The Mysterious Wheelbarrow
by SealWyf, HSM editor
What made the cloven prints in the soft mud under the window? What is the meaning of the scrawled numbers beneath the tattered wallpaper? Who is the man standing beside your late mother in the faded photo that was torn across, then carefully mended and hidden in her lingerie drawer?
There’s nothing like a mystery to set the imagination in gear. Even now, you are probably creating stories for the clues in the paragraph above, explanations that are more exciting than than “a stray goat”, “the builder’s wall measurements”, and “the boyfriend she gave up to marry your father.” A mystery promises excitement. It demands a payoff in revelations and adventure.
That’s why one of the most effective ways to create buzz for a movie is to create minimalist posters and teaser-trailers: a blurred, ambiguous image, a few words, a date — just enough to get our imaginations working. We may be disappointed when we finally see the film, but at least we had the fun of speculation.
Lockwood, canny developers that they are, has adopted the “minimal movie poster” approach to publicize the impending arrival of… something. The image appeared on their Facebook wall on December 6. As an image, it’s a poor one — the equivalent of a snapshot that cuts off the head of your aunt standing in front of the Grand Canyon. But as a teaser, it’s pure genius.
We see a rusty wheelbarrow leaning against a tree in the far right foreground. Sparse grass covers the hard-packed earth. A horse and rider stand mostly out of the frame. We see the legs of the horse (it is brown and white, a Paint), but the rider is shown only in the cast shadow. The text, in the bottom right near the wheelbarrow, reads “2013”.
So, something is coming this year. Probably not all that far away. It could be next week, or it could be longer. And it involves horses with riders. It’s very unlikely that it’s another prop horse — that wouldn’t justify a teaser campaign. And Lockwood has been experimenting with rideable animals, most recently the truly stunning Maliki the Lion. There is a huge pent-up demand for horse locomotions in Home. We know that Lockwood has a talent for identifying demand and meeting it, with innovative, well-crafted products. Given all this, I think a rideable horse locomotion is pretty much a given, and it’s probably coming in January. And, indeed this has been verified by Lockwood in an interview; there will be horse mounts in January, and a public space “designed for galloping around in.” Epic news — I’m very much looking forward to seeing it.
Farmville horse
But what else might be going on here? Was a horse so far beyond a lion that its release date had to be pushed past Christmas? There’s an arms race going on among the developers — we see it in the dueling wings and custom dance locomotions. The first developer to bring out a horse will make a killing. So what’s the holdup? If it were simply a horse, wouldn’t it be out by now?
Or could there actually be some meaning to that rusty wheelbarrow?
Back in the early days of console gaming, when there were no numbers attached to PlayStations, I was moderately addicted to a little game called Monster Rancher. Like many games of that kind, it was a port from the Japanese version. You collected monsters and cross-bred them, trained them to fight, and them took them into town to compete in the local arena. Since this was before the PSN, your rivals were either AI creatures, or ones loaded from memory cards by your real-life friends. I only played against the AI, but I still found the game deeply engaging. At one point, I was even writing fan fiction about it.
Fast-forward to the social media age, where everyone is playing Facebook games like Farmville. Then take a side trip to your local game arcade, and watch enthusiastic players breeding and racing virtual horses in Sega’s multiplayer game, Derby Owners Club. A mag card with the data for a prize-winning horse fetches a good price on eBay. And now take a look at Home, and the popular Dolphy Races. Drop by the HGL (Home-Grown Labs) space, where players customize monsters for gladiatorial competitions. Do you start to sense a pattern?
Derby Owners Club
A “farm game” in a private space has been one of frequent requests of Home users. We dream of breeding and training animals, then racing them against other users’ creations for fame and prizes. The demand is there. What has been missing is the technology.
But technology has been advancing. We can now do things in Home we never dreamed possible. Many of the necessary parts are already in place — user-modifiable spaces such as Blueprint:Home, Home Tycoon and FUBAR. Trainable AI creatures in the Dolphy races and HGL. Rideable animals, in the form of big cats and dragons. Social interactions and hooks into a larger game-oriented world in FUBAR, Avalon Keep, and Home Tycoon.
Where would you find a wheelbarrow, in connection with horses? In a stable, of course. And that’s my guess — or perhaps only my fond hope. We’re getting a stable.
If that happens, heaven help my PSN card budget!
Because what this kind of game does best, in venues as diverse as Facebook and “Dave & Buster’s”, is raise money. You would buy the basic stable apartment — or maybe it would be free, but you would buy upgrades. Either strategy would work, although I would personally recommend the “freemium” model: the basic stable and one horse are free. But that’s just the beginning.
Basic free game-play usually doesn’t get you far. You can train your entry-level horse, but he’s not going to win many races. So you’ll need to upgrade him — high-quality feed, training equipment, you name it. Some of it you can win, but others will cost cash, or cash filtered though “Stable Bucks” tokens. And, since this is Lockwood, some upgrades would only be available on the Gift Machine.
So you train your horse, and take him to the races. And there you can win prizes. Perhaps some of the prizes would be tokens that can be exchanged for more upgrades. That’s how I would do it. But some things must always be purchased. Including new horses. Which you can train, or use for breeding stock, producing new foals you can raise and train and race. Or you can breed your horse with the horses of your friends, and give them some of the resulting foals.
Meanwhile, you are decorating your “Stable” apartment, and the adjacent owner’s quarters. That means you are winning or buying furniture. More money, from us to the developers.
Mysterious wheelbarrows
I may be totally wrong on this. This is a lot of deduction from one rusty wheelbarrow. Even Sherlock Holmes would roll his eyes, and urge me to keep it “elementary”. So, maybe I’m deranged about the stable. Such things may still be beyond the capacity of Home.
But, if they’re not, this should totally happen. Because I want one. And so do most of my friends, especially the ones who play Farmville and Harvest Moon and collect Pokemons for competitions. We totally want this as soon as it’s technically possible. And we’ll be happy to spend money on it. That’s a promise.
But until that happens, we’ll enjoy the horses. Rideable horses in Home will be pure win. I know I’m going to want several.
Even without an associated wheelbarrow.
January 2nd, 2013 by SealWyf_ | 4 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
Great article as always Seal. A few weeks ago I saw a tweet of the pic with the tweet saying ” You Like Wheelbarrows, Right? ” I responded to the tweet saying “I think they are teasing us notice the shadow of rider on horse” Lockwood responded in one word “BINGO”
The horses that we could ride would be nice but I’m really looking forward to the wheelbarrows in which we could push someone else around.
Forget the horse races! I’m a waiting for the wheelbarrow races! (Insert very, very, very rare Jan and Dean song Wheelbarrow City here. Click this X for video.)
Two-person locomotions. That could really be interesting.