So Many Homes?
by FEMAELSTROM, HSM team writer
I’m known for having wacky ideas sometimes. Some of my ideas may even be downright insane. But I’m okay with that. Like everybody else here, my mind sees Home and thinks of things that would make this a better place.
It is true that there are different flavors for different palates. But sometimes we have ideas that can be universal, or were not even previously considered. Occasionally I have one or two that actually make sense, through all the fog my mind generates. One that really sticks out lately sprouted from the fertile ground of Home, and the concept that while this is already a great place, it can always be expanded for us, the users.
Darn there goes another thought escaping!
The idea came out of the roaming that I do and the invites I get, and seeing how others decorate their places. I see how friends have decorated their personal estates, and want to emulate the things they have done there. But I cannot, because I have already set up the same space in a different fashion.
The idea is simple and sweet. The idea is the concept of multi-use estates.
I’ll explain.
There is a game on a rival console that involves race cars. When you purchase a car — say, a Chevy Corvette — you are allowed to decorate it any way you want. If you want the Corvette in a different color, you can simply get a new copy of the car and paint it a different color while retaining the original model, essentially having infinite copies of the same car. Off of one Corvette, you can own a red copy, a blue copy and a green copy.
I really do want a different version of this thing!
In the game, this is called ‘car designs.’ And, though the name is obvious and simplistic, it’s a great idea. We here in Home already have a form of it with our wardrobe.
A user can have up to twenty-four save slots, and each save can be totally different. An avatar might have the same face, but different clothes or skin color. The same character can have a red afro or a golden mohawk, and a myriad of clothes, all with the same face and body design. All you need to do is to load the files and presto, you can be who you want in a flash. My wardrobe saves are split 50/50 by genders, because of my penchant for the ladies. But that’s a story for another article.
Here’s my fantastical, incredible idea that should rock the pillars of Mount Olympus itself.
Give us multiple save slots for our homes.
The idea is this: when we buy a home, such as the aforementioned Mt. Olympus, we should be able to save it a few different times in different motifs, to allow us to use more of the furniture we have all come to own. Yanking out all the furniture to experiment with a new motif is a tedious headache, particularly if you happen to like what you’ve already done with the space.
"What would I look like inn a different light?"
Imagine Mt. Olympus as a classy day spa, as a friend of mine has it — then turn around and portray it as a rocking nightclub complete with smoke machines and dance floors and lights. Then as the throne room of the gods it was intended to be.
I know I would love to see a few of my places decorated in dramatically different styles, while keeping the original designs I am so fond of. But my estates are so intricately set up that I would have to perform a total strip-out and remodel to achieve this. Adding some active items would mean removing a lot of other things. I am not ready to do that with my favorites, such as the Eden Primarch’s Vigilarium from Final Fantasy XIII. This is the crown jewel of my design work here in home. It would have been nice to have a few copies to decorate in different ways, though — one as the cluttered Blade Runner-esque place I have now, then perhaps a more spartan design where I can take the room in a different direction, and another dedicated to a third concept.
There is a large community of house designers here in Home. Perhaps they, like I, would love to see the homes they own in more than one light, and decorate them in more than one fashion. Would this create too many estates in one’s private collection? Like game save files, the maximum number of copies would depend on the available hard drive space or on a certain number of allotted saves per home.
I’m certain there is a long list of reasons for thinking this is not an idea worth diving into a little deeper. Undoubtedly, there are technological hurdles to overcome. I will offer this, though: in an age where every purchase is tracked and technology can tell me what I bought on any given day, or let me play a social game-within-a-game on a video game console, I think we can shove a few ones and zeros around and find a way to make things a little more interesting and expansive here on Home.
Particularly since this could even be a revenue producer. Imagine it: you could have people repurposing their estates, and actually buying new furniture for it! I think the imaginative possibilities are endless in a place like Home. Personal estates are indeed becoming a very saturated marketplace, so this might be the next logical step in revitalizing them.
Home is a vast canvas for those of us who want to express ourselves through the clothes we wear, the homes we decorate, and the places we frequent. And I think that an added avenue of expression could be the way we decorate many copies of the same estate. I’d rather own multiple copies of an estate that I love than have a bunch of estates that sit empty because there’s nothing to bring me back after the novelty has worn off.
Assume for a moment it was technologically feasible to have multiple save slots for your estates. Does this appeal to you? Would you take advantage of it?
May 21st, 2012 by FEMAELSTROM | 10 comments
FEMAELSTROM came to Home in June 2011 and never wanted to leave, even at weekly maintenance when he usually gets booted. The sand box environment appeals to the explorer in him and often is out and about as he ‘geeks’ out dressed like some sort of sci-fi character, while he people watches in popular public spaces. An artist and writer, FEMAELSTROM loves making friends and meeting people. He loves sci-fi and decorating Home estates and loves to respond “here” when people ask “where are you from?” in public places.
You can already do that, save different versions of your private spaces.
Buy flash drives and put the spaces on the drives. If you want to save more than one version you’ll need 2 or 3 cards.
I don’t know where you’ll get the Corvettes from though.
I wonder how much space on our hard drive it would use to do something like that? It’s an interesting idea though. Good article Strom.
I like this idea Strom. I think it might be a great addition to what we can do here in Home. In a sense they already have this technology in place with the various skins we can use and decorate totally differently with the clubs we own. I have two skins, the original and the Desert Haven and they are both decorated completely different from each other. This could be handled like that I think, possibly with an option like the club one has of changing it as long as you are in the space you want to do this with. They could put a cap on it, like 3 versions or something to keep the memory use down. Nice concept and good article.
Great article, Femaelstrom! There is actually a way to do this already, but it’s a bit of a hassle. You can save your personal space arrangements directly from the XMB onto a thumb drive, and restore them from the drive when you want to use them. This is especially useful if you have glitched a space, and don’t want to lose all that hard work. But having save slots would be so much easier!
Thank you all. I did figure out the flashdrive trick, but the idea was to have it with in the software, as Burbie noted like the clubhouses. Plenty of PS games have this feature as well as smaller indie games, so it’s not really that grand a programmer task either.
I love this idea, but when I think back to all the decorating and redecorating I did for the holidays, it is almost scary. I literally undecorated, redecorated, rinsed and repeated every single space I own halloween, thanksgiving, and christmas only to return every single one of them back to “everyday life” once the holidays were over. It was a lot of fun, but between October and January, I did nothing but decorate everyday. LOL, one would think I would have had my fill, and I thought I had too for about a week… then I found myself right back at it. Buying more spaces and decorating them. I will have to start in July to get them all decorated for the holidays this year LOL
Great idea!! I think it is a feature that some people would use a lot. Maybe they could sell the save slots to generate revenue. Something like 4 for $0.99. Just brainstorming here which is always a good sign. Way to go.
Hey, I’d be willing to pay for that feature. Or it could be a property of specific private spaces, something that would enhance the value and make people more willing to purchase.
deuce and Seal, I love those ideas. I for one would pay , say a one time fee to make a place mutli use or pay per copy. These are both great ideas. Now we’re cooking with fire.
An interesting idea. I find myself buying new personal spaces whenever I have a new decor theme in mind; it’d be nice to use the same space for multiple looks.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s why they don’t allow it already? To encourage users to buy additional personal spaces…