How Real Do You Want Home To Be?
by NorseGamer, HSM Editor-in-Chief
After E3, I detoured up to the San Francisco Bay Area on my way back from Los Angeles. While there, I stopped by my old preschool — revisiting my (quite literal) old stomping grounds.
Good lord, that playground was small. Could it possibly have been the same vast expanse I used to scamper around in when I was a kid?
Of course, it was. The playground itself was unchanged; all that was different was my perspective. But it shook me: the magic of those early sunlit memories was demolished by the stark reality of what actually was.
It is thus for many of us, I suppose. Goethe even once famously wrote that at the end of their lives, all men think their youth was Arcadia. And there is some truth to that. My first car, as a teenager, was a Chrysler LeBaron red convertible. Now sure, as an adult, you look back on it and realize that it had a suspension made out of toothpicks, about as much horsepower as a single horse on a horse tranquilizer, and really is the sort of vehicle that only a female hairdresser would be seen in.
The original Norsemobile. Fueled by a secret desire to be Turbo Teen.
But you don’t think about that when you’re sixteen. When you’re at that age, all you think about is the huge grin on your face as you drive past meathead jocks on the school’s baseball field, shouting obscenities at you because you’ve got the top down and you’ve piled five ridiculously cute cheerleaders into the car. Which means you officially have the coolest lowrider at your high school.
“Reality,” thus, is far more subjective than we like to think.
And that brings us neatly to PlayStation Home. In reality, Home is a somewhat antiquated hodgepodge Frankenstein monster that’s held together with duct tape and chewing gum, and if a butterfly flaps its wings in Ulan Bator, half the servers crash and spew out indecipherable error codes that even Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory wouldn’t be able to figure out. But that’s not important. What’s important is the magic of the reality it creates for us.
Home is a remarkable escapist fantasy. It’s a venue in which we can portray ourselves in any manner we wish. It gives us the ability to interact with each other as we perhaps wish we were, instead of how we are. And this raises an interesting question:
How “real” do you want Home to actually be?
I raise this question because I think there’s a bit of an Uncanny Valley risk to a virtual world being somewhat too real. Frankly, I don’t think it would hold nearly as much escapist appeal.
Let’s take a look at a virtual world which tried this approach: Twinity.
Twinity avatar.
Twinity’s initial approach was, as the name implies, to faithfully recreate actual cities in an online metaverse environment. Which, actually, could be somewhat fun, to say nothing of being a nifty method of learning a city’s road system before you travel there. But here’s where it gets interesting: you could use a Photofit application to map a fairly accurate recreation of your actual face onto your Twinity avatar.
Hmm.
Let’s be honest here: how many of you are comfortable enough in your own skin to actually portray your skin to the world? If there’s one semi-uncomfortable secret about Home that we all share, it’s that many of us have made our digital selves far more visually appealing than we are in real life. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is often a rather significant gap in appearance between the avatar and the person who created it.
I’m not saying this to pass judgment on anyone. I’ve done my best to make my avatar look as close to my actual appearance as possible, but I’ve certainly made a few artistic interpretations as well. And so the concept of something like Twinity, where I could display myself in a much more photorealistic fashion…isn’t all that appealing.
As humanity becomes increasingly digitized, there’s been a commensurate increase in the number of cosmetic surgeries performed each year. And with good reason: all you have to do is turn on your laptop’s webcam and stare at your own face to instantly feel insecure, because the illusion of what you think you look like is shattered by the reality the image on the screen is telling you. So is it thus any surprise that in Home (and other virtual worlds), so many people are portraying themselves as something other than they actually are, either in temperament or appearance? And why such an experience is psychologically so addictive?
Thus, the problem with making a virtual world as eerily accurate as possible is that it really does produce an Uncanny Valley reaction. If video games are all about escapism and fun and adventure and interactive storytelling, how the hell am I supposed to believe I’m El Cid if I’m staring at the screen and see something which looks way too much like me? Because the truth is that I’m not El Cid, Alexander the Great, Parsifal, D’Artagnan, Captain Blood, or even Peter Facinelli when he did Fastlane. I’m just another brown-haired suburban thirtysomething who wants to spend more time as Captain N and less time as Kevin.
Seriously: what is the point of virtual reality if not to embrace a certain amount of magic realism?
There’s a decidedly “uncool” factor when examining the motives behind Home’s more socially-motivated users — because while anyone can think they’re heroic when playing as Nathan Drake in a carefully-scripted escapist experience that makes damn sure you feel like the alpha male, Home (like all social metaverses) holds up an uncomfortable mirror in front of all of us, forcing us to confront our own shortcomings. Physical appearance. Lack of social skills. You name it. And this is why Sony was forced to change Home into a gaming platform instead of a social network for gamers, because games can function as the glue to bring disparate people together who don’t want to admit just how awkward they might actually be.
It should come as no surprise, thus, that Twinity rapidly changed its strategy, becoming far more like Second Life as it progressed. And, granted, I’m not in favor of Home going to that extreme, either; that’s a little too much “fantasy” for my comfort level. As far as I’m concerned, Home strikes a good balance between those two extremes.
And that’s one of the reasons why this topic interests me. This entire console generation has been about making things more photorealistic, as though that is the key to a memorable gaming experience. But gaming experiences don’t have to be photorealistic framerate explosions on a 4K screen that gives you an epileptic fit in order to be memorable. (Christ, if nothing else, Angry Birds may have finally proven that point.) What makes any gaming experience truly memorable and addictive — including any virtual world like Home — is just how good a job it does at making you feel good about yourself. Because when that feel-good escapism is on tap, it’s amazing how much people are willing to forgive, overlook, gloss over or just downright ignore.
Thus, my appeal to future designers: remember that all the realism in the world doesn’t equal the magic of a world our collective imaginations can create. Virtual reality is ultimately an escapist experience, fueled by the consumer’s desire to be something other than themselves and find some measure of inner peace through social acceptance and/or temporary psychological escape. It is a key motive which drives a lot of virtual commodity purchases. And considerable sums of money can often be spent in pursuit of that fulfillment. So remember that the user isn’t necessarily looking for realism — they’re looking for an idealized version of it.
December 7th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 3 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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What you said here is very true Norse. I couldn’t even make a really true version of myself with the limitations of our interface if I wanted to. So I decided to create a unique younger version of myself, though it isn’t exact either, it will do. I occasionally tweak her with the new stuff like the Beautiful Eyes from Granzella, which I consider one of the best things for our avatars to come out in a very long time, they give you eyelashes for one thing, something lacking totally. In that sense I will go for more realism, but the fantasy part of Home is what keeps many coming back, you just have to sit in a public space and watch for awhile to know that, and the wings and mech-bots and the like shows that many love to step totally outside of themselves and the “norm”. I have friends who never wear anything but the wildest costumes imaginable.
Great read as always and I hope the developers keep giving us these fantastic toys to play with.
I believe I made a reasonably facsimile of my real self with the cowboy hat. I posted a picture of my avatar wearing a vest in my Log Cabin and a cowboy hat and a guitar and bows in the background. In real life I have worn a cowboy hat at times although not often anymore. I posted a real life picture of myself with a guitar. Never mind that I don’t live in a log cabin or that I don’t bow hunt, some said that I did a pretty good job. Someone mentioned Ted Nugent but I’m not like him. I do have a guitar but I am not a musician other than I play a little guitar and write songs.
Other avatars I have are based on what I like and use the same face and head such as the sports outfits. I lked the hockey outfit although I wasn’t much of a hickey player that’s for sure. Baseball/softball I was pretty good at based on speed but I didn’t like organized sports. I quit basketball in high school and didn’t go back despite being asked by the coach to do so. Not that I was any good.
(Any sports was based on speed.)
On Halloween I dressed as a pirate and can do so on home. As I child I played war, pirates, pirates and whatever else and I now dress as those things on Home. However, while using the same face model, I add to it with hair, clothes and other things I wouldn’t wear or carry.
If you see my avatar with a guitar I don;t carry one with me and I do not have long sideburns. My hair there is no way I could create it.
So in short, I have a mixture of reality and make believe.
I don’t dress like a girl cus I’m a guy (an old guy and I tried to make my face look old -- most of the time). I do dress like a girl in wardrobe when I’m dumping freebies to storage on the Female gender. I did try applying makeup and holy wah! How do you gals do it?
I sometimes dress like a robot.
I forgot your question if there was one, but I hope I answered it. Oh yes, I never used roller skates in real life nor have I used wings to fly but I do in home.
Bye.
I feel a certain weight of responsibility from the name KrazyFace now. A few years ago it was just another screen name like anyone else and I could happily get away with the usual online caper, and I did! But over the years ( and my refusal to change my name) I’ve grown a kind of attachment to the name. Another me. As such, I conduct my behaviour as I would normally -- even if it does get me into trouble sometimes. But to me, that’s the greatest RPG ever! No reset button, where every argument I’ve had with people stains, every joke or laugh is fondly remembered. I’d have my avi more like me in Home if I could because I spent so damn long being embarrassed and unsure of myself in RL for so long that when I finally figured it out; that I should be happy with myself for who and what I am well, I just dont feel the need to hide anymore. I WANT the world or whoever I meet to see as much of the real me as possible. Warts and all! (as they say)
Another nice read Norse. Oh, and super-XL KUDOS for having a convertible stuffed full of cheerleaders by age 16 -- I wish I’d found my confidence as young as that.