by NorseGamer, HSM Publisher

If you had the choice of going back and redoing your entire Home experience all over again, would you?

Note that I said redoing, not just reliving. That’s a very important difference. Reliving the Home experience means that you would consciously choose to go through the whole shebang again, knowing that you can’t change anything. Like rewatching your favorite movie, the enjoyment is still there but the events are fixed and you know how the story will play out.

Going back in time and redoing your entire Home experience, on the other hand…now that’s something different.

In my case, there isn’t much I’d change. But that’s easy for me to say, since I’m the guy who won the game of Home. Who would want to change a success story, right?

But “success” is a relative term, isn’t it. What you get out of Home is a direct reflection of what you put into it. FEMAELSTROM’s moving off to the eastern seaboard to be a with a woman he loves — a woman he met because of Home. That’s a success story. Burbie’s discovered a new love of MMORPG gaming which enriches her life, thanks to Home. That’s a success story. There are certainly plenty more.

…However, for every success story there is another tale of sundered hopes, missteps, frustration and failure. People who wanted something — power, internet fame, respect, attractiveness, etc. — and found disappointment. And I honestly do wonder: if those people had the ability to go through their entire Home experience again, knowing what they know now — knowing how their years of time and money invested originally panned out — would they take another swing at it?

This is where MMO experiences become very interesting. A traditional video game is a short-term engagement: you play it, you beat it, you unlock everything and you move on. Maybe you revisit it a couple of times down the road. But MMO games introduce a clash of personalities and egos; when viewed from the outside, it seems a bit silly and pointless, but when you’re in it and you want to get something out of it, it can become a focal point in a lot of intersecting lives.

When you read about something like EVE Online’s Battle of Asakai – how countless players who labored for years in various factions to build up their resources came clashing together in a fight that saw players on multiple continents fighting it out (even more pronounced here) — it’s easy, from our perspective, to look at that and think it’s all a bit daft. Because we’re not emotionally invested in it. When we read about the Gorean subculture in Second Life and feel morally repulsed by it, we are ourselves not involved in the context of that environment and thus do not understand the personalities involved in it.

And it’s no different when people on the outside look in at Home users — as beautifully evidenced by this recent piece from Kotaku.

But for anyone who goes deep into any such experience, digital or real, it’s not just a hobby or even an avocation; it’s a part of their lives. And when you put that much of yourself into something, you want to get back a reward of at least commensurate value. In this regard, Home is an interesting beast because there’s no real way to keep score except by comparing yourself against others. Or, ideally, achieving what you set out to achieve.

So now, looking back, you’ve spent years in Home. Years trying to achieve something. Years of all the accumulated sedimentary layers of people and detours and smiles and gritted teeth that piled atop that initial decision to stay. And now, with a new console generation firmly underway and the question of Home’s longevity at the forefront of the community discussion, it really is interesting to ponder if, knowing what you know now, you’d do it all again.

And, if so, what you’d do differently.

I don’t pretend to have the answers on this subject. It’s a deeply personal matter. There comes a point when everyone engaged in a long-term affair looks back at the time spent and wonders if it was worth it, if it could have been done differently, and so forth.

For me, Home was absolutely, unquestioningly worth it. The last five years have completely reshaped my life. When that last day finally comes — whether it’s tomorrow, a year from now or a decade from now — I’ll be able to close the book on Home and feel very satisfied with how the tale turned out.

Hopefully you’ll be able to say the same.

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One Response to “A Mulligan for Home”

1. Danger_Dad says:

   September 18, 2014 at 4:43 pm

   ;^) Personally, Home has brought my life much more than I ever would have expected. Without Home, I’d likely never have joined Sony’s message board and began posting there, and thus would likely not have been invited to become a Playstation MVP, and wouldn’t subsequently have attened the E3 trade show last year and again this summer.

   :^/ About the only thing I think I’d do differently would be to start sooner. There were events in the early days that I missed out on, and it’d be neat to be able to participate in them, if there were ever a cosmic do-over.

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