Is 2012 Home’s Best Year…Ever?
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Sometimes I wonder how Home would have been received by gaming media and the general public if it had launched its open beta with what it has to offer today.
This isn’t to say that Home is perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. It ain’t. It has some very real problems which need to be addressed. But at least Home would’ve had stuff to do. Hence why I tend to hold a mildly pro-glitching stance, even though I strongly dislike the attitude of entitlement many glitchers have: in a Home devoid of games to play, the community resorted to creating its own meta-games, and glitching was atop that list.
By the way, this is one of the reasons why some of Home’s older users complain that Home feels like its soul was hollowed out; when you don’t have stuff handed to you, it comes down to your own resourcefulness, and this creates a sense of communal significance. Hand everything to everyone, and you strip the users of that significance. Some of them couldn’t cope. It’s hard to feel engaged if you think Home is a giant carnival in which you are a faceless patron.
Still. Even though it took years to get here, we’re finally at a point where Home itself feels robust. Off the top of my head, look at what 2012 has offered us or declared so far:
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Home 2012.
Cutthroats
- No Man’s Land
- PODI
- Blueprint:Home
- Mercia
- Home Tycoon
- The Casino
- MiniBots
- Avalon Keep
- Portable EOD
These are all huge content releases. And there’s plenty of stuff I’ve forgotten to add. It illustrates that Home, albeit still a metaverse with no purpose itself, is becoming a much more interesting game platform.
So there are two questions that bear asking:
1. Is Home “better” now than it was back in the day?
2. Can developers maintain this kind of product release schedule, or must there be a shift to support existing content rather than new IP development, causing a slowdown in new content?
Ya had to be there, man…
The first question is highly subjective, of course. Any time you have a small, close-knit group of people who must rely on their own abilities to entertain each other, you gain a greater sense of significance. But aside from Xi and perhaps glitching, I’m having difficulty seeing what was so empirically great about those early days. I do, however, understand an emotional attachment to something archaic, even if it doesn’t measure up to modern experiences. Quite frankly, nearly this entire console generation has left me cold, and I still hold up my Apple ][ games from thirty years ago as some of the best entertainment I’ve ever enjoyed. So perhaps the then-novelty of Home, with the optimism of things to come and a sense of being part of a small “in” group, was enough to romanticize the past. I get that.
At some point, though, you have to get past our disappointment with what you wish Home was and explore what it is. Particularly now, because even if you don’t like the idea of Home being nothing more than a game platform, you have to admit it’s a pretty damned entertaining one. A free service which offers a variety of freemium gaming experiences to pick up and put down as I want? That’s fairly awesome, and frankly the most interesting innovation to come out of this console generation.
Here’s the catch, though: with so much large-scale content being released into Home this year, will it hurt Home 2013? Is 2012 a sort of “peak oil” event for Home?
The problem with sinking the money into a huge content release for Home is that you then have to tie up a significant amount of resources into sustaining it, rather than moving on to the next project. And the bigger the project, the more you have to put into keeping it dynamic.
Let’s look at Hellfire Games as an example. Up until very recently, they’ve really only done one big thing: Novus Prime. And they’ve done it exceptionally well. It was the first Home game since SodiumOne which really felt like it had some depth to it, and let’s not forget that it’s a multiplayer game that was deployed in Home before the 1.5 update introduced multiplayer APIs to the core client. Hellfire, since then, has periodically released major content updates for Novus Prime, keeping it fresh and stimulating. In a Home marketplace which is littered with failed games and content which was simply abandoned rather than updated, Hellfire is a testament on how to do things.
And now Hellfire’s about to unleash Home Tycoon. This is an insanely massive game for Home, which will likely also demand content updates on a regular basis, as Home games must be kept entertaining for years at a stretch. This wouldn’t necessarily sound like a big deal, but let’s remember that most of the third-party development houses for Home are fairly small teams. Lockwood may have a large team (and, to be fair, they’ve earned every penny of their success by producing kick-ass content) capable of wearing multiple hats at once, but they’re the exception to the rule.
It’s not a question of talent. It’s a question of manpower. At what point do you become so tied to sustaining your current obligations that you simply don’t have the supplemental resources to invest in a new IP?
Here’s the reason why I’m asking. Home 2012, particularly in Q3, is unleashing new content at warp speed. Seriously, can you remember another time in Home when so much major content was being unleashed, from so many different developers, in such rapid succession? And the scary part is that there’s even more to come this year. But what must immediately follow this is a period of time in which developers focus on major updates to what they’ve already released. More style packs for Blueprint:Home. More versatility for Home Tycoon. More maps for No Man’s Land. Et cetera.
What this suggests, at least to me, is that there may be a general slowdown in new large-scale content for 2013. Keep in mind that stuff takes time to develop; even if a development house started on a new IP right now, it would take, what, a year to create, test and deploy? Eighteen months? And let’s remember that some of these developers aren’t tied solely to Home; they might be working on content for other platforms entirely, particularly as this console cycle is drawing to a close. The Vita, for instance, is a brand-new platform which is desperate for content. And if we go further out, beyond the PlayStation solar system itself, there’s a huge shift in the gaming industry towards mobile and casual gaming.
I can’t shake this gut feeling that Home, by the end of this year, will be largely transitioning from a growth phase to a maturation phase — and that 2013 will be largely marked more with content updates than new gaming experiences. Granted, the problem with being a prognosticative business analyst is that you run the risk of being wrong. And I could be flat-out wrong about Home 2013. It’s entirely feasible that Home could see even greater content growth next year, particularly if Sony itself decides to invest further into it. It’d be amusing to look back on this article twelve months from now and feel like Home’s version of Charles Holland Duell.
For a moment, let’s assume I’m right. How do you feel about a 2013 Home which sees more emphasis on deepening successful games than creating new ones? As a consumer base, we’re being trained to not only expect hot new content every bloody week, but now we’re getting used to these huge content releases. Will Home feel like it’s on a decline of some sort when that pace slows down?
There are two lessons to be learnt from this — one for the developer and one for the consumer.
For the developer: try to develop games which harness the social aspects of Home. Not only will this sidestep comparisons against disc-based titles, but the more the community can entertain itself within the framework of your game, the longer you can go between content updates.
For the consumer: enjoy these days. While we don’t know how long it’ll last, I suspect we’re in the Golden Age of Home.
August 23rd, 2012 by NorseGamer | 7 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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For a lot of people Home has always been about the content. Others have been using it for years and hardly put in a penny, for them it’s the friendships and personal interactions that matter. These are both fine, and for me it’s about 50/50; well bit of a lie there, I’d say it’s my friends in Home that really make it but I do like to see what new ideas are out there.
I think Mercia and Tycoon will change the way some use Home forevermore, just like Novus did. It’s rather plain to me, that Home sucsess is in the perpetual rather than the quick money shot games. I know the Midway and Casino are top of the money makers but this might just see a change if Mercia and Tycoon are deep enough to hold onto people for long enough. And in those two worlds is your regular users looking for content updates rather than new IPs.
July, 1969. No sounds filtered in through the window. The streets were bare. Inside flicketing images on a screen: “Eagle has landed”…”One small step for man”… and we were jubilant. Next would be Mars, the moons of Jupiter, the rest of the universe. It had been a mad scramble since Pres. Kennedy had sworn that the U.S. would land on the Moon within a decade. And then, slowly and slowly, people came to realize that the wild ride was over. Instead of bigger, better, wilder, we would regress to “maybe someday”. In the same way, I have seen video games come full circle.30+ years ago I was playing games on Atari that looked very much like what I see on the hand-held games today. The days when a game like Skyrim would have completely dominated are gone. There’s just too much else to DO. Putting 300 hours into one game is anathema to the digital-age gamers. Unless there are thousands of trophies in that game to collect. Thus, I am beginning to wonder if Sony will actually bring out a PS4. Is the era of the ‘big AAA game’ coming to an end? Just as reading a newspaper from cover to cover was replaced by television and the half-hour news show -- and then that was replaced by sound bytes and now by internet headline/pics/caption journalism, so will entertainment become shorter, faster, and shallower. It’s the way of the world. Just ask T.S. Eliot: “This is how the world ends; not with a bang but a whimper.”
If I have a say in this I would opt for more depth in the ones we have already than new content every week. A new one here and there would be enough, the way it is now I can barely keep track of what is new out each week, and I am not only talking games. I would actually welcome a slow down at this point to give us time to absorb what is already here for awhile, and learn to appreciate it fully.
The more immersive and fresh they keep Cutthroats, Tycoon, Mercia and No Mans Land the more people they will retain in Home playing these things over and over. New content is fine, but they do need to stay on top of what they already have.
Blueprint and Avalon are no exception to this.
Asia has been lately getting less content. Past three weeks we got nothing! And noticeably content gets frozen for Asia whenever an Asia won Street Fighter IV at EVO! I noticed!
2009 -- Daigo (Japan)
2010 -- Daigo (Japan)
2011 -- Fuudo (Japan)
2012 -- Infiltration (S. Korea)
On paper, USA can’t beat Asians in Street Fighter.
LOL! THEMS FIGHTIN’ WURDZ!
Let’s wish 2013 will be the year of stability ;/
Seriously I think Home is ready for maturity (no pun intended). I go with Burbie saying the community might benefit from a more paced new contents release. We have a good game base. More than enough clothing. The furniture department is covered with the recent kitchen items released. ( I know I know, some still request bathroom cabinet lol).
Now just some core update, L1 & R1 functions, button maping, more furniture allocation and… stability.
I say wr crusin men!
Content wise its been the best, community wise and stability wise its getting worse. theres so much mis trust in the community, to some people it seems a quest for micro celebrity or there are people creating they own personal soap opera, others just want to cause trouble, so far this year ive heard many stories several ive not got long to lives, im suicidal if you delete me i dont know what ill do, these stories mostly are caused by the desperation of one person not wanting to be deleted by another, trouble makers have just made some spaces no go areas, its actually getting quite annoying to the point im spending more time in personal spaces. and we all know stability wise Home is creaking a bit. there is a point that its not just Home but the speed of the users internet comes into it as well so there will be a point where Home has to stop, theres no point in having a super powerful Home if it means most of us cant use it due to connection speeds. Content wise we have a choice buy it or not, community and stability wise we have no control and those that do, have accounts to balance