Steak-Eating Contest
by FEMAELSTROM, HSM team writer
I was watching a television show once — and for the life of me, I can’t remember what show — but in the show, two of the characters engaged in a steak-eating contest.
The idea is simple: the two guys sat together, and ate a regular-sized steak very fast. The one that finishes first, wins. In the episode, one of the guys stops and admits defeat, preferring to instead savor the taste of the steak and relish the fine dinner.
Recently, this happened in Home — and I thought that it was interesting to see the different reactions that this ‘glitch’ caused.
This came to me by way of friends on my list and I respect that they did what they did, as the nature of the incident was not ‘criminal’ in nature. It was taking advantage of the circumstance. Allow me to get into the details before I fog it all up.
It was the Tuesday night before the weekly offline period for maintenance on June 3rd 2014. There was a new set of Sony Home challenges ready to fire the next morning with the re-opening of Home. Tuesday night, though, a glitch was discovered, and I got the idea of how to do it through a few XMB messages. Apparently, the points from the last challenge session were never cleared, as I heard, and when we logged into the challenges prior to the weekly maintenance, we were rewarded with all the items as the system read that we had the full points. The glitch made the game believe that the player had finished all that needed to be done, and handed out the rewards.
Some people on my list did this and did get the prizes and the estate. I chose not to and here’s why.
I love these, I really really do!
This is like the steak eating contest I talked about earlier. Yes you can eat the steak fast and finish in record time, and the body will get the protein and nutrients, but something is lost in the speed. Yes my friends that did it got the prizes and can show off the estate to anyone that wants to see it, but for many of us, the fun is in the actual running around Home. I prefer to savor the moments and have fun going and doing the tasks. I enjoy the anticipation of calculating the estimated time left before I get that suite. In my eyes, the fun of having all the suites that I have collected in my estates list, is the fun of knowing that like in a video game, I achieved something and was rewarded for the effort.
Now this is not as bad as when Lockwood had the big price error and had people take advantage of what was minimally $50 worth of estates taken for free. There had been an announcement that there would be a discount, and in all reality, everyone knew that the discount price was not free. People still jumped in and took the free estates, and gave nary a second thought about it.
This is different, in that eventually anyone that participated would end up getting everything and for free. So those that took the ‘glitch’ path just got it faster, not as a cheat or steal.
Now I am not going to stand on too high a soapbox and preach that this was evil and a harbinger of the end of the world, I guess I just see it as that steak eating contest represents. I think that it is more enjoyable to take your time and savor the flavor, despite the fact that so many malign the challenges as boring and silly, I think that they are fun and have served to get me back into Home just when, at times, it seems that my interest wanes.
Yay! I get all this, just for running around.
What are the rewards? I don’t know, and really we can all see them when we look in the challenges window. They are as usual, clothes, furniture, an LMO, and the chief gift, an estate. I know though, that I would much rather eat that big steak, all flavorful and enticing, making me relish each and every bite, as I do every day that I play the challenges. That’s the fun.
So, that past us and onto the challenges, have fun with them, and enjoy the daily visits into places that maybe we haven’t been to in a while, playing the games that maybe we haven’t seen for some time. The challenges reward us for this and we get some fun stuff, including an estate. This was the intention, and I for one say that it worked so very well. I can’t wait to go about the dailies, and enjoy Home again.
Now can someone please pass the horseradish?
June 13th, 2014 by FEMAELSTROM | 3 comments
FEMAELSTROM came to Home in June 2011 and never wanted to leave, even at weekly maintenance when he usually gets booted. The sand box environment appeals to the explorer in him and often is out and about as he ‘geeks’ out dressed like some sort of sci-fi character, while he people watches in popular public spaces. An artist and writer, FEMAELSTROM loves making friends and meeting people. He loves sci-fi and decorating Home estates and loves to respond “here” when people ask “where are you from?” in public places.
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Mmmmmmm steak
This article speaks truth in more ways than I can ever imagine in regards to the Steak-Eating contest. Kudos dude.
The problem is not all users enjoy the challenges not because of the grind but because of the issues and all they did was skip the tedious queuing, the spoiled bowling games, the problems that some users are having with arcade machines which causes them to crash. The whole point for some users is to get it first, I found because people completed in a second it’s taken some of the shine off challenges for me as I don’t really enjoy the grind I enjoy the race.