The Beauty of Home
by FEMAELSTROM, HSM team writer
I don’t often write puff pieces. In fact, a couple of pieces I’ve written have been overtly critical, and I don’t think that puff pieces serve anyone in any real fashion. It is far more important to serve the Home community by telling things like they are (and I do mean as they actually are, not things as they are when warped through personal bias).
Sometimes, though, it is important to give credit where credit is due.
I regularly eavesdrop on fellow users in public places. Occasionally I see the sentiment voiced that Home is boring or no longer worth the effort. I will grant a person their own opinion and view, but when I overhear people tearing down Home, I’m not so sure about the reasoning.
In Home, we have so much to be thankful for. I realize this when I look at somebody standing or sitting and complaining about this, that, or the other. The topics are always the same: “Stuff’s too expensive,” “People are jerks,” “This place is boring,” “There’s nothing to do,” and the infinitely juvenile “Sony sucks” — which always tickles me, as the people will complain about Sony while wearing clothes they bought or got for free, standing in Home, on their Sony PlayStation 3 console that gives them FREE access to the online world of gaming, stores and Home.
I am a glass-half-empty type of person sometimes, but even I can see the beauty of Home. I see Home as a place that owes us nothing but generously gives so full and rich an experience. Yes, there are some issues that need looking at, but they (though seemingly big) are often small compared to the scale of what has been done here. Let’s examine the magnitude of what we have on the massive plate before us.
To start: let’s not forget that Home was originally created as a place to find gaming partners to launch into games with. When we realize that, we can see that though this has gone a little off course from the original intention, it has gone in a far better and more expansive direction than ever thought of. This has become a place that we can find real-world friends — and sometimes romance — as well as clubs and groups with open communications. It truly is an amazing shift in intention. If it had stayed on its original course, the idea would have been a great one that would have assisted users in finding like-minded gamers to find common games to play, but may have never become a social platform.
When Home shifted, the developers shifted too. They adjusted their course to accommodate the users. As Home grew, so did the attention of the developers. Developers made larger and more complex and interesting lands and private spaces. They made countless clothing items and home furnishings. We have more innovative active items, many of which are now smaller in size than the dreaded 22 slots — and the ones that are 22 or more are usually well worth it.
The private estates are vastly improved too. The homes we buy and live in now are more commonly filled with mini-games and prizes for the owner and their guests. The homes are made more ornate and with obvious indicators that they were thought out a lot more meticulously than in the past with some of the ‘diorama’ estates we faced for a short time.
Our avatars have been given a larger amount to do. We have add-on dance moves we can obtain that allow us to have more dances than originally programmed into Home. We now have both high-heel add-ons and fashion catalog poses that allow the user to emulate aspects of the fashion world, and for some in Home that is a big deal.
We now have the ability to ride skates, skateboards, hover discs, techno-unicycles, and horses. Some of these even offer us faster transportation speeds than we were used to previously.
Though an older element in Home, we have clubs to invite people to. This may seem like a trivial fact now, and there may be some people that scoff at that and say, “Yeah but that’s old news.” The fact is, this isn’t about what’s new and what’s old. It’s about the fact that we have all this at our disposal. I personally have a club, as well as two additional skins available for it, and though the roster for the clubs is small, it still is a thing that makes the experience here worth it.
Public spaces have advanced as well. I see some of the static places that we had in the past — the classy side of me won’t name names — but as the population grew here, so did the input of the developers. Lockwood has its own loyalty program in Home now. Home may be a disparate sea of interlinked scenes, but parts of it are still very cohesive.
The real reason Home is so great, though: it’s not really the places, the companions, the items to buy, the clothes one buys, no. These are fun and serve as tasty frosting to the cake. But the real magic of Home is that it allowed us to meet people that we probably would’ve never met at all otherwise. We meet them and make friends with them. No matter our loves and desires in Home, we meet others that share our interests. We make friends that we eventually mean more to us than Home itself and find ourselves valuing more than the simple avatars we met. The friends we meet are the reason that Home is such an amazing place that is always worthy of some praise; even if there are things to pay for, we don’t have to spend a penny to meet people or join clubs or hang out with those we like or love of similar interests.
Thank you, Sony, and those that created this place. This is not a puff piece; this is an overdue acknowledgement to Sony and to the developers who make this place fun beyond any imagining I could’ve ever had.
Thank you, Sony. Good job.
September 17th, 2014 by FEMAELSTROM | 2 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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;^) I recall my earlier days in Home, and playing chess in the Mall off of Central Plaza. We chatted a bit afterward. He lived on the east coast, while I live on the west coast. To play chess -or any game, really- with people across the country from you just staggers the imagination of anyone who grew up before there was the Internet.
The interactivity with others is what makes Home special.
What Danger Dad said..The interactivity with others is what makes Home special… and I still play chess on Home..great article..