What If Home Was Gone Tomorrow?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
We are all a curious lot; curiosity is a part of every human being. It is a big part of what created the world that we now live in. Without that spark that makes us seek out the unknown around us, most inventions would have never been made, most explorers would have stayed home and never discovered the rest of the world, and much of what as been developed in the past two centuries would still be undiscovered. I would venture to say that curiosity is what brought a good deal of the people in Home to find it in the first place. it is why I found it, how about you?
Home has become an integral part of many peoples real lives. It has a way of sucking you in once you have made some connections here with other people, people you would have never met otherwise in most cases. It allows us to learn about different parts of the world we may never see in real life through the people we befriend, it has spawned real relationships across the world and our country that have turned into marriages and true love. It provides a great outlet for leisure activities to those who are home bound in real life because of illness or finances, or both. It has opened up a world of friends to those who are shy and introverted and socially inept. Home is a brave new world of opportunities for many people on many levels. For me it gave me this outlet for my writing and a great group of friends to talk to about everything under the sun, and have fun doing it.
“What if” is a vehicle that writers have used for a long time to create stories and articles. it is a loaded question as using it once creates another “what if” right after it, thereby moving the story along through the consequences of each reaction to it. The other day I was asked a “what if” question that got me really thinking:
What if Home was gone tomorrow? What would you do?
There’s been a lot of speculating about Home’s future on the PS4 when it is released. Does it even have a future there? That is something we will have to have a wait-and-see attitude about, but I believe Home will survive and move ahead with the new console when it arrives.
But what if it didn’t? What would you do with all of the time you used to spend here in Home? Would you look for another console-based Home substitute? I heard that both XBox and Wii are going to be looking at that as a new thing on their future consoles. Would you jump ship and buy into that? I am not sure that I would; I have too much invested in Home to just easily move on to another place. I would probably get contact information on my friends here and try to keep in touch through emails, phone calls or Skype and the like.
I have had people say that the platform for Home on the PS3 won’t be sustainable on the PS4; it is too different or antiquated. I don’t know if that is true, but what it means to me is that if there is no transition to the new console, Home will still be available on the PS3 like it is now for quite awhile, though it may become frozen in time, with little or no new content being introduced. I could live with that, I think, because I am here to be with my friends and have fun, and there is plenty of that to be had here already.
At some point, the lights will be turned off.
If there was no Home, would you spend more time playing video games? I think that I probably would do that. I must say that it would give me more time to do so, and I would take advantage of that. I haven’t been playing much outside of Home lately, mostly because there has been such an inundation of new content it has taken all my time to just keep up on it. I haven’t bought or played anything new in quite awhile now, and if Home was suddenly gone tomorrow, like it was during the famous PlayStation Network outage of 2011, I would most likely revert to what I did then and play a lot more games. After all, games are what brought us here in the first place.
Another thing that might take over from Home is real life. If Home was gone tomorrow, would you change gears and get more involved in real-life ventures? Read more books? I know I would, as I love to read and have been letting it go more in recent times. How about taking a class in something or spending more time with family or friends? For some people these real obligations and concerns wouldn’t change at all, as Home hasn’t taken them over, but I am sure that for some, especially those who are home-bound because of illness or circumstance, the loss of Home and the life they live here would be a devastating one.
This is one of the reasons that I hope Home goes on for a very long time, be it on a new system or the PS3. Many people have an outlet here they would have otherwise never found, and it can even be a lifeline to them. As we have said many times over — and it has been proven just as readily — Home is much more than a game, whether Sony intended it to be so or not.
September 18th, 2012 by Burbie52 | 6 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Most of us have a pc so perhaps IMVU or second life. Its surprising how many and what games have a social side to them also. Rockstars midnight club you are supposed to racing online multiplayer but its surprising how many times you find a server that’s got users cruising the beach front showing off they latest designs on they cars, talking socially on headsets, homes a good media for social interaction but shouldn’t be your only one. Imagine your whole virtual life tumble down around you because home was no more. When we had psn outage I just went to IMVU and hardly missed home. As social animals we should always have multiple ways of socialising being reliant on one is just self defeating. You got to see what’s out there virtually if not in reality, can’t rate home if you have tried nothing else. Not just visited, didn’t like it, so left, but actually tried it joined in etc etc. Home may be the best but it’s not irreplaceable. If you make irreplaceable and it goes more fool you.
Home like all things have a beginning and an end. I have been involved with a bunch of MMO’s that had to close it’s virtual doors. It’s sad, but you move on. I truly hope when Home closes many, many years from now, It does so in a gradual way, Giving people time to take care of things. Even better I hope it happens when I’m to old to remember my log in! Great article as always Burbie
Wait for the next big thing. There always seems to be one. Maybe even dream up the next big thing and hey! Sometimes dreams come true. But someone else would more than likely dream it up.
I suppose when push comes to job I’d make a slightly bigger effort to play Major League baseball.
IDE be pissed coz I spent money on it!!!
Since early 2009 I have seen such amazing growth in HOME! The minute I came into HOME I became social. I wandered around wondering who would I talk to and vice versa. I have made wonderful friendships since then. They will be maintained well after HOME is gone. Yes, I will play more video games,read more, sleep more lol.Find another social media maybe. All goods things must and will come to an end…
well in my opinion i doubt that home will be going well anytime soon anyways. the reason i say this cuz some of the home devs just make / develop stuff for home and that’s their primary source of income and dont have any secondary income or any thing they can fall back on if home was to go tomorrow . now this is just from my knowledge of home devs ok
granzilla -- home primary income no secondary income
lockwood publishing -- home primary no secondary income
ndreams -- home primary no secondary income
hudson / konami -- video games / slot machines primary income -- home secondary income
digital leisure -- video games primary income -- home secondary income
sony -- electronics primary income -- home secondary income
loot which is part of sony it would included w/ sony
ubisoft video games primary income -- home secondary income
lucas arts -- movies , cartoons , special effects , video games primary income -- home secondary income