Trophies in PlayStation Home
by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor-in-Chief
Thanks to Pavlov, we all learned about classical conditioning back in our high school’s psychology class. It’s a simple enough process – combining a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus, which triggers an unconditioned response and turning it into a conditioned response that will occur when simply presented with the conditioned stimulus. With Pavlov, it was the sound of a bell that became the conditioned stimulus. With the present generation of gamers, it’s the chime indicating the achievement of a trophy.
And now that Pavlovian response is coming to Home.
This is a rather interesting development, for many reasons.
To start, there are those out there who probably have by now wondered aloud why this hasn’t happened sooner. It’s no secret that gaming has evolved from that sense of personal achievement when figuring out and beating a particularly hard level of a game to that sense of achievement – that must be shared across the whole internet – of performing an action that makes a chime go off. Home has steadfastly denied people this satisfaction up to now, largely because when it was conceived, the PS3 did not as of yet support trophies. And since gaming media like IGN wrote off Home as a black-sheep app, the popular perception was that there wasn’t much sense to invest the money and manpower to go in and change this.
So why now?
Perhaps this was something that was planned all along. Perhaps the tools to implement trophy support into Home’s architecture simply weren’t there before. Or, perhaps after enough years of collected data, the realization came that user retention and engagement increased whenever Home had something new and fresh – and, most importantly, structured – to do. There is strong evidence to suggest that the recent development of Home challenges, while enjoyable for the community, had another, quite serious purpose – to specifically collect data on user engagement.
That said, if you listen to the Home “power users” (both self-proclaimed and legitimate), the refrain they’ve sung for the majority of Home’s life up to now is that they don’t particularly care for trophies and don’t see much sense for Home to have them. However, when it comes to publicly displaying achievements, the Home userbase is probably louder and prouder than a San Francisco pride parade. How many photos taken, how many machinima produced, how many fansites? At HSM alone, the amount of words written on Home by the authors published here could make up multiple novels worth of material – and that’s a lot for something that’s “not a real game”.
The root behavior is the same. Only the terminology is different.
“I’m a hardcore gamer! I’ve platted Hanna Montana!”
“…”
By the way: before you read too much into my trademark snark, keep in mind that I think the addition of trophies to Home is a good thing. With the added bonus of trophies, it adds a sort of legitimacy to it all. Home users can no longer be thought of as not “real” or “hardcore” gamers, especially by those who do consider themselves as such, and who will go to such measures as playing Hannah Montana just to up their trophy counts.
Personally I find myself on the same side as the power users, not because I am one or think I am one, but because I’m an old gamer. I’ve never platinumed a game, although I’ve played many; and in checking my trophies right now, I can see that if I actually bothered with such things, there’s a couple of games on my list that are just a trophy or two away from getting to that status. I’m just not used to the notion of trophies, or even actively hunting for them; often I find their cheery little chime distracting. Just the other night, I was playing Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening and out of the blue (and annoyingly in the middle of some dialogue) I get a trophy chime pop up. I still have no idea what for.
In my day, beating the final boss (on any level) of Ninja Gaiden was an achievement, and the reward was that your controller was still in one piece afterwards.
Of course, one question that’s already been observed swirling around some circles: is it too late?
Last year saw strong contenders which could potentially draw a portion of Home’s userbase away, in the forms of Final Fantasy XIV and Grand Theft Auto V. Home’s lifecycle as a product appears to be in far more of a maturation phase than a raw growth phase. Short of a few things that probably just aren’t possible due to how old its framework is, there is a question of just how many new features can be introduced into the current core client without a clean-sheet rewrite, and whether or not the budget is there to support such feature additions. The announcement last year about the Japan and Asian regions no longer accepting new content certainly made ripples around the entire Home community, and much like hearing a layoff announcement at your place of employment, you can’t help but wonder who’s next.
Fortunately, both North America and Europe have strong, large communities, and with Home’s main development being handled in the UK, a strong counterargument could be made that it is in these regions’ best interests to maintain Home so long as it’s fiscally viable. Having a user’s activities in Home equate to that chime of a trophy could bring not only those people back, but even the people who left Home in its early years, who cited chief among their main reasons for leaving that there was “nothing to do”. Now doing the same amount of nothing in Home that they do anyways in a “real” videogame will likely get them a bronze trophy.
Heck, maybe even the major gaming media outlets will take another brief look at Home. If nothing else, the curiosity generated from such coverage would likely contribute to an influx of new users and returning veterans. People who wrote off Home 2008 — and have a mental snapshot in their minds of Home from that era — would likely be amazed by Home 2014. To those of us who have used it every day for the last several years, such evolution has been gradual; however, to someone who hasn’t been in Home in half a decade or more, it’s almost a completely different experience. All that was needed was something which would be sufficiently enticing to the mainstream PlayStation consumer base to get them to sign in again. A digital gateway drug, for lack of a better phrase. How ironic that it should be trophies, not districts, which appear best poised to achieve this. Even greater irony will be witnessing people who once scoffed at those of us who participate in Home’s activities performing the very acts they scorned, all for the sake of the chime of perceived achievement.
From a business perspective, I totally get it. Hunting for and achieving trophies is a big deal to the modern gamer, and at this point in Home’s lifecycle, they are a great way to drive user engagement. The veterans have had their fill of virtual t-shirts and miscellaneous free swag, and their lagging inventories are proof of it. Heck, depending upon how the trophies are planned out — whether it’s strictly first-party support or is extended to third-party content — it may even give Home’s third-party developers a slightly higher profile and broader gaming audience to work with. However, whether or not it will be enough to drive up that all-important engagement factor is something not easily forecasted; even some of the biggest gaming flops of this console generation have trophies attached to them.
For now though, the enthusiasm appears to be high, and it will create a wave that should be worth the ride, if only to see where the journey takes it.
March 11th, 2014 by Terra_Cide | 2 comments
Terra _Cide is the former Community Manager for Lockwood Publishing and Editor Emeritus for HomeStation Magazine.
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YAAAY! They did it! Man, took em long enough. Ah, I’m kidding. This is very big news though and I’m glad it has finally happened. I’ve neglected Home (and you guys, sorries) for GTAO in the last few months because GTAO feels kinda like Home did back in 2009; its new, exciting, broken, frustrating and has become this thing that you either love or hate.
Personally, I find it amazing how “normal” gamers that have sneered at Home are now all talking about getting new clothes, tats and a choice of interiors for their virtual houses.
Sorry, I’m trailing off-topic…
Trophies in Home will definitely bring in new people, and bring back old users. I never left truth be told, but kept a low profile, this will definitely pull me back into the public spaces though, probably.
;^) Heh. The actual numbers aren’t in yet, of course, but I’m confident that many gamers will try Home out for the first time for these trophies, and of those users, many will stick it out for a while to pursue the two time-dependent trophies. The one for taking a picture each day for ten days, or for logging in on fifty separate days.
Many will likely not return after earning their trophies from Home, but I’m confident that many will stay, as well. How many remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an interesting time to be part of Home.
This is history in the making, everyone.