Everybody’s Bored, Sometimes
by deuce_for2, HSM special guest contributor
I will actually take the pro-bored people side of the argument here. I understand how people can get bored in Home.
I’m not just saying that to be contrary; I myself have been bored in Home before. Boredom in Home is the state of not currently being able to come up with an interesting thing to do next. That does not mean there is not one; it means that none come to mind.
When I buy a sixty-dollar game, I insert the DVD into my PS3 and it auto-starts. There is nothing more required, and I am in the game. You might say, “You have to choose between single or multiplayer, maps, game modes, etc… before the game really starts.” But aren’t those really just options? Aren’t you just saying how you want to play the game, not deciding whether you should play the game?
One of the things I have noticed about being in Home is that if you do nothing, nothing happens. Home puts the burden of finding and starting something on the player.
I truly believe this is why so many people hate Home. They are used to being force fed entertainment. Home is an entertainment buffet, not an entertainment fire hose.
The reality is that you can run through every space in Home without ever actually doing anything. You can say, “I saw it,” or “I was there and nothing was happening,” because all you really saw was a bunch of avatars sitting around doing nothing. A very large chunk of Home is static, even when people are playing games.
For instance, the Killzone TGI game. What did it look like from the outside? Honestly? A bunch of avatars standing uncomfortably close to each other. This does not exactly inspire me to go there.
Or the zombie TGI game? I loved that game, but in my mind it was exactly backwards. I could see people not playing the game, but they could not see me hacking up Zombies. How much more fun would that game have been if when you went to the Central Plaza, you were in the game? You could hang out and talk with friends, but periodically you would have to pull out your machetes and beat up a wondering Zombie. That would have been awesome. Home would have become Westworld, where nothing can possibly go wrong.
So, whose fault is it?
It’s everybody’s fault.
Players’ Fault
Sure, the people going into Home should be more proactive, pick something around them to do, and try things. There is no penalty for trying. But the reality is that the thing they are interested may not be anywhere close by. If they are new or spent little time in Home, how can they be expected to know what is where? How can they be expected to know that a great place to play Chess is Indie Park? I can’t even find Indie Park easily in the Navigator.
(Editor’s note: one of our fervent desires is a redesigned Navigator which is laid out like Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid, organized by genre, which allows a user to see the entire “map” of Home at one time.)
San Andreas Fault
Developers’ Fault
Some developers help players better than others. I like being in the Novus Prime space because people are floating around, games are launching off, and I feel like there is a lot for me to do. But drop me in Aurora and I am lost. At one point my nephew pointed out that I was in a game and I didn’t even know it. Sometimes the round circle fencing is a teleporter, sometimes it is a store. I loved the idea of a fantasy world where everything is different, but in Aurora I am just confused. Making it more obvious what is a game and what is a distraction would make me as a player feel more empowered. And consistency makes it easier to predict. It is a fine line between surprising the player and confusing them. But it is an important line to find.
The Home Core Team’s Fault
When I started out as a programmer, one of my early machines was a Macintosh. When the Macintosh first came out, there were a set of rules for developers to follow. The rules talked about how to use windows, dialogs, buttons, et cetera, such that the user would get a familiar experience even if it was the first time they had run the program. As it turned out, the rules were not enforced by Apple, but by the users; programs that did not follow the User Interface Guidelines were panned in reviews and warned about everywhere. The programs that did follow the directions flourished.
Sony has no such standard for Home. Nothing to help players be able to identify a game from a distance. Nothing to warn you that if you take another step, you will be teleported somewhere. Nothing to warn you that the door upstairs is really just a decoration, and if you figure out how to get up to it, you will be disappointed when it doesn’t open. The lack of the player to be able to learn the platform and create expectations based on their knowledge of the platform misses the opportunity for people to feel ultimately empowered, even when walking in new spaces where they have never been.
What Now?
It seems highly unlikely that Sony can or will be doing anything to fix this as a blanket policy. There is too much content at this point for them to create a set of guidelines that would likely offend many of the developers who have produced content in good faith before the guidelines existed.
The players do not do anything as a group. There have forever been threats of boycotts and quitting Home in protest, but the reality is that so many new people are joining Home every week, I doubt efforts to organize the masses will make a noticible difference (short of Homeling Folding, of course).
In my mind, the answer comes down to the developers. As a group, developers can start to think about how to make it so a player who arrives in their space for the first time can quickly see what they can do. In Disneyland, when you first arrive, there is a map. Maybe this is an answer. Creating this standard and having multiple developers follow it would make everything going forward better for players, better for Home, and likely better for their bottom line.
So this has become my mission: pull together a set of guidelines and work with everyone to refine them so that a new player can, after visiting a few spaces, recognize the patterns and confidently have the best chance that nothing unexpected will happen and they will find what they are looking for. It can’t happen quickly, but I want to try.
May 2nd, 2012 by John C. Ardussi | 13 comments
John C. Ardussi (deuce_for2) is a developer for PS Home and other platforms. He recently started a new company, Game Mechanics who is now making items and games. Be sure and tell him what you think of what he is doing. He truly listens and adjusts based on input from the community.
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Have loved Home long time. That said, not for the games. In fact games within Home were never a thought for the longest time. When they did come, there was little personal interest. Joining Home was done to meet and interact with other beings in a virtual setting. Besides that, am have little time, if any, for playing games while in Home, what with having priorities as pressing as assimilating as many beings as possible and/or simply sharing the Homeling goodness.
All that aside, if playing a game in Home was a preference, would like for it to be less a puzzle just to find them. Am in agreeance with you, Sir. And truth be told, have actually been bored in Home. Sad but true.
What if there was a bored button with suggestions?
Would one of the suggestion options be:
“Transport to Central Plaza”?
I agree that the games could be a bit better defined when hidden within a large public arena. As a long time user of Home I have no trouble navigating and figuring things out as a rule, but a perfect example of what you are talking about I just found in the now removed Ratchet and Clank space the other day. I have been going there off and on for a long time, yet I didn’t know there was a firing range game there til the other day. The area where it branched off the main one was not clearly marked, so I never found it until I saw a friend there on the navigator and followed out of curiosity. That is when I found there were actually three different firing ranges attached to the core space there. I was amazed I hadn’t seen it before, but most everyone always went there for the dance floor anyway. Good suggestions and read Deuce.
That raises a funny point, even when you are in a space, games many times become an Easter Egg hunt. And if you don’t even know it is there, it becomes a matter of stumbling across it. I feel it is a sad thing when people have put so much work into a space only to have it overlooked.
I agree with that sentiment as well. Developers work hard to create these things so I would think it in their best interest to more clearly define their existence.
Some things are hard to find. Only recently did I discover the Tekken area and got a free water bottle and dumbell set for it. But part of the fun from my view is not just the gaming or thee freebies. It comes in the idea of just finding your way around, once you do, it’s up to the user to ‘Marco Polo’ it and roam and explore. Some things are only revealed when you walk up to them. I say explore and the fun will come to you. I know that sometimes we run out of gas here on what to do, but i think it’s because we the users need to get up and go out and look. Find a friend, make a new one, help somebody new, explore a space you never have or re-visit an old one. There’s a ton to do, believe me, I’m a boring person…LOL
Personally I don’t spend enough time in Home to comb every space. I wish I did. And for those who just arrive, there is a much higher chance they will stay if they know all their options.
I agree that finding things can make them more special, but finding everything can be tedious. I am mostly arguing that there should be easy ways for players to find all the things the developer expects them to.
I have to agree with Femalestrom, one of the things I enjoy about Home IS in the finding! Every time there is a new space in Home I travel around the entire perimeter checking every nook and cranny, then I work my way inward and do the same. But I am a very adventurous soul and I enjoy the challange and puzzle to it, I don’t particularly care to have my hand held. Guess I’m a leader and not a follower? I’ve been doing this since the first day that I entered Home and I’ve known about the shooting game at the R&C space since the first time I went, and have always had it in my favorites. I’m wondering now how many people missed the other games in that space, like the chasing sheep game?
I too love the hunt. When I first discovered Alphazone4 it was ON baby! I sat with laptop on one side and Home on the other. It took me a better part of a week to gather up all the freebies, earn the rewards, and collect all the spoils from the stores. During that time, my hunt took me to all corners of Home so I also got to explore and see what was out there. Now I use that knowledge to spur others to do the same, especially the new folks
The PR tagline that’s been thrown around, ever since the Hub was launched, is that Sony is going to make Home itself into a game. Which is great — except that being a platform for games and being a game itself are two different critters.
In order to make Home itself into a game, its various public spaces should be designed in much the same way one would design a game level — which is very different than how one would go about designing, for instance, Central Plaza. Now, obviously, game levels have a somewhat linear structure due to questing, and Home spaces need to be commercial showcases. So there needs to be elements of both.
Should games be more clearly marked in public spaces? Yup. Something as simple as a pop-up screen when you first enter, showing a map of the space and where things are located, would do the job. And while I’m not sure if this is feasible with Home’s current architecture, I’d love it if public spaces had hidden areas which could only be uncovered by following a set of clues or successfully passing a mini-game in order to gain access. That would go a long way towards making the spaces themselves interactive — and, by extension, making Home more of a game.
There is a really well done interactive map in the sodium hub that I wish we could see more of in other areas. If you’ve never seen it it’s on one of the screens near the entrance to the scorpion bar.
my bad is actually behind the commerce point with the spinning red chili jacket near the entrance to the training game. The only flaw is that the map itself isn’t very obvious. I had been a long time visitor of Sodium Hub before i ever even realized it was there. A pop up map would be a really good idea. At least one you can access from the navigator.