VEEMEE’s Content Surge
by Phoenix, HSM team writer
In Home, consistent content output is a hard trick to pull off: most development houses have what HSM has referred to as “lumpy reporting,” where a studio goes quiet for several weeks (or even months) while working on their next big release. It’s rare to find a production house that’s large enough to maintain a consistent presence in Home.
In the past, the rush of new weekly content featured steady streams of Lockwood. And that makes sense: Lockwood is possibly Home’s largest third-party developer. However, Lockwood — like nDreams, Heavy Water and LOOT — has diverted resources out of Home and into other ventures. Given the current outlook for the future of Home as a platform, this makes perfect sense; being a Home-centric developer means having most or all of your revenue tied to an aging platform which hasn’t received any long-term guidance from its providers.
Still, in the last sixteen weeks, one developer has been adding more and more content. Since April, this developer’s name and trademark has hit the Message of the Day with noticeable frequency: VEEMEE.
VEEMEE has made a stunning leap forward in visibility of Home content: everything from cats to vampires, jeans at the Wrangler outlet to their Fine Dining Experience, and everything in-between.
VEEMEE in SCEA Home was known primarily for the London Pub estate, along with interactive pool tables and dartboards. In SCEE Home, VEEMEE is known for their Audi association
. They’ve brought us the fun and always flirty clothing line Billabong, and the Snug line of Home furnishing. All of this content has been there quietly in the background. The last noticeable content from them that I personally recall was the Age of Swords collection. That seems to have changed; in March they debuted a new space, the Irish Pub, purchasable in a bundle or on its own. It was the second pub space from them. From then on they have made a pop up visit to the new content scene again and again, and they appear to have exploded with so much content that the Message of the Day is VEEMEE’s calling card.
They have in the past created the public spaces and F2P games most are familiar with: Diesel Island, No Man’s Land, Total Recall, HGL and Acorn Park — and, of course, the Go Fish estate. These spaces are in both NA and EU regions. VEEMEE creates original and branded content for consoles and handhelds.The surge in content from them lately has been all personal content.
Their name has been around more than a little while, but they have been in the background, seemingly plodding along, until this year — making a big showing weekly 
since late winter. Of course, this begs the question: what changed? Our only working theory is that they may have been tied up with contract work for SCEE (much as Heavy Water did a lot of contract work for SCEA), and perhaps that’s come to an end. If so, the consumer base is indeed the benefactor, because VEEMEE’s explosion of content in recent months has been outstanding.
I for one am well pleased to see their content surging in Home. From my own experience, the items I have from VEEMEE are well made and have not given me any issues. I can’t begin to list the growing line of items they’ve sold of late in its entirety, but I can name a few since April. For instance, there was the My Bedroom line up, a modular set of single purchase or bundle furniture and the Billabong La Brisa dress, just for starters. In May they brought us Magical Creatures for our avatars to not just ride around Home, but to transform into, as well as classic scooters and jeans from Wrangler.
In June, Veemee brought the Ugly Companions and Street Styles. They introduced remote-controlled planes to Acorn Park. There was the Inverse footwear collection and still more. July was no different; for VEEMEE there was no slow down in new content. In July, they updated the 3D Printer, My bathroom saw release and still more clothing to Wrangler and Billabong. Has all this been just waiting for the proper time, to hold Home’s buyers hostage? If this was a marketing strategy then it must be paying off because it hasn’t slowed down. VEEMEE says they are a company 
that employs strategy and technology in creating content. They pride themselves on delivering content that’s brand enhancing, self liquidating and profitable. I would say they are doing just that this year in Home.
For me, I love the items they have brought to Home, but I’m hard pressed to choose what I really want from their growing catalog. Too much choice can be a problem sometimes.
July saw the My Gym collection, making it easy for those body-conscious avatars to get in shape. Wrangler saw even more updates, as did Street Styles, B-movie characters arrived in Home to my own personal delight. I am a big fan of this genre.
Now here we are in August, and so far VEEMEE has their Acorn Apartment, a little piece of the park for your very own. Indeed, Acorn Park itself is a revelation: it may be the most lauded public space to have arrived in Home this year. They have introduced the 50’s Diner and the Personal Dining Experience two exceptional arrivals. Domestic Kittens and more 3D Printer updates, BMX Trick Bikers and my personal favorite — 
the B-Movie characters — received an update: the Mummy has joined the Wolfman and woman, the vampires for his and hers, and the rest of the B-movie family. In the meantime, VEEMEE has a couple of huge summer sales in progress: Age of Swords, a Pub bundle or three, and summer clothing.
It should be interesting to see what happens the rest of the year in Home. VEEMEE is dominating the buying customer’s attention with all this new content of theirs. Will they continue their weekly release or will they move slowly to the background on content again?
One thing is for certain: though Home’s content releases aren’t as big or flashy to the outside world as they were last year, there’s simply an avalanche of content arriving this year, largely geared towards Home’s social scene. And VEEMEE is doing an excellent job of being at the forefront of this.
August 19th, 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
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It seems to me that Veemee are listening, properly. They’re also looking at Home hard, what’s there, what sells, what’s being asked for; where the market is saturated and how to freshen that rather than shy away…
Basically, they’re doing everything right, right now.
Krazyface has pretty much took the words out of my mouth. The content released is more on the social aspects of Home and this is something I couldn’t wait for.
Kudos to the team.
Veemee and Granzella seem to be able to put content out and keep it repaired and working, Where Lockwood and N Dreams put broken content like mercia, XI and fubar and do nothing to repair it as both still have the same issues that were there on day one. Socially a lot of developers ignore what could be a decent social public space and turn it into a personal space to make a bit more money. something like konami’s lumiosity space. Id never buy that space but would I if available like slap happy sams bought a music player that gave me access to an exclusive lumiosity club public space. yeah i think i would of. Would be nice now if more socially orientated public spaces could be released.
Absolutely Gary. As Acorn’s public space has shown, all it takes is a little bit of inventiveness and most of the Home public will fill in the rest themselves. I was there yesterday with a friend and we both decided it’d be a good idea to see who could knock who out of the air in a dog-fight with our RC planes. Before we knew it there were 6 of us standing in the place, all just flying around into each other!
The forefront of ALL public space’s ideas should be all pointing towards social behaviours; allow us to interact with each other in unique ways and we will!
Lead that pack Veemee, show them how it’s done!