Dangerous Days
by FEMAELSTROM, HSM team writer
As I sit here and type this, I am watching a little circle go round and round that says “WWW”. It came up because I bought something that then caused my PS3 to kick me off of Home. It took some three unsuccessful attempts to re-enter Home, until I came to the screen I sit at now. As I watch, I see many friends jumping on and offline, in and out of Home. At present, I am “verifying purchased content”. This is quite arduous as I have a lot of stuff I have collected and bought over my stay in Home. This is an issue again, and as a writer, the last thing I want or should be given is time to chew the cud of any issues with Home.
Yes, this is yet another issue that we, the residents of Home have to endure. It seems that with each passing day, there is something new to grit our teeth over, grind our collective jaws about and brace our eyes for. First, let us establish what makes these days so difficult. Home has always had some quirks in it. Deep down, it is still software, but of recent, the bad days started after the update 1.75.
We were immediately faced with issues that were not there before. People were loading in with the wrong gender in default clothing. Others, if not most people, had their… well everything tossed around like a criminal had been looking for diamonds in our inventories. People lost things like games or standings. One guy I know lost his dolphy racing game and dolphys — a sport he loved to play. On the heels of the hurricane-like disaster that swept through Home, came another update after several emergency offline periods.
The sign post ahead reads…
There seems to be a large increase in content that is somehow glitchy or faulty in one manner or another. Herein I will not list names, but there are many times that an item comes out and the user is disappointed or feels that they did not get what they paid for. Of the people that I have spoken to or read about in the forums, this is a sentiment that needs to reduce in size before it overwhelms Home.
Now the forums are running rampant with the talk of bullying and “freezer” groups that have the sole intention of freezing public places in the hopes of damaging users’ hardware. These two elements alone are enough to keep the cautious and wary in the private places, which is a great disadvantage to developers like Peakvox, Juggernaut, and nDreams. Let’s face it, if we the Homebodies are scared to go out, how can we give any public space the attention they want, need or deserve?
Recently there was another update, 1.8, and that was described as having a list of features that are in the works, but not available. We, as the paying public, need far more help and far better policing from Sony, in Home moderators and technology. Even to the point of publicly making it known that people are banned, if just to calm the masses.
We want to “Make. Believe”, not make believe.
There have been reports that people are cheating on the leader boards in games that others pay money for in terms of the premium items. This is offensive to those that spend money to play legitimately, and want the fun of playing and getting any free items as those that cheat and “hack” their way to the top, do so over the dollars of those that truly paid.
Recently Sony dropped the price of its PS3, so that means that there is the possibility of more and more people entering Home. This in and of itself is a great thing, but that also ramps up the number of trolls and bullies that may enter into Home. There have been tons of articles here in this very magazine about the ills of trolls, but that never ends, and now “fams” are running around virtual landscape possibly doing damage to people’s hardware, and at very least, but certainly a bad thing, bullying people.
If the bullying and the trolling are not reined in somehow, people will turn from Home as it risks becoming too hostile a place to go to, considering that it’s free to begin with and that it become a place that people have bad feelings and memories of.
One note to ponder: in an ever-growing social environment, in our lives away from Home, there is a growing movement to stop bullying of any kind. Bullying is not nor will ever be acceptable. The act of hurting or harming or threatening anybody for any reason is unacceptable, and for those who refrain, it is one of the reasons we are better than animals that act on instinct. Even animals don’t bully. Sony has to be more socially aware and active so as to not let this scourge take a strong root here in Home.
When the gangs and bad people take over.
The people that are responsible and act in socially acceptable ways, for the most part are the ones who have a more fluid income and can buy the many goods and wares that are put out by developers that want to make money in this virtual environment.
In a land where I cannot get a berth on a pirate ship because people have clanned up, or a woman cannot go out in public with out having some (far too) aggressive troll or bully type his sexual fantasies to her and then call her any vile name for refusal, there should be red flags that tell Sony that things have to change to make this a place where the evil and cruel do not win, and that those who are holding off spending money because they are afraid they won’t be in Home much longer, can find some comfort and safety.
Now, let us establish what makes these days so great.
We need far more of this.
Home is still a great place. This is a land full of (still) wonderful people and has a lot of great games and beautiful environments to wander through. There are still great amounts of thing to buy and to have plenty of fun with, and once things like freezers and leader board hackers, as well as trolls and bullies are dealt with, this is a virtual utopia that offers a vast amount of fun for free, and there are wondrous things to do once one spends some money too.
Home can be so much to so many people. For some it is a refuge from the real world, and the issues that vex so many there. For others it is a place to freely express themselves and have fun being as free as this environment allows. Then there are those that have found or made things for themselves to do. Some are involved with decorating clubs or machinima film making, fashion clubs or reward hunting.
There are just so many things to do, that once Home is cleaned and the powers that be take the responsibility they should, and clean this paradise (hopefully not ‘lost’) of the trolls, bullies, freezers and cheaters, it will be amazing to have a Home that is a restored community, like many have done in the real world, by eliminating the gangs and bullies. Let’s make these dangerous days, things of the past.
May 18th, 2013 by FEMAELSTROM | 5 comments
FEMAELSTROM came to Home in June 2011 and never wanted to leave, even at weekly maintenance when he usually gets booted. The sand box environment appeals to the explorer in him and often is out and about as he ‘geeks’ out dressed like some sort of sci-fi character, while he people watches in popular public spaces. An artist and writer, FEMAELSTROM loves making friends and meeting people. He loves sci-fi and decorating Home estates and loves to respond “here” when people ask “where are you from?” in public places.
Share
| Tweet |
I think trolling/bullying is a problem exlusive to Home. But by it’s nature Home is just the perfect place for them.
Recently I had been a victim of a very persistent bully. To the point I almost left Home for good. Our club was falling apart as Nice people don’t have interest in drama and trouble. There is many other things to do with our PS3 than enduring that.
After 5 weeks of this I exanged message with the digital community moderator head… To be told they need a lot of evidences and there wasn’t anything wrong in the report… That was the final blow! I knew what I reported. There was more than enough.
There is a serious lack of moderation and worst, a lack of courage to apply sanctions.
In my experience if the bullies would had been sanction after the 1st week, even just a week ban. The problem would probably had stop there. We are told Home is a PG-13 place… make it!
When you make a report about someone the definitions of what they are doing is very confining. Sometimes what is going on isn’t in the short little descriptions and you have to use the “other” at the end, which really doesn’t help a moderator see what is going on. There should at least be an option at the bottom of the report screen to write something down for them to describe what was going on, I think this would not only help the victim, but also the moderator as it would give them something to filter the text they are reading through.
I had someone walk up to me in the casino recently and when I wasn’t interested in his attentions he told me my PS3 would be destroyed because he was going to hack me. Now though I didn’t think he was truly capable of this, it was a bit of a scare, yet there wasn’t any choice listed in the list of things to use for that. I used “other” and hoped that the moderator saw what I did.
I even told the person that threatening people with hacking was a banning offense (though it isn’t really listed), but he didn’t seem to care.
A small area to type a message into would help immensely.
Good article Strom, these things needed to be said.
Bullies and trolls on Home are Homes version of domestic violence and terrorism. We all can agree that we don’t enjoy that aspect of Home. But what can really be done? Are we saying that Sony should spend more to hire more mods basically expanding the police force? Sounds good at face value and I am not saying that isn’t the right plan of action and it probably would help alot… but…
A few years ago my husband and I went to Mexico. We stayed at a beautiful resort and everything was so beautiful and peaceful. This was in stark contrast to the drive from the airport to the resort. About every 200 yards in the median of the roadway was a military dressed police man with full auto machine guns over both shoulders. Even once we got to the resort I noticed every access point to gain entry had at lest one if not more oddly bulky dressed resort employee standing around eyeing everyone that passed by. This was both comforting and alarming at the same time.
The ignore feature is awesome but it is also very much like the big drug companies… it treats the symptoms but is not a cure.
Maybe it has come to the point that if we want to live our Home lives with the freedom of a gated community, we should all under go back ground checks… some way of proving we are here to contribute not distract… on the other hand… much like the Mexico resort and the gated community, how free are we if we live behind fences.
Great article Stromy!
I don’t know how to fix it… it used to overwhelm me when I was new to Home… now I can deal with it better having the sure footing of experience, the fast legs of knowledge and the well rehearsed witty come backs much like a comedian that plays bad clubs and is hair triggered for the inevitable heckling.
Will it take a police state to fix this? Or background checks to get into the Home owners association? Or are we doomed to have to evolve and grow even thicker skins? I don’t like any of those options. I have nothing to hide! I can easily pass any background check…. I say that but I did once get a warning about spamming when I never have spammed.
I think the ideal fix sadly is so far fetch that it has no realistic hope… and it also could cause world peace… SELF ACCOUNTABILITY… but the only way that can work is that everyone values honor. It is those that don’t value honor that cause the problems and I see no way of imposing honor on the honorless.
In short… all I just said was I agree and don’t know how to fix it.
In Second Life, you can report an incident, but very little can or will be done about it. Sure, we set up security orbs or have guard pets (Dogs, Tigers, etc) around our ‘Homes’ there to eject people we don’t know turning up on our private sims (Our private area)
We very much have to police ourselves and the same can be said of Playstation Home.
This article got me thinking about real life vs. Home life. I so agree with you about the painfully slow load times lately. I also thought I dodged the 1.75 inventory bullet only to find it happened to me as well. I have also been hearing lots of complaints about buying glitchy product from big name developers lately, and I guess this is all happens in real life as well. However,we play Home to get away from the problems of real life, so when it gets to close to real world frustration, people start getting mad.
As far as Trolls go this is only a problem in Home as to the extent that only in places like Home, can a troll be anonymous. In the real world, they would get their ass kicked. Maybe we need some new actions like “Troll Judo Flip” It would be fun and satisfying!
Great article Strom!