Shopping — the LOOT Way
by BONZO, HSM team writer
In Home, there are several developers that provide content you can count on being of a certain variety and a certain level of quality.
For design aesthetics that break the mold, and set a standard of coolness, you almost always rely on Lockwood. Lockwood just appeals to the designer in me and I can really appreciate their methodology in design and color choices. LOOT appeals to the geek in me, and for my sci-fi, techie fix I rely on LOOT. They have provided the content that has the gadget-loving nerd giddy with excitement, and the kitschy film lover remembering their childhoods watching such memorable films like Ghostbusters, and Men In Black. nDreams, meanwhile, provides the surreal whimsical content that plucks snippets of forgotten dreams and sets them up as the backdrop of a virtual playground.
LOOT had me with the NASA channel on the LOOT theater before they expanded the EOD content, they had me with the Whale in the Sunset Yacht, and now has set a new bar in how to properly showcase and shop.
This may be an experiment, and it also may be temporary, but I do hope LOOT will expand their showcase format into something more permanent. If you’ve ever toured the European region of Home, you may be familiar with their Plaza and their store fronts. I always loved their outdoor open mall concept over the indoor mall we in North American had adjacent to the old Central Plaza. Even our current method of the Hub is still based on an indoor concept.
Lockwood presented a different method in their showcase, allowing a preview of some of their wares. The mannequin avatars wearing some of the outfits is absolutely brilliant, and I wish the concept were adopted by more developers. The now retired PixelJunk museum had an interesting concept showing a display of t-shirts on a counter, which was an emulation of real world store counters. Their showcase of the PixelJunk Monsters was a bit misleading, as the props you bought were a small fraction of the size displayed. Shopping from the store alone has led to a lot of buyers’ remorse because of unclear descriptions, and no size comparison to an average avatar height.
The basic problem with the Lockwood showcase and other similar product displays, has been that you are still required to access the store. Sometimes they provide direct access to the product you are looking for, but too often you have to dig around for it. The single-purchase mode is just brilliant.
The open house of the LOOT Stage Set crammed in a lot of content into a limited space. This made it a little off-putting to a comfortable browsing environment, or window shopping if you will. The method of walking around and selecting a product individually and buying it directly from the display is still pretty cool. Not to mention that LOOT gave it an elevated touch of coolness with the scan line highlight method, so it felt like a futuristic sci-fi twist breaking the standards of emulated reality in Home. LOOT played with the perception of realism there and reminded us that we are in a virtual space, so we shouldn’t be so grounded on concepts that replace reality but augment it with some fantasy.
I’ve contemplated that smart little design twist for the last week, and thought how cool it would be to see that in real life. While directly visualizing that effect of the scan lines is possible, it isn’t very practical. It is however a possibility with smart devices, and I realized to some degree LOOT’s sci-fi cool shopping method actually already exists in the real world. I’ve used it, and didn’t even think about it.
While shopping one day at an electronics store, I scanned the bar code on the product and looked it up on a smart device, which brought up a price comparison that showed me a website which had it for a cheaper price and told me all the features about the product I wanted to know. I ordered it directly from the smart device while still in the store. This is the level of technology we have now. Some movie and game packages even have a bar code you can scan to get a trailer and review on it before you buy it. It struck me how I kept thinking about selecting a product and buying it directly from a display method seemed so science-fiction, even in a virtual setting, because we are so used to the web catalog approach of shopping we normally use. It is anything but science fiction even in the real world, so why are so stuck on one method in Home?
It would be awesome to see this virtual world creativity from other developers. Most of the third-party developers in Home have their own storefront already, and it would benefit them to create their own showcase. Not completely eliminate the browser shopping method we have now, mind you — too many people are used to it. While touring the LOOT showcase, I overheard several people stating they hated the single purchase mode, which I couldn’t understand why, but my guess it that they are just used to the old method.
One of my biggest pet peeves about the current method is trying to figure out where a specific item is. You end up spending a lot of time browsing through different subcategories just to find what you want. How often have you asked someone, “where did you get that?” — or have been the recipient of that question? Things are too hidden, and browsing through the entire Home catalog is a daunting task, particularly as it continues to grow. If your customers can’t see your product, or don’t know it exists, they wont buy it. If you see it on someone else you have the chance they will either be annoyed by being asked where they got it, give you a very generic answer, or — sometimes as you tend to find with trolling elitists — they won’t answer you because they would like to believe they are the only one wearing it. Trust me on this, developers don’t want you to be the only one buying their product; the more people buy it the quicker they can make their development cost back and the more product they can develop.
A showcase doesn’t have to be too fancy. A big white room would do. Just have your product displayed, and have the option to purchase it directly from the display. Some developers have a lot of content, like Lockwood, who has several brands. Hence why the showcase has only a few items displayed on a promotional rotation basis.
Imagine if you would that you could enter this big white room, nothing fancy, just a few products displayed on platform. Categorized between the different subcategories of personal space items. A couch, a chair, a table, a foot stool, a cube, et cetera. You select it to view in close up mode, then you can scroll through all the variations of this product. View every couch in the catalog for that developer. If you see one you like you hit the x button and it goes in your shopping cart. This would be a more welcoming shopping experience than the current stumble upon method.
Older products aren’t displayed on the rotating posters in the Hub. So if you don’t see them or aren’t aware of them on their release week, you may not even know they exist. Not everyone who uses Home knows about the forums or the fansites. I used Home for a year before I ever knew of the fansites, and even now the webmasters and the handful of volunteers can’t keep up with all the content that keeps coming into home (except for Cubehouse).
That seems to be a recurring issue with Home, not just with its shopping method: a new user entering Home may not know what it has to offer, and the current interface makes it very hard to uncover everything. Why should Home have such an esoteric approach to its store content? Part of business is advertising, and marketing, and the end product of those efforts are to let your customers know what you have to sell. Major stores like Walmart and Best Buy change their displays periodically, to show their customers as soon as they walk in what they have to sell.
LOOT’s showcase brought something innovative, at least to Home’s shopping. Is it perfect? No, it has it’s issues. One of the recurring bugs I have experienced involves getting stuck in detail mode when selecting an item in Single Purchase mode. Which leaves you no option but to quick single purchase mode, but once you do you can’t return to the prompt and get back into it. You have to exit the space and come back if you want to get back to single purchase mode. That said, all bugs aside, this has been one of the coolest shopping experiences in Home, and a chance to see the active items in action before you purchase them has been exceptional. Home is a virtual space; granted, not all rules of the real world will apply, nor should they. One rule we can count on, though, is that shoppers can be lazy, and if you don’t show them what you have they may not take the time to discover it for themselves. If you show them, they will buy.
July 6th, 2012 by BONZO | 12 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
Twitter
This is one reason I love alphazone4.com You are very correct in saying we are lazy, if it isn’t in front of our faces, we usually won’t go digging for it. I know that I personally have dug through all the stores extensively, and still run across things I have never seen while touring other folk’s spaces. Most of the time it happens to be something that isn’t available any more, but now and then I run across a gem that works perfectly for one of my own spaces and off to the store I go.
I did want to add that I made a purchase at the open house the morning it opened, but to date I have still not received my purchased item. It has been reported to support and there is suppose to be a “ticket” on the issue (I was not the only one who did not receive a purchase), and I would truly like to see something done about rectifying these problems in a timely manner even if it comes down to a refund to my wallet for the purchase price.
Indeed, they need a system maybe similar to that of the Sims. Categories of Kitchen, Bedroom, Living area or Garden would help, sub categories from there could split into smaller or more precise items, so for example, say I want a new lavalamp (just to be awkward) I’d go: Furniture > Livingroom > Lights then scroll to find my lamp. Or say I want a new bed; Furniture > Bedroom > Cucumber > Beds then scroll to find my preference. Clothing seriously needs sub categories also. The EU is atrocious for shopping, not only is everything scattered around, but have to load up two different shopping areas BEFORE you even get to look at the front of a shop. By which time my seriously short attention span has become frustrated enough to make me just give up. As a result, I spend waaaay more in US Home than I do in EU.
It’s more like a lucky dip at the moment where randomly stabbing at brands then browsing till you either hit oil, or just go away from pure boredom. It’s negative to all the brands within Home.
Good ideas in this article Bonzo, did some good brain-stormin’ there.
I love the sub categories idea. Sometimes i feel the lack of organization is intended …
I don’t know how many times people have asked me or I have asked them where they got something I liked. If they bought it recently they might know, otherwise it can be a very daunting task to find them. Even though there is a description under the about on any object, like furniture or companions and that makes them more easy to find, when it comes to clothing, you are on your own and good luck finding it if it says Sony. Lockwood and the others are a bit easier if the person who you ask is willing to look at it in their wardrobe and give you a hint, but Sony is all it says if you look for their products. A better method would be nice, like a more apt description. Sony needs to have someone write the “about” better so you can find where things are. Nice read Bonzo.
Funny thing, I hate shopping but in the old mall days I used to go there once every “update day”. Lockwood shows up some new items too at their showcase. I’ve heard peoples complaining about the new shopping system at LOOT and couldnt figured why myself. It’s all old stuff, not like you had this as the only method to find the new and rare items. I guess i probably had bought less item i didnt liked if i had seem them in a showcase first. Wich doesnt mean i would had spent less money that week. Just more satisfied of my purchase. With the load of old items on home it’s obvious we still need the old navigator store. Just much more efficient when you need a specific item in a hurry too. But i would certainly be more incline too buy new stuff if i could see it first.
Home is base on the social experience. Shopping in the physical world is a big social experience. The current shopping on Home is a lonely, tedious experience. Go the LOOT way and i see …ka-tching$
Yup, the fact I can jump to my harbor and shop from there is the reason I’ve spent so much. They don’t have this in EU, it’s load up the shopping or nothing, unless it’s a new item which can be bought from the “new” category. Thing is, EU has two shopping spaces which means you have to know which one to load up. Load up the wrong place and it’s back to the navi for another loading session. ANOY-ING! Lol
“shopping *space* or nothing”
Where’s that edit button, NORSE!?
You mean to say, “WORDPRESS!?” as they’re the program that the site’s comment system is based on.
Ahh, is it now? I might just know a man who could help in that case…
Great article! And thanks for pointing out that pesky detail mode bug! We’ll dive in and check it out!
Best,
The LOOT Team
Thanks LOOT, Seems to be fixed. I’ve tried recreating it again since the update and I haven’t gotten it again.