For example, LOOT continues building on the social experience! Thats why I keep coming back, and spending.

So you drop a bunch of gamers into a nicely designed virtual space. If all they have to do is talk to each other, very few are going to stick around. What do you say to a complete and virtual stranger? Where do you go after “Hello. Nice pixels you’ve got there.” Nowhere, unless someone says, “What games do you like?” Nowhere, if the answer is “Medal of Honor” and the other person hates shooters.

Rewards don’t just give people a reason to visit Home; they are a catalyst for the social interaction that’s needed to build the community. “Where did you get that?” and “How does this work?” become the basis for opening up conversations with strangers, just as all the ways of personalizing the Home experience through purchases help us establish individual identities.

I would be very surprised if more than 20% of new Home users bought something within their first five visits, because at first glance, those items have no real purpose and no value. So in addition to fostering social interaction, freebies help to establish the benefits of having particular items or clothing, which lowers the innate resistance to buying. New users don’t know if they’re going to spend any time in Home. Why pay for it? Rewards and free-to-play games open up the possibilities.

I don’t find the expectation of rewards to be at all misplaced. Lure people in with free items and they’re going to expect more free items. Does that mean every Home game should include free items? Ultimately, I believe the answer is yes, because Home games will always need to compete with the PlayStation Store for customer dollars, and the perception among customers is that the games in the Store offer greater depth, not to mention the trophies that all Home games lack.

I do think developers should create more merit-based rewards that unlock for achieving certain objectives, rather than rewards which simply appear when you buy an item. The success of the Midway spaces shows the value of merit-based rewards. They encourage gamers to play longer and extend the enjoyment of the game.

At the same time, I strongly disagree with the entitlement mentality that some Home users possess. No, everything should not be free, and no one has an innate right to get every piece of content. Virtual items have value based on the entertainment they provide, and those who create them deserve to be paid for their efforts. That doesn’t mean everything is priced fairly, we can find plenty of exceptions in that department, but it does mean that Home users need to recognize that some content is going to come with a price tag.