To Reskin or Not To Reskin
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
I believe, and I may be wrong, the Xi Party House may have been the first ever reskin of a personal estate in Home. I wasn’t a Home user back when the original Xi was played, so a long-timer would be able to correct me if it’s incorrect. I also don’t know if people were unhappy that this was a reskin of the Summer House or if they were just glad to have another personal estate on Home. Probably some people thought one way about that and some thought the other way about it. (Actually, in terms of utilitarian purpose, most box estates are basically reskins of the original Summer House, when you consider it.) Nowadays I hear a lot of complaints about reskins of all sorts, and I have to admit I’m confused about why people feel that way. I see this situation as a win-win for the Home users and for the Home developers.
For one thing, I love to have choices, and I believe most people do as well. Isn’t this why we can chose so many details of our avatar’s look, from eye and hair color to height and weight? In Home, reskins of clothing often offer not only different colors, but they can offer different patterns and material choices, too. This in turn helps us clothe our avatars in styles that look more original, instead of a copy of most every other avatar we see. This is one of two major reasons that I see reskins as valuable to the Home community. You may love an outfit or any piece of clothing, except for the color it is offered in, but a future reskin may resolve this situation to your liking. Most developers reskin to one degree or another. Lockwood was one of the first developers to do this with their clothing; I didn’t think of it that way at the time, I just thought it was great to have color choices. Some of my favorite clothing items of theirs I actually purchased in several different colors.
It could be said that Juggernaut’s djinn lamps are “just” reskins of the first one they made; after all, they’re all four basically Aladdin-style oil lamps. But really, when you look at the four wonderfully different designs of each and the completely different effects they have in our personal spaces and clubs, do you think that? And they are likely re-skinning some of their active items, too. Does this make these items any less fun or less appropriate for the season or style they are designed for? I don’t think so.
Third-party developers are in business to make money and like any business it’s to their advantage to keep their expenses down as much as possible. This practice of re-skinning can increase their profits obviously, with less programming time involved in the re-skinning of a product they’ve already made. Overhead costs are going up in the real world for them, which means they will be going up for us in our virtual world of Home too. So almost anything that can help minimize this increase seems like a good idea to me and this is the second reason that I see value in re-skins. It’s an advantage and cost-saver to both developers and users.
Developers can have more products to put into their store, more often, since it’s quicker to make something re-skinned than to make something totally new. Not only does this offer a chance for more sales from those who read the “New and Featured” tab every Wednesday, but new items are found highlighted in the Weekly Announcement, which is free advertising for them. And while we users may not like all advertising, especially pushy in-your-face advertising, it can be nice to have a simple over-view of what just arrived to peruse.
Reskins can be fun. The Irish Pub (VEEMEE’s St. Patrick’s Day Value Pub) is a great themed reskin of the London Pub and offers themed clothing in the bundle, as well. The Nightmare Yacht was the second reskin of Lockwood’s original Dream Yacht. I’m sure that they were able to offer it to the Home community for Halloween more quickly and less expensively because it was a reskin. And the furniture they give with the space is amazingly clever and amusing, also. Why not own more than one version of a personal space, suitable to the season or how you plan to use the estate? You can keep it decorated for the holiday all year long and not bother re-decorating with the season. There’s always something new to add, if you do like to decorate. People often buy a personal space and a club version of the same space to offer others a chance to tour the club, while having the privacy of the personal space for themselves.
One of my favorite little reskins is Konami’s neon reskin of their Anime hair line into their Raver line. I loved several of these styles and the new glowing colors are especially fun while wearing neon clothing items in dark spaces, such as SingStar. I’d love to see more hairdo reskins from other developers too, in unusual colors, such as green or orange or in neon or rainbow colors.
I hardly approve of every item that third-party developers sell on Home and I understand the desire to have one’s opinion heard, even in the form of a complaint. But there is always the option not to buy something, if it doesn’t appeal to you. I wish the community would think of the developers as a player on their same team. We need to work with them to not only bring the products, changes and improvements that we want to Home, but to keep Home alive at all. So, my suggestion is to not complain about reskins — but to embrace them.
November 12th, 2013 by Kassadee Marie | 3 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
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The worse ones are the ones released as rewards after the developer has brought them out to buy a few months earlier such as ansa da fone personal space night, acorn park night and several lockwood and N Dreams items that all came out to buy then were given away a few months later just with a different colour scheme. I like both versions of summer house and have both. didnt care for the other incarnations of the dream yacht so only have original. But ultimately your right if you dont like it dont buy it, but situations when you buy it then developer gives it away in a different colour is gutting to the user.
I look at this spectrum as a double-edged sword here.
Yes, Jess’s Party Apartment is the very first personal space re-skin on Home. I bought it on December 25, 2010 and loathed it at first because I felt it was a waste of money for me. However, over time it grew on to me and was used in a couple of my video projects. I don’t go there often and I’m not stating it was worth the money, but my views are much different than what they were before.
Do I think re-skinning products on Home is a bad thing? I don’t think so. Take a look at what Lockwood has done (which amazingly you’ve pointed out some points upon the fashion areas, which receives 10+ kudos from me): they’ve re-skinned the Bodycon II Dresses and offered them via Gift Machine and they’ve re-colored the very first Figment fashions and is also a Gift Machine offering.
Billabong has updated some of their fashions as well with the re-skins and lastly Konami have done so as well with their Raver line with more color and motif options; all of which the consumers have ate up.
Do I personally think this is a bad thing? Nope, as it offers a whole new venue to the customers. However, I believe there are other options as well to offer re-skins, as I don’t wish to pay $19.99 again for the exact same SeaClyff Retreat space offered in a night time setting.
But overall, I agree to this. The majority of Home just don’t get it when it comes to the business, neither is it a cash-grab scheme; it’s options purveyed to the Home users and the consent upon purchasing the commodity. Nothing is misleading about it (except the Jess’s Apartment :/ ).
Thanks Kassadee.
Nice read Kass, you have made a lot of very valid points here. Though I have never bought a space more than once, re skinned ones I mean, I have been to several that have been bought by friends and they all seemed very happy and satisfied with their purchases. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, to each their own.