Room For Improvement: the Diamond Beach Mansion
by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor-in-Chief
At times, it has seemed like this publication is the only one which stood in defense of SCEA’s approach to PlayStation Home. A good example of this would be the original Mansion estate’s deployment, which was Sony’s hamfisted attempt at creating a premium consumer tier in Home. It’s not so much that we agreed with Sony’s marketing tactics — we didn’t then, and we don’t now — but the sheer amount of how-dare-yous and thou-shalt-not invective that was screamed at SCEA from people who knew better, especially those who frankly abused their position as MVPs in the process, was simply staggering.
“Lines were drawn,” Jersquall observed over on the Sony forum. And he was right. Friendships broke over the Mansion. The level of dialogue turned into bitter caps-locked diatribes which created resentments that simmer to this day. Even here at HSM, we lost contributors and had to ban some notable people from the forum because they just couldn’t behave like adults. Something about the Mansion — more specifically, the ideology behind it — divided people. It was the first time that Sony, as the platform provider, openly moved to monetize Home by creating an artificial class divide.
It was a crass and tasteless move, handled with very little grasp of behavioral economics. Or, as extremetech.com pointed out in this article, “Home always had good ideas, but never quite found footing — mainly because a marketing team probably shouldn’t make an MMO.”
And we supported it.
No, we didn’t support the Mansion itself, or the marketing tactics behind it (in fact, we roundly condemned them): we supported Sony’s right to try to make a buck.
Because here’s a counter-argument to all the whining: Sony gave away the house for years to build up a large enough consumer base to make Home a self-sustaining animal. Free rewards, free events, free games like Xi — all of this came at a cost, supporting a concept that was championed by a guy who defected and went to work for the competition, and in the process creating a horrible sense of entitlement to free stuff. It should be blatantly obvious to anyone with two brain cells (which is one more than some of the children on that forum) that the profit margins for Home are far, far narrower than is commonly believed. And if Sony needs to make some numbers to keep the lights turned on, then by God, they’ve earned the right to do so.
And what the hell: the Mansion did well.
It was thus inevitable that a sequel would arise, to perpetuate and expand upon the “Exclusives” concept and class system generated to drive sales. Mind you, it couldn’t be released too soon after the original Mansion — Sony perhaps learned its lesson from those godawful gemstone suits, none of which apparently having performed as well as the original Gold Suit. Success is as much timing as it is product.
So now we have the Diamond Beach Mansion.
Oh, dear.
By now you’ve doubtlessly had a chance to check out the new Mansion. We deliberately held off on our coverage for a bit while everyone else jumped in on the “first!” bandwagon — because, honestly, it’s just gotten tiresome watching the same gaggle of glorified copypasta mavens racing to get their URL up before everyone else — so we’re not going to bore you with a technical rundown of what the space offers and is promoted to offer. Because the reality is that we as human beings make buying decisions very, very quickly — read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink if you want to immerse yourself on this topic — and this new Mansion has some astonishing flaws in its diamond.
Note the waterline. Not straight.
First off, let’s start with the sand. It’s a beach estate, and “beach” is in the estate’s title, so you’d expect the beach to be an inviting, lovingly rendered environment that welcomes you and makes you feel like Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in Martinique. Instead, you are presented with a painted, smooth surface in which the tile pattern is clearly visible and the light reflection makes it look like you’re sunbathing on a kitchen countertop. I have been on the beaches of Florida, California, and Hawaii – I know what those beaches look like. This doesn’t look like any of these. This looks like Caesarstone from a prefab housing subdivision in Henderson, Nevada — you know, the one where they watch trendy TV shows and bleach their teeth and all drive mid-range Audis from four years ago.
It gets worse.
The water line is just that: a straight line. I don’t care if you’re trying to duplicate slack-tide conditions on the leeward side of a Caribbean island during a day that’s so still that the Earth stopped spinning: that water line looks horrifically bad. And while there’s some decent water shaders when viewed from above at oblique angles, rotating the camera down to underneath sea level just absolutely shatters any sense of realism. Oceans should not disappear when viewed from underneath. Not in Home 2013.
(What’s weird is that the NPC in the speedboat at the dock has all the classic hallmark art design of a Heavy Water NPC, which makes me wonder if this space was developed by D2O on contract for SCEA. But D2O is known for having very richly-textured designs; they’ve even staked their fortunes on a Unity-based level editor. So why does this place look so…unfinished?)
Then we get to the diurnal controls. Everyone wants diurnal controls in a Home estate, right? Shall we rewind the clock to one month ago, and reminisce about how LOOT was excoriated for not introducing diurnal controls to the Hollywood Hills estate? And their defense was that the lighting would look absolutely terrible if they did, because there just isn’t enough memory in a Home scene to make a dynamic lighting scheme look as good as a bespoke one?
LOOT can now thank SCEA for proving their point for them. The lighting at Diamond Beach Mansion looks like crap.
Oh sure, you can change the “time.” And it sort of looks like nighttime, in the same way that pulling the curtains closed in your bedroom when it’s noon outside sort of makes it feel like it’s dark outside. The diurnal controls in this scene actually take the user out of the illusion of being immersed in a richly-detailed environment, because the lighting just falls flat for every single option on that controller.
Then we get inside the house. There’s a TV that plays, as far as we can tell, Sony gaming propaganda. After years of being spoiled by the vastly superior EOD interface, this feels about as trendy as a cathode-ray tube in a room full of 4K displays. Novel, sure, but not what you’d ultimately choose. And while there are tons of interactive features — cabinetry, stoves, doors, bathroom sinks, etc. — interactivity with them only appears on the local user’s screen, not the remote user’s screen.
Brilliant.
Sony consumer market research hard at work.
Honestly, you know what this feels like? I get the overwhelming impression that because everything got shoehorned into this space (and all the other spaces attached to it which have yet to be released for sale), they ran out of memory and had to start cutting corners. Because that’s the only thing I can think of that would explain why this estate looks as unfinished as it does. And this brings me to a larger point: at HSM we’ve debated over the years about what actually sells virtual real estate — aesthetics or technical whizbangery. You get the sense that Sony, with the Diamond Beach Mansion, took bullet-point notes of every requested technical feature every user ever requested, dumped it all into a scene, slapped an “exclusive” label on it and trotted out Magnus’ annoyingly white boy “gangsta” voice to try to sell it. And, in so doing, they completely overlooked the behavioral motives behind buying a private scene to begin with.
The problem with Sony’s attempts at selling luxury is twofold: that it’s being created and marketed by people who have no true concept of the enculturation that goes with real luxury and wealth, and that Sony actually believes its best source of revenue for such a broad — and, yes, divisive — marketing initiative are from people who make the cast of Jersey Shore look tasteful and sophisticated. I mean, come on, a white lion wearing bling anklets? Really?
This is why Lockwood can get away with selling ten-dollar estates that have practically no special functionality built into them, whereas SCEA has gone completely in the wrong direction by trying to garnish a turd with rhinestones: Lockwood simply understands the understated aesthetic elegance that goes with true luxury, while SCEA thinks “MTV Cribs” is the right answer. And I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hang out in a neighborhood full of MTV cribs. You can throw all the bling and special goodies and exclusive access you want at it; the reality is that I just don’t want to be there.
It’s the same reason why a Cadillac CTS-V will simply never be in the same tier as the European vehicles it uses as its performance benchmarks. You are told Cadillac is a luxury brand. You are shown the spreadsheet with all the performance numbers. And yet you look at it and you just don’t want to be seen behind the wheel of it. You’d much rather be in an old E-type Jag, because while the Cadillac might get you into White’s in London, you’ll never be able to live down the look of barely-concealed disdain on the valet’s face.
I’m sure there’s a market for the Diamond Beach Mansion, and HomeStation will continue to defend SCEA’s right to make money, simply because we thoroughly despise the persistent gaggle of whiny self-entitled brats on the forum who think SCEA is a charity and everything in Home should be free. But this is a no-sale for me, personally. If nothing else, it has committed the cardinal sin of looking and feeling worse than its predecessor, and thus I find myself in the awkward position of recommending the original Mansion over this one. Which, I suppose, is a bit like recommending airline food over hospital food.
Bleh.
- Someone will buy it
- Beach texture is poor
- Artificially false water line
- Ocean disappears when viewed from underneath
- Remote user does not see interactivity elements when triggered
- Gauche
July 29th, 2013 by Terra_Cide | 8 comments
Terra _Cide is the former Community Manager for Lockwood Publishing and Editor Emeritus for HomeStation Magazine.
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What no mention of the albino lion diamond poop box and the Fish Tank Experience? Well I guess 1 is as low as you can go.
The sad part is as we have seen, there is no accounting for taste in Home. The Konami Glow Stick Apt dominated the Top 20. So even spaces that make me woozy sell well.
I laughed so hard reading this I snorted. It’s funny because it’s true. Great article!
As soon as the news broke ( basically the open house got broken in to) home sites and users were falling over themselves to review it and put it on you tube. Reason being it will sell. It will get hits on you tube and it will get the sites extra visitors. Doesnt matter how bad it is, it’s got rewards and exclusive stuff attached. It is the marquee the pinnacle of home stuff to have, making the owner feel as high in the social standing of home they can get. Ultimately it’s what drives social media, if users aren’t selling they souls for likes or retweets. In home it’s about exclusive rewards, exclusive items and a bit of good old I’m better than you
Sony has stepped back from the content side of things for a while now, so this space came as a surprise to me. One one hand it’s great they are releasing content again. On the other, this space stinks. They lost me at all the door that open right through your avatar. I can’t wait for the top 20 to come out next week and see how how this sold.
There are so many examples of how to do a space right, the Dream Island comes to mind. To release a product that will most certainly be compared to those at the level the Diamond Beach is, makes you scratch you head.
Welcome back to making personal spaces Sony we missed you…but,uh…things have changed a bit since you were gone!
Things have changed. I am not there to clean it up before it goes out.
The Mansion campaign did not work on me because I was turned off by the whole Exclusive/Elite concept. A fifteen dollar purchase does not buy one exclusivity or an elite status in my book. Not that I see much value in those labels anyway, especially in the context of Home. I was also appalled at the Mansion perks that SCEA was determined to place in unrelated spaces. Why should anyone receive an incomplete personal space just because they don’t want the Mansion? I refused to buy the Mansion or any of those spaces.
Still, with all regards to garish style and bad taste aside, the Mansion is a nicely detailed set of spaces. The sections are well designed, at least. The Diamond Beach place, on the other hand, is a total turd sandwich that will only appeal to those with the misguided need to feel elite on Home and the compulsive buyers who collect every space.
Diamond Beach compares so unfavourably with spaces from Lockwood, Loot and Granzella that SCEA should be ashamed to even sell it.
Here’s the most damning observation that I’ve read about the space. When the pre-release images and videos began to leak out, everyone assumed that it was an unfinished space that had been sitting on a virtual shelf for years and was never intended to see the light of day. Then two weeks later…there it is in Estates selling for $15. And there you have it.
I find myself wondering what kind of success a developer would have creating a personal space that was a blatant parody of the Mansions.
John mentioned the diamond litter box. Bingo! I have no idea what that thing was supposed to be, but yes, that is exactly what it looks like. That’s the kind of detail that would be included in my proposed “I’m Richer Than You, Dude!” space — features that are so completely over the top that everyone gets that it’s a joke.
You might argue that’s what Sony was attempting with “Diamond Beach”, which in many ways feels like a Mansion parody. But I suspect it was a serious attempt to snare the bling market, not a send-up of it. It’s a pity, really. Just a little more push would have sent it into hilarious territory.
Would a parody space sell? Would it even make it past Sony’s approval process? Perhaps — we have had some very odd content approved recently. Sony may have developed a sense of humor, or at least a sense that laughs can be marketed.
Would I buy one? It’s hard to say. But if it tickled my fancy, I might well do so.
As I’ve said in other places before, this space is an unfinished mess. But it’s also a perfect example of the half-baked flotsam that’s pushed out there for gamers. This is about the only industry that gets away with this kind of conduct but the REALLY stupid thing about all of this is that there are still people out there willing to pay for this stuff.
Maybe it’s a case of just not being able to ‘see’ quality?
Maybe whoever buys this can’t (or won’t) read anything that might help them make an informed purchase?
Maybe this is only for the “space collectors” in Home?
Unfortunately gamers have been talking with their wallets for a long time now, and it seems the majority of us couldn’t tell a good deal if it ran over one of us in Dell Boy’s Reliant Robin. Whoever puts $15 on this thing though deserves to have the rest of their money rudely wrestled from their hipster man-bag, since they clearly have more dollars than connected synapses.
I thought I was the only one appalled to see bling elevated to ultimate goal. Where once ostentation was tasteless, now it’s [supposedly] chic.
Perhaps there’s small hope in noting that at least SEAC has toned down it’s gold color.