Not A Static Home
by ted2112, HSM team writer
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
-Winston Churchill
Look around Home lately?
Change is in the air. Halloween season has come and gone, and soon we will start seeing the major end-of-year holidays popping up. This holiday ebb and flow, and the changes in the digital real estate, have always been a big part of Home. I don’t know any other MMO that spends the valuable time and energy into changing up the game environment for nothing other than to please its users.
Perhaps it’s good business sense: keep the game moving, changing and interesting is good for keeping fans coming back for more and spreading that ultra-valuable word of mouth advertising. Keeping people in a holiday mood means selling more virtual merchandise.
Or…
Perhaps it’s simply because they can. Home was built to change and evolve. Home’s entire history has been an exercise in seeing just what can be done. Just when it seems like we’ve seen everything something new pops up and then it changes again. In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut, who described how things are always changing: Busy, Busy, Busy.
Central Plaza was an amazing concept in social engineering, but the architects of Home weren’t afraid of retiring the space when they felt a change was necessary. Pier Park, when it first debut, was a little on the boring side if you didn’t like to play poker — but subtle changes started to creep in and liven up the space. And that is Home in a nutshell: no space is more important than the experience it must provide.
To add to this culture of change is the fact that we have multiple developers in Home. This ever-changing variety is not only good for the multiple points of view we get, but an atmosphere of not leaving well enough alone, because the other guys might just show them up. And take my word for it, these developers are all gamers at heart and no gamer wants to be shown up. Between this expanding group of developers, Home has progressed from a few boxy private spaces and a handful of public spaces to a multiverse of interactive private spaces and an almost bewildering assortment of public areas. If you can’t find something you love on Home, you frankly ought to look harder.
My point is that change is very good thing. It keeps things fresh and moves a game forward in an evolutionary way. Mistakes are fixed, ideas improved upon and what is not moving forward gets left behind. The gaming world is changing — maybe now more than ever — and we must change with it to stay relevant. Home has been an excellent medium for change.
We at HSM have always been bewildered at the people who say there is nothing to do on Home. In my opinion there aren’t enough hours in a day to take it all in, and when you add on the seasonal and holiday changes it’s almost overwhelming.
I feel that the amount of change in a game is a direct correlation to the health of a game. Look at the Final Fantasy series: the first several games were a simple closed environment. As the games progressed, the game play got off of tracks and into more of an open environment, to finally a truly massive sandbox word of Final Fantasy XIV. Each game of the series built and most importantly changed. No two games are alike; in fact, the characters don’t even stick around for long. Square Enix has figured out a winning development 
philosophy that keeps the Final Fantasy games hot and relevant year after year. In Home we see a similar outlook of not leaving well enough alone. As long as we keep showing up for the show, a show will be provided.
We see these simple examples of change in Home in things like Halloween decorations and developer tours of brand new spaces. Last year was the Year of the Game; we saw a huge array of new gaming content come out. This year might well be called the year of the social space. Next year, who knows?
But I bet it will be something really amazing.
Change for change’s sake is never a good thing, but when we change in a way that moves us forward, it’s called evolution. It has been true of Home in years past, and it’s just as true of Home today, whether that evolution is a redressing of a scene, a reorganized Navigator interface, or something else yet to come.
Not everyone will agree with evolution. Just ask the neanderthals. Wait, never mind, you can’t.
November 7th, 2013 by ted2112 | 2 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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Home has changed so much sine I started playing. I remember Central Plaza and all it had to offer. I liked how it had holiday themes. I also like the addition of Pier Park and how it is always decked out for the holidays with new games and rewards. I liked that wintery space with quests and prizes and different presents to unwrap. I look forward to what Home has to offer this holiday season!
Great ending line. As good as Resident Evil was the series has been watered down to the point of being unplayable. There is only so much you can do with that story. Final Fantasy games are only loosely held together so they can do much more. Ive got to hand it to Home they find a way to keep it interesting.