Inspected Clothes, Sales, and Reskins
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
2014.
It’s still a rather new fiscal year for Sony, which means it’s a new year in Home as well, of course. The twelve months of 2013 were a lot of fun in Home, with innovative items and locomotions that we’ve been requesting for a long time.
But where do we go from there? What will this be “The Year of”?
Only five months into the calendar year, and it’s starting to look like this will be the year of inspected clothes, sales and reskins.
First: let me say that I’m not against the idea of reskins at all. I even wrote an article about why they are a good idea for the developers and a good idea for us Home users. And second, I’m certainly not against sales. Sometimes an item or items will be put on sale that I had considered buying, but didn’t have the money for at the time, or I felt wasn’t quite worth the asking price, and now I can snap it up on sale. I don’t even mind when something I bought already at full price goes discounted. After all, I’ve been using the items much longer than those people purchasing it now and I always think there are people who can’t afford much on Home that are getting nice things too, because of a sale.
Third, the new inspect feature has been great fun for people who like to look for the rare and/or unusual clothes. There’s even a huge thread on the SCEA Home forum, with pictures of what you can buy only through inspect. I’ve picked up a few fun and unique clothing items myself with this feature. (By the way, don’t worry about making purchases this way, as Tempest_Fire, our community manager, has assured us that all items purchased through this feature are legitimate.) Another interesting thing about the inspect feature is that even those who don’t have access to x7 can pick up preview items a week early, if they can locate someone wearing items they want to purchase.
All of this isn’t bad at all — but is it enough?
Is it enough to retain the current Home users, including the small but important percentage of users called whales (for the large amount they spend on Home)? Is it enough to attract new users by word of mouth, now that Sony has severely limited advertising for (or even mention of) Home anywhere?
Some of the developers have been offering more to Home users, and at little or no cost to us. You’re probably aware that LKWD Life is a new feature, offering rewards for those who collect “crowns” for certain activities in most of their Dream spaces, the Sunset Lounge and Dream Central. As these last two spaces are public Lockwood sites, you don’t even have to own any of these spaces to play. Of course, the more Dream spaces you own, the more crowns you can collect each day. However, you’ll see quite a few reskins in the “Redeeminator,” and it’s quite a grind to pick up enough crowns to purchase the top reward (a personal estate) at this time.
VEEMEE is still updating their terrific public space, Acorn Meadows Park, for the larger (American) holidays. This has been very diverting and it must renew interest in the space and bring back people who have quit visiting every day. But we are about to lap the holidays that VEEMEE started with last year. Birthday celebrations notwithstanding, I can only imagine that they will be using the same skins that were presented to us then. While this is great for new users who didn’t have an opportunity to visit this space over last year’s holidays, I doubt it will pull in many long-time Home users.
Sony itself has added to Home with the expanded Challenges. The challenges program was originally offered last year, but had a lot of repeated challenges every few days. While it’s terrific to see a greater variety of challenges being offered this year, the rewards, other than the personal spaces, aren’t much at all. Also, the supply of these spaces seems to be drying up, as the latest offering is a re-skinned Harbor Apartment, actually with less features than the original.
One of the best innovations to be presented so far this year are the two-person interactive locomotions. Well, the idea is innovative; the execution has been a bit less than we may have hoped for, in some ways. And more than we hoped for in others. (Do we really need romantic kissing in Home?)
Meanwhile, nDreams has not updated Aurora, nor has Juggernaut updated Serenity Plaza, nor has Hellfire updated Novus Prime, nor has Digital Leisure updated the Casino or Western Frontier, nor has LOOT updated their space station. There are a number of developers that offer nothing new to purchase either; some of these are putting a few of their older items on sale each week. The Japanese companies — Granzella, Konami, and O-Two — have almost disappeared from the North American market. Heavy Water left Home, with a trail of broken games, broken items, and broken spaces in their wake. Bigyama said they were coming back, but where are they? Other third-party developers, such as Evil Tree Studios, left almost before they got started.
I feel like Sony and the third party developers are cleaning out their virtual warehouses, having fire sales, and painting over anything they can get that hands on, to offer it for sale. I have to wonder what this means for the future of Home. I’m certainly not the only one speculating on this subject, and without word from Sony itself, speculate is all we can do.
May 13th, 2014 by Kassadee Marie | 2 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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I agree with your assessment of the situation Kass. I don’t mind re-skins at all of they are done right. Look at the new version of SeaClyff, it is a masterpiece. I am totally looking forward to having another Harbor to decorate totally differently from my original one.
But with no one fixing what has been left broken and others just disappearing from Home all together we have to see the writing on the wall I think. Home probably has a few years left in it, but I doubt much more at this point.
No matter what the outcome is, Home is still Home, it is a wonderful place to meet people from all over the world and make some incredible friends. If they stopped making new things tomorrow I would still be content with what I already have acquired in the past 5 years. Things are not what defines Home anymore than they are what defines us in real life. Who we are and how we treat others does, so with that in mind I still look forward to a lot of good times in Home.
All the new items and functions only really appeal to current users. The mundane repetitive games like Lockwood life or challenges aren’t going to get users from other games. Trophies are too few and there no platinum so if I was a trophy hunter I can get more trophies and a platinum trophy playing the Hannah Montana game. Every game has challenges why would you play them on home when most involve queuing and long load times. Actually home offers as a application very little, but we still love it. But offers even less if your new. If I was new and the first place I visited was acorn parks current birthday version id never come back back as once I got an understanding of whats going then realising how much it would cost me to actually win a decent reward I would give up. So currently home really is only trying to keep its current user base which says to me as well that homes run hasnt got a future. Once it’s users numbers hit a level it will start winding down. But with all its flaws we still love it. More because of the users than whatever the developerd do.