nDreams Reveals Blueprint:Home
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief, with information provided by Joe Dale, nDreams Digital Product Manager
For quite a while now, this publication has expressed the belief that PlayStation Home’s personal estate marketplace is supersaturated. There simply comes a point of diminishing returns: how many yachts, houses, caves, or other such settings can one enjoy before things simply become redundant?
To be fair, there are some genuine standouts. LOOT’s Sunset Yacht, in terms of aesthetics and technical whizbangery, is easily the best value for money in Home — and their Space Apartment is a legitimate masterpiece. Lockwood’s Blaster’s Paradise is worth the price of admission just to be able to play TankTop. Hellfire’s Officer’s Quarters and Hangar let you and your friends have your own Novus Prime session, and it is still the only personal estate on the market which plays with the physics of virtual reality. Granzella’s Private Hideaway opens up more fossil digging. There are a few others.
Can a personal estate be worth the price of investment based purely on aesthetics? Sure. My own personal estate is the Log Cabin, which is Home’s second-oldest estate (the fact that it’s set on a Norwegian fjord wouldn’t have anything to do with that, of course). Everyone has their own sentimental favorites. But let’s face it: personal estates have more or less reached the end of the line — an end that was hastened in early 2012 by a glut of bland-box cookie-cutter estates all released in rapid succession by SCEA. While there is always room for a really interesting or unique personal estate to come to market, the blatant truth was obvious:
This medium had to evolve.
Jersquall’s the one who first called it. Years ago, he was asking for the ability to empower the user with more creative control over their estates. While Harbour Studio gave users the ability to change the wallpaper, it would be years until the next major innovation: diurnal controls, first introduced in LOOT’s Sunset Yacht. But Jers was right on the money: users empowered to modify the setting as desired — flooring, lighting, setting, architecture, etc. — would be far more apt to invest in personal estates and remain engaged with them for long stretches of time. Home has no shortage of immensely creative minds who either work inside the box via interior decoration, or go outside the box — quite literally — via glitching. Either way, the motive is the same: to do something creative with the setting.
The holy grail, of course, would be to make the setting itself something the user could control. To allow the user a wide variety of templates from which he could build his own custom estate, so that no two estates would be the same.
And then, almost as if on cue, nDreams rode to the rescue.
Welcome to Blueprint:Home.
We understand if you just jumped on the sofa like Tom Cruise and spouted a line of excited multisyllabic gibberish. We did the same thing.
All right, let’s get some of the obvious criticism (likely due to the memory restrictions of Home itself) out of the way. The scenic backdrops you can choose from don’t appear to have anywhere near the same level of intricate detail as what you might be used to in a conventional personal estate. The templates appear rather boxy, it looks like you’re limited to single-story dwellings, and the video doesn’t indicate an ability to create any settings other than a fairly conventional estate (so not yachts, caves or other such specialized settings).
So what.
I’ll be as subtle with this point as I can:
OH MY GOD YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN ESTATE.
The magnitude of this cannot be understated. As Gideon pointed out a while ago, Home — when compared to other virtual realities such as Second Life — is more of a gated community than a sprawling metropolis. User-created content is extremely limited in Home (despite allusion to its eventual prevalence in the original Home FAQ), and while this is fantastic for quality assurance, it effectively stymies one of the major reasons to invest time and money into a virtual reality: the ability to create one’s own world. Without a greater level of user-to-user entertainment, Home is simply a gaming platform with enough leftover social elements to keep the core user base satisfied for as long as there isn’t a viable competitor to jump ship to.
The holy grail, then, is for a developer to offer commodities which monetize a user’s desire to make Home their own personal canvas and share it with others. There are still restrictions, of course — as there should be — but let’s face it: there is a huge appetite in Home for commodities which deepen the social experience of Home. So far, only five commodities have been developed which do this:
1. LOOT cameras and EOD;
2. Lockwood Gift Machine;
3. Hellfire Games’ Home Tycoon;
4. Juggernaut’s MiniBots Battlebox;
5. nDreams’ Blueprint:Home.
What’s most impressive about Blueprint:Home is that it feels like it’s a direct response to community feedback and requests. Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant; from a marketing standpoint, nDreams just delivered a product which satisfies years of overt pent-up demand and has a built-in audience cheering it on and inclined to want to see it succeed.
Even cooler? nDreams just revitalized an entire market segment in PlayStation Home. As mentioned earlier, personal estates have faded from Home’s marketplace as a major source of revenue generation; in 2011, it was not uncommon to see estates hit Sony’s top-ten sales lists (by number of units sold) — in some cases, such as the Hollywood Hills House, for months on end. Whereas in 2012, they’ve been conspicuously absent. I will be very, very surprised if Blueprint:Home doesn’t chart, as it’s more or less a foregone conclusion it’ll be a megahit. And it will spur everyone else on to innovate as well. Personal estates must become more than just pretty boxes if they want to effectively monetize now. The bar has simply been raised.
Since this publication’s inception, we have clamored for developers (and Sony) to offer monetizing commodities which deepen the Home experience itself, as opposed to simply making Home a gaming platform. 2012, which will be remembered as the Year of the Game for Home, will also — thanks to third-party developers — be remembered as the year when Home finally started delivering on the PR promise of making itself a game.
Blueprint:Home. Coming soon from nDreams.
July 3rd, 2012 by NorseGamer | 15 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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BWA BWA BWA BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
*ahem*
Sorry about that. My inner mad-scientist kinda took over there. This is one of those things that just shows what Home is capable of. I am just surprised over and over and over again with what they are able to do.
Whenever I hear the statement “Home can’t” a little smile forms at the corner of my mouth.
Gid I love it when a little smile forms at the corner of your mouth… if this is the result (a little smile is forming at the corner of my mouth too -naw! its a great big grin)
Yoweeeee! I am going to be all over this like ticks on a fat dog!!!
Finally something different and wow could it be any more awesome than making your own? I love this idea! NDreams is really thinking outside the box here like I was hoping for! Way to go Ndreams!
OMG is right -I love it! Its a start- a move in the right direction. Awesome- I love you nDreams!
Something we only dreamed of coming to Home? Yip Yippe Yay!
The technology was there at least sort with LOOT‘s initial film studio from years back that allowed a background change at least allowed a view through the windows.
We shall see what we shall see but I am wondering if I’ll be able to make a park.
As for creating a new log cab, the present one is still my favorite also, I think I’ll pass.
This from nDreams sounds pretty grand to me. It does.
Please be aware that the website I typed in the previous post is not me nor are they me. This one is correct. So sorry
Maybe it will change with this posting.
It’s about damn time. I’m sorry for my lack of enthusiasm here but, after waiting for what, 3 years? They finally give us the ways and means to create our own place. Granted the textures look rather simple, and there is certainly restriction on creativity still but, yes, I am pleased. Very.
It’ll be interesting to see how the other developers react to this, Loot in particular. This is quickly becoming a two horse race in my mind, at least where creative and technical freedom are concerned. I’m very cautious about the promises that are made within the Home sphere now-a-days, so I’ll still be just watching, but with intent.
Round of applause for nDreams I think.
They had to make sure to bleed us dry on dozens and dozens of personal spaces first. lol!
I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the “harbor studio” of blueprint spaces. Maybe later we get different spaces (or upgrades) where we can make 2 story, different backgrounds, more complex structures, etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point the tools are just as complex as those found in LBP. But that is a very long way down the road.
Absolutely Gid, but it’s fun to look into the future huh! As Home becomes more of an open book to the devs, in turn we’ll get our shot at being creative. It’s just hard knowing it’s coming and having to wait, like when you need the toilet on a super-long car trip LOL
I could get really excited about this as I love this sort of thing, but im going to wait and see, what the basic cost is and how many add ons we have to pay for. I also wanna see how the ambient noise and ambient light is. Plus if theres multiple saves, im going to hold back a bit, if its like imvu personnel space where you change room skins at the touch of a button ill be leaping about
It makes me think of having a dream house built. Only we can be our own architects. This could really lead to some interesting homes. Way to go NDreams, thanks you
To anybody that is absolutely not rolling on the floor drooling and howling at the promise, I think you don’t understand the concept. I mention the drooling on the floor , and howling ’cause thats’ what I’m doing over the promise of this place. MAKE YOUR OWN HOME PEOPLE! No more complaining over how one company or another didn’t do it right. nDreams did it right and they hit the nail on the head!So long as it pans out to work out of the box and NOT be glitchy, they will be kings.
Very cool.