of racing or waiting around, who do not come back to the races. There are new racers that replace the old ones.

Although my experience has differed from yours, I do agree with the main point of your article and that is that developers have to constantly keep updating their space to keep people coming back. This is certainly true for those who don’t own dolphies and come there to win prizes for voting on dolphies. Once the horns are won, many do not return.

Even though the race time has been shortened to 20 minutes from 30 minutes, I would like to it to be shortened even more. If you miss a race or get skipped then it because a time sinkhole that many cannot invest the time into just to get your three dolphies to race. If there was a race every 10 minutes then getting skipped would not be such a big time waster and would get more dolphies raced, thus reducing being skipped.

Some have suggested “Versus” races where you can race against friends.

I do agree that “launch and leave it alone” is not good that that regular updates is what is need to keep space fresh and new to keep people coming back.

If Cutthroats teaches developers nothing else, I hope it is that players want to work with and against real people. Shooting bots is fun, but not nearly as satisfying as sinking real players.

That is what is unique about Home. You can know the people you are playing with and against. My hope is that by tapping into that, the game has a longer life. We will see.

Why not add new creatures like cute looking dragons, Unicorns with wings that even your AVATAR can sit on and ride them all?

Why not do one off incentives for the winner to receive a $20 SEN Card for getting 1st place in a race. I think Hudson should raise the stakes for ppl? say a ‘major’ event annually?)

This was, at one time, one of the best games in Home, but even the best games lose their replay value if there’s nothing left to accomplish. It is a truly rare game, like Blaster’s Paradise, that is simply so much fun to play that it’s worth banging away at for hours on end, knowing that you’ll get nothing but the thrill of blowing some stuff up and a higher spot on the weekly leaderboard.

Part of the problem with this game is the way it works. There’s an awful lot of standing around and waiting, and if there’s a reward to be won or some friends to chat with, it’s time well spent. Take those things away, and it’s 20 minutes that could be spent mastering a track at Sodium 2.

I do hope that Hudson revisits this game at some point, because it has excellent mechanics. The recent trend in Home toward spaces that offer regular updates has shown that unless you’ve got a really compelling play experience, the way to keep users coming back is to keep delivering new stuff.