Why I Left PlayStation Home
Foreword by NorseGamer:
As a Sony-positive and Home-positive publication, it is exceptionally unusual for us to publish an op-ed of this nature. However, consumers do sometimes choose to leave PlayStation Home, and this subject most assuredly merits careful examination. Were this some sort of sour-grapes rant, it wouldn’t be published. As it stands, I believe it is a good foundation for an extended discussion on this topic. While this is ultimately one person’s perspective, it must be asked: can we help improve user retention levels by identifying various reasons why someone might choose to stop using the service?
by IrishSiren, HSM guest contributor
So I recently explored Home again, after being away for a long time, and I wanted to play some games.
At the Bowling Alley, I had to wait. At the pool tables, I had to wait. At Indie Park, I had to wait for someone to go Gnome Curling with me (no one showed up). At Indie Park, I wanted to try out Superhero Madhouse and Savage Cosmos because they looked interesting, only to discover that I had to fork over money first before finding out if I even liked them. At Midway, I had to wait — and that was with a Green Ticket ready to go.
This is my unimpressed face.
The most important commodity I have is my time. And there are simply too many ways for me to spend it to waste that precious time waiting around or wondering if a game is worth my money without first being able to test it. Why is it that a more basic social game like Free Realms from Sony Online Entertainment can get so much of this right, while Home feels like it’s stuck in 2008?
I started thinking about why I more or less left Home. Home doesn’t have any sort of exit survey for expatriates like me; I wonder how much data collection goes on at Foster City for people who choose to leave, and the reasons behind it. Perhaps I can provide Sony a service by outlining my own reasons.
PlayStation Home has quite a lot to offer. Most notably, whereas video games are “closed” experiences — there are only a finite number of tasks to achieve, even in the wildest sandbox games currently available — Home is an open experience; we ourselves create the story. It’s not so much about playing a traditional game as it is living inside a game world, which I honestly believe is the next great step in the evolution of the medium after casual and mobile games have run their course.
This may be part of the problem, though: Home may have simply been ahead of its time. Nobody’s tried a social network for gamers on a console before, and if there’s one thing that tends to hold true in the business world, it’s that the first person who steps into a new concept is the pioneer, but it’s the second person, who studied and learned from all of the first person’s mistakes, who actually makes the money off of it.
I enjoyed Home. A lot. And I spent a hell of a lot of money in Home. You might recall that I produced the first two HSM-branded machinima ever created.
And then I simply chose to leave.
This is not an anti-Home rant or any other such juvenile nonsense. It’s simply an examination of the reasons why someone might choose to leave Home. Like it or not, there are a lot of people who either tried Home and wrote it off, or actually spent a lot of time in Home and then decided to hang it up. If we can identify some of the major causes of user loss, we can perhaps help to offer insights that may reduce it in the future.
An important note, before we begin: Norse has a fairly ironclad rule with HomeStation that if you point out a problem you must propose a solution, in order to provide constructive criticism rather than muckraking. While I agree with this rule, and I believe it has made HSM into a surprisingly academic publication, there is one flaw: it presupposes that Sony actually cares enough about these issues to fix them. Considering how longstanding some of these issues I’m about to list have been, I’ve come to the conclusion that some of the endemic problems and design flaws with Home simply won’t (or can’t) be fixed, and I refuse to continue with the Home experience in its current state. Particularly as there’s no direct competitor for Home (although Phil Harrison’s recent move to XBox should prove interesting), there’s little incentive for Sony to commit major resources to an aging application running on outdated infrastructure inside a console that’s on the tail end of its life cycle.
This article, then, perhaps best serves to provide guidance for the next iteration of Home, or something similar to it — in the hopes that the mistakes of the first go ’round will not be duplicated.
1. Home is a metaverse with no purpose.
This was Richard Garriott’s observation of Home in HSM’s tenth issue, and he’s right on the money. Home is a metaverse which tries to be all things to all people and thus ends up doing nothing really well. This failure stems from a lack of understanding as to how to properly harness Home; originally conceived as a social network for gamers — a 3D lobby for game launching — it was later turned into a gaming platform along the same lines as Facebook. What never took place, though, is the one thing that should have happened — and, indeed, was teased in official Sony PR statements:
Home itself should have been a game.
The classic criticism of Home is that there’s nothing to do in it. Home is a social MMO game, but it lacks any thematic cohesion or gaming elements such as jobs, an internal currency, resource exchange, and so forth. And let’s remember too that this is on a game console, not a PC; is it any surprise that people sign into Home, struggle to discern what the hell it is, and find a sea of bored people standing around? These are gamers, and they’re wandering around Home looking for a game interface. And while there are gaming attractions within Home, Home itself is not a game.
To this day, the reason why Xi is hailed as Home’s high-water mark is because it turned Home itself into a game. What’s sad is that Xi was more than three years ago, and nothing has come close to replicating that magic. It’s not that Xi’s mini-games were anything groundbreaking — if you go to the Xi Museum today, they’re downright hokey — it’s that it made Home feel like it had a purpose and an unfolding story. So the lesson for the next version of Home: launch it as a living, breathing game world unto itself. Take a page from Lockwood’s design of the Sodium Hub and give the next iteration of Home some cohesion, rather than simply a series of disparate experiences.
This is a question worth asking: how much experience do Sony’s creative minds behind Home actually have in proper game design? I’m asking this because while Home is living with the legacy of a flawed concept from the PS2 days, the Hub astonishes me by its waste. What game designer would spend millions of dollars to simply reskin the same experience without fundamentally altering or improving it? The only truly new feature introduced by the Hub was the Activity Board, which appears to have been abandoned by its creators and — thanks to the perversion inherent to any anonymous online society — actually works against creating a positive image for Home.
If Home is a social network for gamers, then the Hub is a pointless expenditure. If Home is a gaming platform, then the Hub is an extremely inefficient design for for delivering high-visibility third-party entertainment to the user. Either way, Home is still a metaverse with no purpose — and it could be so much more compelling.
2. Lack of official community development.
What has SCEA Home done to foster community development and user engagement?
This is not to suggest that the Digital Platforms team is lazy or incompetent; I don’t believe that at all. Rather, I question the laissez-faire approach they seem to have taken with Home.
Let’s start with methods of conveying information in Home itself from Sony to the user, in order to drive user behavior. Sony utilizes the following in-world tools:
A.) The Message of the Day.
B.) Auto-spawning at specific attractions.
C.) A centrally-placed 3D ad in the middle of the Hub.
D.) The Home Community Volunteer Program.
E.) The Community Theater.
The Message of the Day is a very useful tool that reaches every single user, but it can be quickly bypassed; there’s no clearly-marked in-world source of news that people can go to if they specifically want to find out what’s going on. Auto-spawning is fantastic for driving revenue and user visitor numbers, albeit at the penalty of feeling like heavy-handed marketing. The Hub ad is great for visibility, but everything else is buried in the navigator and not plainly visible. The HCV program is a great program that’s limited by the fact that it can only reach, at best, a very small percentage of the total active user base. And the Community Theater, aside from HearItWow’s HomeCast (which really is the best in-world news delivery program I’ve seen), doesn’t really have anything of interest pertaining to Home itself.
So. Two of the five methods for fostering community are provided by the community itself (under Sony auspices), one is easily bypassed, one is heavy-handed, and one puts a spotlight on one featured attraction at a time.
What happens when you build a community and then make little overt attempt to communicate with it.
Things don’t get much better outside of Home. There’s the PlayStation Blog, in which Home feels like an afterthought compared to other stories. There’s the occasional bit of outside coverage from gaming media in general, forgotten a day or two later. And there’s the official PlayStation Home forum, which quite simply is a disaster. The level of disrespectful verbiage which is allowed by moderation keeps many more reasoned voices from bothering to post anything, and the lack of consistent two-way communication on the one and only official channel for such interaction has created a level of frustration in which, as HearItWow pointed out, people feel like they’re not being heard — and so they start screaming. So you have an official forum in which the best voices have simply given up and left, and the trolls and fevered-ego divas are busy circle-jerking each other to feel important. Simply cleaning up offensive posts isn’t the answer; the answer is to actually start suspending accounts, long term: to send a message that if you want to participate on an official forum, you need to act like a civilized adult.
As it presently stands, it’s a sad truth that if one wants genuinely useful information on Home without a lot of the background noise and fevered egos, you have to go to a third-party site such as AlphaZone4. Why the hell Sony isn’t paying Cubehouse for the service he’s providing, given how many years he’s demonstrated product consistency and quality, is beyond me.
I don’t envy the job the community managers have to do. Asking two people to handle it all, as talented as they obviously are, is going to result in being stretched pretty thin. And while the team has recently beefed up from two to four, they’re also handling a hell of a lot more than just Home now.
The catch with Home becoming solely a game platform for third-party content providers: it feels like the soul of Home has been hollowed out. 2012 is only half over, and Home has unleashed or announced a staggering amount of content; this is the time when Sony needs to be overtly present with Home in a big way, demonstrating their commitment to the platform, whipping the user base into a frenzy of excitement. Instead, it feels like Sony’s letting Home run on cruise control, collecting their management fees off of other peoples’ content.
Here’s the aspect of Home that Sony doesn’t seem to have grasped: if you’ve created a world in which user-generated content is near-impossible to produce — allowing the users to entertain each other — then you need to fill that gap by creating a living, breathing world in which the user’s actions feel relevant in a larger context. Someone who uses Home for more than just a night or two is inherently a social user to some extent, looking for a game world to interact with. Without that feeling of connection, Home feels like a party in which the host couldn’t be bothered to show up.
I honestly believe that Sony had a great concept with Home, and utterly no idea how to properly harness it. Home could have been the next iteration of The Sims, and instead it’s an afterthought in the SCEA pantheon. Without providing any sort of attempt at building community or making Home itself into a compelling experience, it just feels like a money grab. Which, of course, it is — but I’d prefer it if Sony gave me the impression that they actually cared, as that’s what inclines me to spend money. I have no problem with spending the kind of money for a virtual experience that I would spend for dinner and a movie with friends; but what Sony fails to comprehend is that I’m more inclined to spend that money if I feel the virtual experience is a truly immersive world.
I know that Norse likes to defend and justify Sony’s business practices, and there are a lot of people (particularly this publication’s readership) who agree with him. But I left Home, in part, because I wanted a greater connection to the world around me, and Sony didn’t provide it. And without that context, Home increasingly started to feel like my third reason for leaving:
3. Too much nickel-and-diming.
I don’t begrudge developers needing to make money. And I’m not one of those whiny idiots on the Sony forum who thinks anything above $.99 is a crime against humanity. But there’s no question that prices have been rising for virtual commodities in Home. On one hand, this makes sense, since third-party developers have to pay a cut of their revenues to SCEA, and more complex commodities require more development time and money. On the other hand, it seems like there are an increasing number of virtual commodities which are sold incomplete — namely, once you acquire something, such as a personal estate, you need to purchase something else in order to have everything the estate comes with.
This is the downside of freemium, and it annoys me. Just set the up-front price higher and give me everything in one shot. It’s quite frustrating to pick up a new commodity and see that I have to purchase something else to unlock a feature of it. This sort of incremental purchase strategy is bothersome, because it feels like the true price was hidden — and nobody likes to feel deceived.
I will say that I sympathize with developers who are under pressure to deliver quality commodities while keeping the price down. But SCEA, in my view, really pushed a bad agenda with the Mansion and x7. I’m willing to pay thirty-five dollars for a personal estate if it offers something truly unique — but passing off a bunch of barely linked estates with questionable baked-in decor as something “exclusive” is an insult. Requiring me to own the Mansion if I want a fully-outfitted Winter Villa and Tycoon Penthouse is doubly insulting. And asking me to own the Mansion (or one of those ridiculously gaudy Exclusives outfits) if I want to gain access to a public space — x7 — is triply insulting. It rewarded one type of consumer over another, in the process sending a clear message: Sony only values you if you’re a rather lowbrow idiot who values artificially-delineated “status” over something with real quality (and don’t even get me started on that horrifically insulting x7 video from “business guru” Magnus, which has more dislikes than likes on YouTube right now). I’m astonished at the lack of grasp SCEA had over the behavioral economics of its own consumers; it’s like they looked at the sales of the Gold Suit and assumed that all of Home would be more successful if it took the same approach.
Ironically enough, given that social games usually rely heavily on so-called “whale economies” for a substantial chunk of their profit, a properly-implemented Home loyalty program would have been brilliant. If Sony can develop PlayStation Plus, why can’t they develop Home Plus? People don’t mind being incrementally bled of money if they’re having such a good time that they’re willing to pay for it. There’s nothing wrong with creating a two-tier Home; the trick is to offer premium services, not just “premium” items. Instead, Home as it presently exists seeks to create social classes via an arbitrary delineation of virtual items. It’s just distasteful, and an economic incentive to not participate.
4. Social harassment.
This is the big one. Home is a service in which trolling and harassment are rampant. This is nothing new, and I’m not going to regurgitate that entire debate here. But the core problem remains: Home’s been publicly available for years, and precious little has been done to enhance the blocking features a user has to curb it.
There is utterly no way that Sony can afford enough moderators to properly police the size of the SCEA user base. That’s just too much overhead, and it would require turning Home into a police state. So the user has to be empowered to block harassment directly, without giving them abilities which could be abused or damage the system. I wrote about this last year (you can read it here if you want to), and a whole lot of other people have written on the same subject.
Is it possible that Home is designed in such a way that it’s at the limit of how many blocking features a user can have, in much the same way that cross-game chat is impossible due to how the PS3 itself is engineered? Possibly. But if so, that means that Home’s original designers failed to take into account one of the first rules of designing an MMO social game: how people will abuse it when they are safely anonymous.
A wonderful enhancement to the current blocking feature.
The solution to this, as far as I can see, is remarkably simple: just revert the avatar back to a ghost. They’re still physically there, but you can’t see more than just the ghost silhouette because you told your PS3 not to download their appearance. This doesn’t break the system and it doesn’t cause any problems with games, but it does neatly solve the problem of non-textual harassment. In concert with the mute/ignore feature, it effectively eliminates a troll’s ability to harass.
Of course, the more pressing issue today is freezing. Yes, the most overt means of freezing has been patched, but that’s likely a temporary fix at best — one which took an agonizingly long time to achieve. I don’t much understand freezing, except that it evidently has something to do with a clothing merge.
To me, the solution is simple: disable the ability to use wardrobe in a public space. An inconvenience, to be sure — just like how you can’t use your camera from a seated position — but well worth it if it solves the problem.
Freezing is a huge problem because it can potentially damage your console hardware. Given the severity of the problem and the difficulty in tracking it, drastic and swift solutions were warranted. Sorry, but I’m not playing Russian Roulette with my console just to listen to the scintillating Hub music.
What bothers me is how slow Sony is to react to major issues (particularly with any sort of overt acknowledgement of them) which drive users away. From a customer service standpoint, this actually erodes brand loyalty. Take the recent spate of error codes, for instance; to those with backgrounds in computers, it was fairly obvious that Home had migrated servers. But was there any official in-world acknowledgement from Sony of ongoing technical difficulties, with verbiage to the effect of, “We’re working on it” somewhere in there?
No.
So the user simply concludes that the service is broken or poorly engineered. And leaves.
This is the age of the internet. Communicate in a timely fashion with your consumer base and be up front with them if there’s a problem. It’s a hell of a lot more endearing than the logic-of-disinformation approach that’s so prevalent right now.
Yeah, it’s a problem.
I can’t hazard a guess as to how much lost revenue freezing, trolling, harassment and a non-intuitive interface represent, but it’s certainly been enough to make me pack up and leave.
Interestingly enough, I will say that freezing and trolling are wonderful arguments for a subscription-based Home. It would cut the population down tremendously — including some good people who are friends of mine — but I suspect it would be a more stable and well-behaved place to enjoy, because people would have some skin in the game. It’s not a perfect solution, but it would help — whereas, if you’re going to have a free service for anyone to enjoy, then the user has to be able to protect themselves.
So now then. In conclusion.
Why should I continue with Home when it feels like Sony itself has moved on? The PlayStation 4 is probably only a year away (if that), and unless I’m very much mistaken, Home won’t translate over to it. There might be a clean-sheet redesign of Home for the next generation — maybe — but it really does feel like Sony doesn’t care enough to bother trying to deepen the Home experience. Were I a third-party developer for the Home platform, I’d be genuinely upset by this. Perhaps Bigyama’s recent announcement, in which they — a Home developer — publicly announced their plans to shift gears primarily into Vita development, is a portent of things to come.
I don’t begrudge anyone who enjoys Home. If you’re willing to overlook its flaws, it has a lot to offer. Since there are (currently) no console-based competitors for it, I suspect it will continue on its merry way for a while, and ultimately this article is just my own reflection on why I left. The sad part is that third-party developers have unleashed some amazing content for Home (particularly this year), and just when it feels like Home is starting to grow into something — when it seems that Home is poised to turn into more than what it’s been for the last few years — the weak point feels like…well…Sony.
Can Home get me back? Sure. I’m not anti-Sony, or anti-Home. Indeed, I’m rooting for both to succeed, and I’m wistful for the days in which I still enjoyed Home. But getting me back means Sony needs to do the one thing I think they’re unwilling to do with Home: a large-scale investment into its infrastructure, not just its cosmetics. Specifically, invest in making it an experience unto itself. Should that change, I would be very keen to see if it’s worth re-exploring. I can only play Lego Harry Potter so many times, ya know.
July 20th, 2012 by IrishSiren | 27 comments
IrishSiren is a former casual Home user who enjoyed Loco Roco island, Dragon's Green, Conspiracy, and ModNation Racers. In real life she is addicted to scuba diving, Grumpy Cat and reality TV. She lives in Hawaii.
Fantastic read, and about the best summery of what’s wrong with Home I’ve seen so far. I’ve felt a similar way to Home a few times, and I’ve also said goodbye to it a couple times over the years too. For me it was US Home that brought my faith back this time, not so much the content drive they’re doing but more the people and the fact nearly everyone speaks English really. EU Home can be a harrowing place if after spending a full hour wandering round seeing nothing but foreign languages, the first person you meet who actually does speak the same language, tells you about things he has done with your sister, your mother then your dog.
Something needs to be done to clean the place up, I don’t know what the figures are but surely it don’t cost much to keep tags on a public notice board? As for shifting it over to the PS4 well, if they can make the first PS3s play PS1 & 2 games…
Wonderful read Siren. I’m actually one of those users that are “invested” in Home. I believe in what Home CAN be more than what it is. That being said: my time with and money spent on Home has seen a dramatic decline in the past eight months or so. I still hope Home can be more than what it is now and that we are on our way to something grand. I do, however, agree that Home feels abandoned by Sony. I’m likely going to keep going back though… just because I hope….
By the way… have you been to the MiB space? It has an option to “turn off” other people. I think that would be the best solution to harassment.
I hope too Gideon!
More likely than not, Home will not be ported to the PS4. It will probably just be rebuilt for it. But, thats just a guess.
Taking these very reasonable, and adult suggestions into what Home will become in it’s next incarnation, should make it the experience Sony seems to be after now.
Superb article Siren!
They need to do something about all the F-13 AND OTHER VARIOUS RANDOM ERRORS ……that occur on a daily basis Allot of people are NOT HAPPY with being booted off in excess of 15 or more times per day.
Excellent article. It is no secret, I am totally addicted to Home and spend way too much money and way too many hours a week trying to improve “my” community because I can see so much potential for something totally great in Home.
However, for those of us who try to make it a positive experience, there are 4 more who do everything in their power to do the exact opposite. This is nothing new, it has been going on since the beginning of the internet decades ago. I for one have been around these types of issues for a over 20 years (both as a user and as executive administration), and Sony has to be one of the worst I have seen for offering any recourse to it’s users for the problems they encounter.
Sure, we can send reports, but it is extremely rare you ever see anything happen to the offender, so most folks give up even trying. Granted the moderators are completely and totally outnumbered by the general population, but I firmly believe that if they were more visible in public areas, at least half of the BS we see happening would come to an abrupt end. I mean, when I see a cop, I don’t step on the gas through a school zone do you?
Even when the user is left to their own devices, most of the social problems arise from the individual’s lack of being able to quickly and efficiently turn the offender off.. either physically (like at MIB), or more often than not, mentally/emotionally. Sure, I have seen adults squabble on Home, but it is nothing compared to the arguments, fighting, posing, and other disruptive behavior shown by the younger crowds. But even then it isn’t entirely a maturity issue. Simply put, some people just can’t ignore someone throwing a perceived insult their way. This has always been a problem with any online social network (hell real life too), and I doubt it will end anytime soon.
The only ones who can fix that, is us, the users. We have the power to tell Sony to take care of us, or lose us as consumers simply by not tolerating anything less than honest value for our money, and reasonable protection for our loyalty while we enjoy our purchases in the environment they have provided for us.
I for one can truly visualize the possibilities way beyond tomorrow and all the things Home is capable of being if someone there just shows us they give a damn if we are here or not… that in itself lies the cornerstone of my belief (or perhaps stupidity), in Home… I Have Hope.
This is a well thought out article Siren, welcome back to HSM. I believe that Sony does need to show more interest in Home and its denizens, particularly the bad ones. We do need enhanced blocking features, turning someone back into a ghost would be an excellent way to do this. I don’t do the forum much myself because of the abuses there, never have. It needs a good house cleaning as well. People that are caught either freezing or making overt sexual advances and postings on the Event board need to be banned permanently somehow. Those postings are scary to me as I said in my article.
Giving us more power as users would be a good solution for much of this, and Sony being more forthcoming when there are problems would too.
How about a new board in the Hub and all other core public areas that show any news about problems instead of just posting them in a blog or forum that many don’t have access to?
You have a lot of insightful suggestions here, I hope Sony is listening, because I too have some friends who used to spend a lot of time and money in Home and left probably because of a lot of the same reasons.
I too spend (and spent) lot less times on Home lately. Started with the disconnection/error codes from the server moves. Thats when I learned there is a lot of moderation on the forums. But not toward behaviours. My post asking whats goings on where quickly locked and move to support. I didnt needed support, it was obviously a problem on Sony’s end. You pointed out what is one of the major problem (for me) about sony/home lack of communication.
Harrasment is the other.
I dont care if home is too big or this or that technical problem. As a consumer I dont want excuses, I want results. Sick and tired of being told “You know it’s like that on the net, woman have it rough.” We do “gender switch night” sometimes at novus. That little taste of what it is to be a female avi on home make me wonder how you woman can cope with that on a daily basis. And thats only one type of harassment.
The direction SCEA is taking with the club x7. To “force” social class on home leave a bitter taste. Home is already filled with such type of attitude. We dont need Sony (or some 3rd party dev for that matter) to push it further.
Awesome article, Siren. I couldn’t agree more with everything you wrote.
I haven’t completely left Home but my interest is currently at an all time low. At one time, I couldn’t wait to check new spaces, play with my personal apartments and look for new virtual merchandise to buy. These days, I might go a week without logging on and not feel like I’ve missed it a bit.
The whole Elite/Exclusive/Mansion nonsense made a bad impression on me from day one and I still can’t quite get past it. What a poor marketing strategy and disrespectful message to send to Home consumers who don’t shop at the Exclusive store! The heavy-handed tactics effectively told many big spenders on Home that their loyalty does not count and their business is not appreciated. To this date, I’ve refused to buy the Mansion or any personal space with Mansion-related perks. It’s become a moot point lately because the SCEA personal spaces have just been repetitive, big-box rubbish anyway. I can’t even see the point in including a Mansion-owner bonus in a space like the new Crystal Seashores. The space is basically a bare-bones, low-rent version of the Mansion/Infinity Pool complex. Why would an owner of the Mansion even want it?
Your criticism of the communication from the Home team is also spot on. If Sony is not invested in Home, why should I be? The Forum moderation swings between overbearing censorship and total neglect with very little official information shared in between.
Perhaps surprisingly, harassment is low on my list of complaints. Maybe I don’t hang around enough public spaces to be affected by it anymore. Even when I’ve been subjected to it, I’m pretty satisfied by telling the imbecile to piss off and just ignore him.
I’ll continue keeping up with Home to some extent. There are aspects that I still enjoy and friends to visit. However, my big spending days and daily involvement are done. Mall items have to be awfully fresh and original for me to even bother looking at them anymore, let alone consider a purchase.
Quality third party developers such as Lockwood, Granzella, Digital Leisure and Juggernaut seem to be working to keep Home interesting. I have to wonder how they honestly feel about the support they’ve been getting from the head office.
Norse, I wonder why you felt it necessary to include your little foreword to the article.
Were you afraid that your readership could not handle an article that held Sony’s feet to the for for a change? Are the powers-that-be at Sony too fragile to receive such well-deserved criticism from your site? You sound like you’re apologising for publishing a fair and coherently written editorial.
The foreword reminds me of those disclaimers before cable-TV movies warning the audience that “The programme might contain mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.” HSM seems to have a mature and educated following. We could have made it through all the negative sentiment without suffering emotional breakdowns.
*** Make that “feet to the fire” Sorry.
Where’s the bloody edit button anyway?
Something one of my business mentors once taught me: “There’s reality, and there’s perception. The two are rarely the same, and it’s the latter that tends to drive humanity.”
As a pro-Sony/pro-developer/pro-Home publication, this sort of op-ed is quite a *tonal* departure from what we normally publish. Granted, HSM has fired off far stronger criticism than this (a fact which our detractors conveniently forget when trying to paint us as nothing but Sony fanboys), but it always comes from a place of wanting to see things improve, and trying to offer feedback that might help that process.
Siren’s article, conversely, comes from an assumption that Home will *not* improve. And the problem with that is that when HSM publishes something, particularly if it’s overly critical…it resonates. There’s no shortage of sources (including the Sony forum and other satellite media projects) telling SCEA what they’re doing wrong. And while we don’t shy away from (constructively) doing that either, we also make an effort to evangelize Sony, Home and its related developers. The major purpose of the foreword was to make it clear that we’re not advocating people leave Home; we’re simply looking at the reasons why some might choose to.
The topic itself, like most social issues HSM covers, is a bit of a powder keg: if someone leaves Home, chances are they have some pretty specific reasons for it. Some will be perception, and some will be reality. And this article does an outstanding job of examining this topic while keeping personal emotions more or less out of it. But art does not exist in a vacuum, and given the frequent negative ranting about Sony and Home on the forum — and, occasionally, in satellite media projects — we felt it necessary to point out that we are in fact attempting to serve Sony by providing the insights in this article, rather than simply tearing them down to make ourselves feel better about the personal grievances we may carry. Perhaps, to the readership, this foreword is unnecessary; HomeStation has a mature and literate audience, and they don’t need any handholding. But as HSM’s publisher I felt it personally necessary and important to include it.
You pointed out what I think is a big part of the problem, perception. In this day and age, image is everything. Not that I approve it, far from that. The fact is, no matter how much goodwill Sony put in the project. It’s relatively pointless if the community is not aware.
The fact that Siren stuck to reality is what made the foreword unnecessary. At least, that’s my perception.
The piece stands up and demands attention because of HSM’s ingrained pro-Sony atmosphere. The apologist-toned foreword dulls the edge somewhat by presenting the article as a talking point instead of direct criticism.
If that was your intent, so be it. You’re the editor. Lacking evangelical interests myself, I would have left it out. Still, kudos for publishing it. Hopefully, somebody of significance will take notice.
You also have the luxury of simply being a reader, Liza, as opposed to carrying the responsibility of trying to always do what’s best for the publication as a whole.
It is precisely because HomeStation is known as a pro-Sony/pro-Home publication that it has an amplification effect any time we publish something that’s directly critical. I could simply slap a disclaimer on every single article that it’s the viewpoint of the author and not necessarily endorsed by HSM, but that to me is a Janus-faced cop out. When something is run in HSM, it’s because the editorial team looked at it, evaluated it, and decided that yes, it would be a good addition to the publication, with the weight of the brand behind it. And it is precisely because of this stance that more than once I’ve encountered contributors who wanted to use this platform as a loudspeaker for anti-developer agendas, and HSM simply isn’t the place for that.
HomeStation has a hard editorial rule: bring a problem, bring a solution. Particularly if you’re taking on a developer, instead of the community at large. It demonstrates that we are genuinely interested in trying to help solve the problem, rather than just exacerbating it. Siren’s article, to an extent, violates that rule. That may not seem like a big deal, but considering we’ve rejected articles and lost contributors over that rule, it is from my perspective as HSM’s publisher a very big deal.
Not everyone will agree with my decisions. That’s fine. An article like this runs the risk of honking off the audience we’ve built up *and* drawing fire from those who feel we didn’t go far enough. But just as it is ultimately my call to edit for tone or add editor notes as needed, it’s also my call to run an article which flirts with the penumbra of what this publication editorially allows in the first place. The fact that the copy itself went in practically untouched is a testament to how well we think Siren handled, in a logical and rational fashion, an emotionally charged subject with a lot of background noise. Whether it makes any sort of impact or not, it’s certainly a very deft examination of a topic that does merit discussion, which is why we ultimately ran it.
Well, I do appreciate life’s little luxuries. Even if I don’t shop at Exclusives.
First I would like to say what an amazingly well written article this was.It’s obvious you put a ton of time and thought into this, but I must respectfully disagree. Home has it’s problems, many of them in fact, but is Home supposed to be a utopia 100% free of problems? Is Home supposed to transcend technical limitations and glitches? Is Home supposed to be a perfect place that brings out the best in everybody?
Home is simply a place, and that place is inhabited by people. The reality of people is we are flawed, and those flaws translate in all aspects, right into Home.
While I agree with you on many of your points for sure, I feel Home is what it is, an imperfect place that struggles with it’s problems and try to make things better and hopefully entertain and bring enjoyment to us. Home is just like real life. imperfect.
Your article is well written and brings up some valid points but there are things that I do disagree with in it. It assumes quite a bit about the people are here purely for the social aspect -like I am.
1. I cant agree with this -but I came on not to game but because the social aspect appealed to me. So, I think that in-Home money would have really intimidated me and turned me off. I think that Sony has been trying to remedy the schism between gamers and people that come merely for the social aspect by creating different districts… this tells me that they are at least aware that there are people that come into home for different reasons.
I wasnt around for Xi but it seems like it was a lot of fun, from everything I have read and heard there are more of these types of things being orchestrated but I am not really in the know.
Certainly any and all boundaries will most likely be pursued but I am sure that with legal systems and other current issues within the existing format that need to be debugged there is a need for time to develop these thing.
2. The problems that are set out in this segment seem a real reason for being frustrated and I agree with you wholeheartedly on the marketing devices used verses the Nav and the convenience of the patron. It took me quite a while to find this little community with Alaphazone and Homestation and HomeCast -and others… to obtain information about new releases and breakdowns on what actually the product was like before laying down my well-earned dollar and facing disappointment.
2. I just totally disagree with the whole pay everything up front thing. I am sorry but I think things are better off pieced out… for several different reasons but mainly because I don’t want to drop a wad in one month. This is good for the developers too because people will continue to return and pay accordingly.
I do not belong to playstation plus at this time so I have not point of comparison here.
3. I like your ideas about ghosting a troll -but you know I largely do not have problems with trolls- I mean they are there but I don’t waste my time on them. I figure, not matter what you do if you put a female av in a sexually provocative outfit and stick it out there in public its going to attract some leg-humping 16 year old. Its not right but its reality. How responsible can a corporation be for the activity of its patrons. I am sure the leg-humpers are spending money too. How do we deter socially unacceptable behavior in real life as well? Everything from the guy in the grocery line that yells at the clerk because they don’t have what he wants in stock to the guy that pulls into the parking space that you have been waiting for. I mean that stuff just happens. And you know its up to us to make sure people get that it is not okay. When someone actually freezes another person then there should be repercussions. I mean then it seems like the line is being crossed.
You raise some excellent points, Siren, but I tend to look at these issues through a slightly different lens. Where you’ve cast this as why you left Home, and every reason is certainly valid, I think the broader issue is that Home failed to offer enough to encourage you to look beyond its issues.
What you’ve expressed can be said about a great many products and services, offline as well as off. Poor communication from a company? Endemic in a lot of industries, and particularly troublesome in the gaming industry. Harassment? Rampant online. Nickel and diming? Hello, Zynga!
We could probably argue the merits of Second Life vs. Sims Online vs. WoW vs. Free Realms vs. DC Universe in terms of communication, engagement and purpose. Second Life is really the only comparison that comes close, but the significant user-generated IP community over there makes even that comparison difficult.
From its inception, Home has suffered from a lack of purpose. Sony deserves every bit of credit for creating something that speaks to gamers’ desire to connect with one another in a method beyond basic text chat, but neither Sony nor gamers themselves seem to have any real idea of what they want to do with that capability.
The blame falls on us as much as it does Sony; some of Home’s community was perfectly happy to have a place to hang out, while others wanted more games. Nothing within the Home experience, apart from the TGI events, has been relevant outside of the Home experience, other than the personal connections that some users have been able to make.
This reality ultimately leads to the question of, “Why am I here?” and allows the frustrations to mount. Unless there’s some purpose to your time in Home, or some incredibly compelling piece of content to keep you coming back, the frustrations are inevitably going to drive you to look for some other method of occupying your time.
The broader truth is that consumers will put up with a lot of aggravation if they feel that the product is worth the pain, but there is that point where customers break off, either because they don’t see any benefits or someone else has come along and done it better. Of course, we don’t know what “better” means…it could be a purely social program with avatars and endless user customization, it could be a game-centric platform, it could be both on two different consoles.
For me personally, it’s fossil digging, because I love archaeology and enjoy the rewards. Someone else might think No Man’s Land is worth the frustrations, while someone else might be satisfied with hanging out with friends in a new personal space.
Assuming that none of your issues get addressed, and that the question of what Home “is” or “should be” needs to be tabled, what would it take to get you back?
That’s a great question, HIW, and it’s one I’ve wrangled with quite a bit. Home, to me, was hanging out with friends and playing fun, casual games. While I still have friends there, a lot of the gaming attractions I used to enjoy are gone now. The one game in recent day which I’ve mildly enjoyed was Cutthroats, but it was just too tedious after a while.
What would it take to get me back? Enhanced blocking features, games that didn’t require me to push fifty different buttons simultaneously, and a more up-front pricing structure which didn’t nickel-and-dime me. And, preferably, a Home that felt like a functional and cohesive universe closer to The Sims. I want Home itself to be a game, not just a loose collection of games.
Who knows, maybe I’m just not a freemium gamer. Maybe the sort of experience Home offers is something which, like anything else, grows old after a while. It’s not something that’s designed for everyone, as much as it tries to appeal to everyone.
The purpose of my article was not to sell anyone else on leaving Home (particularly not the HSM team, which thoroughly embarrasses most other game “journalism” outlets in terms of quality), but to provide insights to SCEA which might help them with the next iteration of Home, assuming it comes to pass. Home as it presently exists is a known formula which really isn’t going to change much, and that’s fine; it suits a lot of people quite nicely.
I just hope that Sony, with its next version of Home, creates something which doesn’t make me feel like I have to pay such a high penalty to enjoy it. There’s far too much *content* for me as a consumer to enjoy, particularly within the greater PlayStation sphere, that has nothing to do with Home — and, truth be told, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
I’m certainly wistful for the days when Home was the centerpiece of my gaming world, and I’m pulling for Sony to keep on succeeding. They’ve got something remarkable with Home, but the architecture underneath it just doesn’t cut it for me, nor has it been harnessed as well as it could have been. Here’s hoping the next version of Home is better.
And cheers to HSM. You guys are a good group and you do a remarkable job of keeping Home interesting.
It’s interesting timing, because changes in my life have forced me to cut my time in Home. Or sleep. Not ready to abandon that yet.
I agree that interconnectedness is one huge area where Home needs some thought and development. Some standalone content is great, and I get the concept that not everything is meant for everyone to own, but that lack of cohesiveness bugs me. Perhaps it’s the feeling that nothing in Home ever advances, or moves toward any sort of a goal, that causes this feeling. The idea of filling my Granzella Museum, when it arrives, is what keeps me going with that game, but what then? Hopefully something else cool gets launched before I’m done with it.
Cut down on the sleep and come Home. We miss you… just sayin.
There is a lot of chatter about what is wrong with Home. I read this and am concerned that there is too much of us leaning on Sony and saying, “Hey Sony, you made a program for free, that you didn’t have to and have run it for ‘nickles and dimes’ and so we want perfection for everybody individually”. This isn’t a perfect place, no place ever is. Even our country which has a lot of good, is still crawling with problems. Home is no different. I believe this metaverse can never serve everbody’s needs. That’s impossible to do. Frankly if anyone of us ever tried to duplicate this environment, we’d end up with Fresno! But Home satisfies alot of needs for a lot of people, closely enough that it is a satisfying place for many. Sony’s involvement? Are you kidding, then we would get the chorus of people saying they are too involved. As for ads in the hub and such, I have no problem with that. They gave me a free place, I will let them throw ads at me all the live long day. They are a for profit company and I help them profit, with a smile. In regards to the ecomony here…wow I love that it is a free environment. We don’t have to buy a single thing and yet we are gifted countless items. So I love the environment that is fun and full of friends with no subscription fee and 0 mandate to buy a single thing. Sony made the playground and we can play for free. I will concede, social harrassment is still a problem and needs further expansion of relief. My view is this: this is a free place to roam, and like my favorite sport, NASCAR likes to say…if you don’t like it, leave, we’ll be fine with out you. I love home. It has filled a large void in my life. I accepted the terms and accepted the economics. The day I don’t, I will not look back with anything but joy at the time that I spent here. I thank Sony for what they did, and acccept it all as an experience, maybe not perfect, but it can’t be ever to all, and frankly I am offended at the thought that we can sit so smugly sometimes and point at Sony with complaints as we roam the world they made for us. Thank you for reading my opinion
I just recently left home but not for any of the reasons that were given but i do agree with the article and yes improvements need to be made for a person like i am that isn’t a gamer but do want home to give more and yes its free but it still feels like it was abandon by Sony again I didn’t leave for any of the reasons given in this article but i won’t be rushing to return to Home either unless some changes are made that are contained in the article. Spot on article Irishsiren ciao all and muah to my friend Dlyrius
First I wpuld like to say this is a great article and topic. Well done Siren!!!!, and thank you to the editoral team of HSM for yet again giveing me a great read @2am.
In response to this writing and the comments that follow.All of you have posted great ideas and comments to this HSM article. I myself have always tried to look at pshome as my psn i.d. Haveing a face and a avatar to walk around with. Not only to socialize with gamers across my country but around the world. PsHome is a huge experiment which Sony has given all of us free of charge. There are so many parts of Sony music, tv, home televisons and sterio systems, ps3 gameing, computers, camreas. All these things take alot of resoruces I am sure to develope and promot. PsHome is I am sure a money maker for Sony, but is it as much of impotantce as a 3d tv display?
I have noticed for along time the lack of Sony brand content in Pshome which yes, gives me the feeling Sony has looked past PsHome for other intrests. On the other hand home is updated ever week, I dont know of anything eles which can make that claim.I think Sony took a big risk devloping this service from the idea of the creator. Like many of you have stated above people(users) are unpridictable.When to people walk up to each other on pshome there is really no telling what one might say to the other. This might sometimes lead people to just stand around and wait to see if the other person even speaks to them. I understand people want more games on pshome or even for pshome to be a game itself. Yet is that what pshome was even meant to be? I live in america and i wonder if our society and how we are as americans has a major role in how we act on the internet and pshome? I myself do not go on to other pshome regions, but i often wonder if other regions have the same trolling issues and harassment as I have seen and heard from in America.
Call of Duty players will gladly spend lets say 20 bucks on a map pack which only contains 2 or 3 additonal maps and yet alot of people complain about pshome pricing. Yes there are some things in pshome I myself do not buy, but that does not mean those that do purchase these items are not enjoying them. I dont think Sony aside from a lack of Sony clothing items has much to do with alot of the issues in pshome we all face. Rather other users cause these issues, such as freezing, and harassment, be it sexual, racial, religouse, ect. We as a indivdgual users of pshome choose how we intract with each other. Yet this is a lager issue than pshome home and will take more than a patch from Sony to fix. As, far as bugs and glitches in pshome these things take time. Computer software and hardware changes so fast these days. That when the ps4 does come out ppl will only be wondering about the ps5. This is the age we leave in. Whats new and when can I get one. All in all I loved your article Siren, thank you for the late night read!
i use to play home all the time i spent some money here and there once in a while like i got the locoromo island when it came out i maxed it out and i also got the tron apartment with the classic tron avatar outfit after i spent like 30$ in total on home it started to sink in you have to have internet even to go to your own apartment something you just spent your hard earn money on when the new consoles come out and the ps3 and xbox 360 are forgotten and no longer supported by the internet that means my money is gone and i have nothing to show for it bad move on my part