Home-less: A Possibility
by Pheonix, HSM team writer
Wikipedia defines a Home as: a place of residence or refuge. [1] When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can live and store personal property.
It further states: It is generally a place to provide safety and is used as a center from which people or animals base their daily activities.
The Free Dictionary states: A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it.
PlayStation’s Home is, by definition, a home.
Residency
For four years, Home has been a place of social gathering, a residence, and yes, a refuge for many. Millions of people live there and play there. They have apartments and personal belongings, pets and friends, some like me even have family on Home. No, not the kind of “fam” some join in Home, but real blood family. Some of us get up every day and turn on the PS3 before we go to school or work. Some of us are on Home late into the night in all four regions. Home is where we spend our free time and some of our work time.
Home has been where some have meet the first friends they truly ever had. Some have met the best friends they will ever have, and still some have met more than a friend. Some now have lives joined to others they first met in Home.
In its four years, Home has changed lives. It has grown from its first steps in open beta as a place for gamers to hang out before a game, to more than just a gaming community. Home has several online magazines and blogs dedicated to it and its residents.
Some compare Home to Second Life; having experienced both, I can tell you there are more than just surface differences. Though Home is a social platform, as are Second Life and Blue Mars, Imvu, and Kaneva, it is vastly different. Yes, all are online and offer the opportunity to shape your own experience and world as you see fit. All offer housing and pets, clothing, the possibility of romance and some offer luxury items like cars, planes, and lots of bling!
Home is only found on the PS3 console, while the others are computer online worlds. It is, I would say, a bonus from Sony and the PS3. Given all that Home is for some, what would you do if you woke up tomorrow and Home was over?
The End of the Road
What would you do if you woke up tomorrow, turned on your PS3, and got this message?
Thank you for your patronage. Home has come to the end of the road and is offline permanently.
The login prompt is gone. The Home icon is gone. The dashboard has no sign of there ever having been a Home icon at all.What would your first thought be? What would you miss? Is that too drastic a thought?
Many people believe the PS4 will spell the end for Home. The rumor is that it will bring a new way of gaming, with no place for Home. Will Sony see a need for this type of gaming platform anymore? Rumors abound about the power and ability of the new game console behemoth, which will include cloud streaming — another game changer for Sony if it’s true.
What if we were given a date and time for Home to sign off permanently? Would you make plans to attend a final party in Home? Would you throw an end of Home party yourself, like a 2012 End of Days party?
But how much of your day would you get back without Home?
Offline
I thought back to April of 2011, when Home went down for 25 days. I had just started my exploration of Home in March of that year. I wasn’t a long timer, yet it changed my days. I was checking every day in the beginning for news. I had met new friends and had not gotten any information on how to contact them other than Home, before it went offline. When it seemed as though it wasn’t certain to come back, I started looking for something to do during those hours I was online.
It felt as if I had been on Home for years. To tell the truth, I seriously had to think of something else to do to occupy my time. I started reading blogs for any information. Most of the information was incorrect, because little was being said by Sony officially, a bit like now. That’s when I discovered AlphaZone 4 and MyPSHome. I became what I lovingly called a PSN-a-holic; I wanted to talk to others in my situation. I figured if it was gone for good, I was glad I hadn’t been on long. Those that had been on Home from the beginning — how many hours of their time had they gotten back in the offline fiasco? How did they feel? How were they spending that new-found time?
Home-less
We have been back on Home since May 13, 2011. If it goes offline for good, what will you feel? My time spent in Home has changed. I’m not there nearly as often now, but I’ll feel it. With the 2011 outage there was uncertainty and hope that it would be fixed and come back up. Now we have the same uncertainty about Home’s longevity. Would you even continue to play, if you knew it was ending soon?
Speaking for myself, I would continue to play in Home all the way till the end. This time I have the means of staying in contact with my friends, so that part of what I’ll miss will change little. Home is more for me than just a game. But what it is, exactly, is hard to put into words. Home is definitely something more than I think Sony had in mind when Home was conceived. It has a life of its own, in the millions of lives of we who use it. Like a real-world home, it is a shelter. If and when Home ceases to be, it will leave a new kind of homeless people — ones that will remember a time when they were part of something that could not be pigeon-holed or categorized.
Many of Home’s homeless will take shelter in the other virtual places I mentioned. Many will refuse at first, holding out hope that Home will return as before. Still, some believe it won’t end after all. Just as 2012 was not the end of the world, some in and out of Home believe the PS4 won’t mean the end for Home.
But what will? If not the PS4, then something else. Someday, Home will end. Nothing lasts forever.
The Bottom Line
Because you know, there really is no place like Home! Personally, I believe the bottom line will determine the future of Home. If Home is a money pit, it will come to an end. Why would Sony or any other company keep throwing money away?
Speaking of other companies, what will happen to Home’s developers? It’s true that many of them develop more than just Home content. From what I know of some of them, they too will miss Home, should it come to an end. Their experience with Home is unique, as is everyone in Home.
Whatever else we can or can’t say about the end of Home, we know it will be missed.
January 17th, 2013 by Phoenix | 4 comments
Phoenix writes poetry and is a photography enthusiast, along with writing for HomeStation Magazine. She is currently studying for a BFA in Creative Writing and BA with concentration in Photography. psn ID phoenixstorm21
youtube.com/user/phoenixstorm21
Digital Leisure make a lot of stuff outside of Home, as do Juggernaut and Hellfire, quite a few in fact. But that’s the business side of it, what will matter the most is those who “live” there. Like lil old me! I know where I’d go firstly if Home was to finish at the PS3; games. Just yesterday while Hone was offline I decided to go back to Skyrim for a bit. I realised I still hadn’t gone as deep as I’d always wanted to with my Alchemy so I spent most of the morning mixing potions and poisons, just experimenting in my little room if magics…
After nearly 500 hours of being in that world and I STILL leveled up just from tinkering around! I know, you wanna know what this has to do with Home? It has ZERO to do with Home! I guess what I’m saying is, although I love to socialize and meet new people, I also love whittling away the hours exploring the rich worlds of single player games all on my lonesome.
I will definitely miss Home *when* it goes, but I also feel I’ve been neglecting the real reason I got a PS3 for quite a few years because of it. Let’s just hope it continues on the PS4 for now, this sand around my head is cool and comfortable lol
With elder scrolls online coming, im a fairly active member of imvu having created my own public space, had a very good gaming social life on gta, rdr and midnight club. With my life outside the ps3 as well. Id mourn home going but im not reliant on it. Me and my online friends had a back up before the outage anyway, knowing how fragile the ps network is. through the wonders of social media we met up on imvu, explored second life now that was funny and weird and joined up in forum chat rooms. If anyone is that reliant on Home or PSN then id suggest get a back up plan. And if anyone is that addicted to home that seriously, then you need to get out into the bigger virtual world and see whats out there. Home isnt everything, and of course do it without damaging reality of course. Rejoice youve been able to be involved. and enjoy the good times
Hopefully they`ll continue to support Home when the PS4 arrives. After all the PS2 has only just been fazed out, why stop a great service like Home just because a new console comes out.
All that will happen is the PS3 will be reduced in price giving a much wider audience a chance to purchase it. As long as theirs the companies to produce the content and the users to purchase I dont see a reason for it to stop.
I truly don’t see it being more as “when Home finally goes offline” but more like “when Home expands”.
Even more so, Home has become a overwhelming successful social network on a gaming console.
I just don’t really see this as “what if…” or “when it will…”
I just see it expanding sometime soon.