by Bonzo, HSM Editor

Very few things in Home can truly be yours, individually customized to the individual user. Customization options are available, and the only true personalization options continue to be limited to the individuals themselves. There are standard preset avatars, which look exactly the same for everyone. Some of us take the time to make the avatars look a little different. Change the features and clothing to suit our style, our personas and reflect who we are.

This happens sometimes at a subconscious level; we may not even realize we reflect so much of ourselves as we pick out the things we like and appeal to us. But it happens when we are driven to customize. We customize our personal spaces and decorate with an individual mindset. Personalization is specific to us, and we can only do that with avatars, outfits, personal space decor, the digital frames images, the club billboards, and — for the first time ever — with some furniture items, via the Game Mechanics canvas chairs.

The ability to write your own name or message on an item has been almost non-existent so far. And this is a powerful feature which becomes very useful and also very personal. But this level of interactive changes hasn’t been explored much. Since my first companion, I have been clamoring for the ability to change the pet’s name. I would love to be able to change Binx’s name to Jassy, after my own real life pet. Or just have the ability to name my dinosaurs anything I want. We can refer to them as any name we want, but the importance of personalization is that others see them and recognize them as ours.

When I volunteered in animal shelters, rarely did the people adopting a rescued animal ever keep the name given to them at the shelter. Even my own pets have never held on to a shelter-name, but as soon as they became my pets I named them something meaningful to me. That usually bonds a pet even further to you, and they become more yours and less like some stranger living in your home.

You need look no further than the Dolphy races, where you can name up to three Dolphys and have them seen in the racing ring by any Home users participating. Many of us there have taken that opportunity to pick a name with something meaningful or symbolic to us. If that feature were available for personal spaces it would make them even more our property. It wouldn’t be the Jam Games RaceOn Garage; it would be Bonzo’s Garage. It wouldn’t be the Sunset Yacht, it would be the S.S. Bonzo. Although, with my nerdiness it would probably be the U.S.S. Enterprise.

That is really what makes personalization important: what it means to us more than what it actually says. That is also what makes it so much more valuable because we have that opportunity to make it our own.  The canvas chairs from Game Mechanics look simple — they aren’t overly designed or complicated in comparison to other furniture items in Home — but the deceptively simple feature of letting us name them, individualize them makes it truly unique and exceptional as far as what is offered in Home.

Consider how often we really see this in real life. Vanity plates, engravings, embroidery, silk screening – anything and everything that can be personalized is personalized. When I worked in marketing, we distributed catalogs with some pages showing items which could be personalized. We only sent them to people on our mailing list, so we had a database to work from. It didn’t take that much more to personalize the catalog images, company Christmas Cards, or promotional advertising cards with the individual’s name. But the response generated by that simple customization to the individual client was invaluable.

Although it doesn’t take that much more effort when working off a database, it deceptively gives a client a sense of personalization. “You made this for me!” Not for nameless client, current resident, not for account number, but for Nathan. In our modern society, particularly in America, we are more identified by a number, be it a social security number, license or identification card number, than a name. But we don’t call each other by those identifiers, because a name is what we learn first, and numbers dehumanize us.

You can argue that numbers and letters are just symbols, but names are important to us. Many people can share the same first and last name, but it doesn’t take away from our individual identity to the people we connect with and how we see ourselves and identify ourselves to others. This level of personalization is something I hope we see more of.

While more options to customize items have been offered, very few personalization options still exist. You can name your Dolphy, or use giant letters to spell out anything you want in a personal space but there’s not much for which you can chose a name or label other than the Game Mechanics canvas chairs.

So what will the future of personalization hold? That remains to be seen. But I personally love the canvas chairs for that feature alone, and look forward to more of these features being available in more items. A scrolling text sign with a personalized message for example, a desktop identification plaque, a scrolling text t-shirt or wearable item. A small touch which can go a very long way towards making a virtual item a little bit more personal.

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2 Responses to “Game Mechanics, and the Value of Personalization”

1. deuce_for2 says:

   January 7, 2013 at 8:51 am

   What you are talking about is what we have been working on as a premise: people want to personlize their stuff. I have no idea if other developers will follow suit, but we have a few more coming. I hope we live up to the standard you put forth here.

   A very nice article about something we think is really important as well. And wondered if anyone else noticed!

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