Epilogue
by NorseGamer, HSM Publisher
It’s ten years from now, and Home is long gone.
Leafing through pages and pages of memories. Old files. Pictures. Videos. The Hauppauge 1212 is in a cardboard box, layers of dust atop it, its component cables tangled askew.
Such a wonderful time that was! Those young, heady days where Home felt like the bleeding edge of what video gaming could be, because it was the bleeding edge of what video gaming could be: a giant social experiment that never quite became what it was envisioned to be, but in its failure became something far more interesting.
Did we really spend so much time there? Half a decade. Longer. An entire console generation came and went, and there we were: the happy few who used the PlayStation solely as a HomeStation.
Thousands of articles written. Countless debates, discussions, podcasts, videocasts, forum rants and kudos. My god, did we really write the equivalent of several novels‘ worth of words on this one application?
All the achievements, the meetings, the phone calls. The tired nights of thousands of words edited, a blizzard of articles ready to unleash. The sunlight outside, ignored, because the world inside had to be taken care of. And it was worth it. It was worth it to help other people succeed.
The joy of helping someone else unleash their potential. Seeing writers and artists and filmmakers grow and strengthen, become confident. 
The elation at receiving an e-mail, years after Home’s sunset, from a former teammate who went on to achieve something spectacular — thanking me for helping them at the very beginning. When the truth is that they helped themselves, and I just provided the platform.
The anguish of remembering friends who turned into enemies. Though Home itself has long since gone, I have little doubt their 
resentments simmer still, even if the details have washed away like sandy footprints along a shorebreak. It is their poison to drink, and I wish them well.
Then the wholly unexpected opportunity to actually become a Home developer. Why’d you leave Hawaii, your house, your decade-long career in resort development behind? Why leave the paradise that most people dream of as the ideal finish line of 
life? Why move to the concrete labyrinth of Los Angeles, trading coconuts for salt bagels?
Because it was fun.
And it was every bit as much fun as you thought it would be. For as much as you know that HSM and its team had a measurable impact on Home’s developers and what they brought to market, how many Home fans dreamt of being able to 
write item descriptions and blog copy, set pricing strategies, film promo videos and do all of that behind-the-curtain stuff — for a living — that you got to do? It was every bit as much fun as you hoped it would be, particularly since you’re working with a team of people you’d already gotten to know over the years, and it’s a great environment to be in.
It’s been ten years since you started there.
Of course, the inevitable day arrived at some point when Home was on its way out, and it was time to work on other projects. The blizzard of new terminology to learn. The new clients to work with. The fun — yes, fun — of taking on new and unfamiliar challenges beyond the walled garden of Home, and establishing something that nearly every brown-haired thirtysomething suburban kid wanted when they grew up: a career in the games industry.
It’s been ten years, and the industry is just as much fun now as when you began. Though Home itself is long gone, and — as is always the case in life — no one keeps in touch with each other as much as they promised they would, there is still the bright memory of that brief moment in time when we all came together for a glorious cause, and the memory of that shared camaraderie is cherished.
It’s ten years from now. You are now middle-aged. Things have changed so much: your entire world is different, just as you couldn’t have imagined as a teenager what life in your twenties was going to be.
But two things endure from those days:
The first is that quantum computing has now really begun to replace the digital age, and there are articles about a new virtual world being created — something wild and beautiful and truly immersive. Because the lure of virtual worlds will never die, and Moore’s Law has seen to it that this new Home (or whatever it’s called), in the year 2024, is something truly breathtaking. You intend to jump in with both feet.
The second is Melissa.
For a time, she was the one for you, and you met her because of Home. She taught you so much.
Had Home never existed, that connection would never have been made, and the world would simply be a far less worthwhile place. For that, if nothing else — and there’s lots else — Home will always occupy a special place in your heart.
All of this, ten years from now.
Some day, in the future, it will be fun to reminisce about all of this. It won’t happen immediately, of course; when the actual announcement about Home’s closure finally came, there was the usual cycle of emotional hyperbole — but it was the beginning of Home’s final, bittersweet, poignant, remarkably florid phase. And after the doors finally closed in March of 2015, everyone wanted to put some emotional distance between themselves and the now-past-tense Home.
But, like all good concepts that captured the imagination, the memory of Home will grow into something larger than perhaps it ever was, and take on the status of myth. And for those of us who populated Home during its lifespan, we get to say:
“We were there.”
It is such milestones, and the memories we create together, that define our lives.
October 15th, 2014 by NorseGamer | 3 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
LinkedIn
TwitterShare
| Tweet |
It has been a fun ride and a wonderful experience writing for this magazine. I have been asked many times by my real life family why I do this for free, put all of this effort into something that gains me little or nothing in return. I try to explain that I have gotten so much from this endeavor over the years that I can’t put a price tag on it. The people I have come to know, the lessons I have learned are well worth all of the effort over the years. Money isn’t everything, it is only a means to an end, and I measure my time here as worth much more than that.
Thanks to everyone who has read my words and the words of others here. Thanks to the whole team here for their endless devotion to a common cause. Thanks to the developers who allowed us to come to know them and their products.
Now it is time to move on from this magazine and Home. I will always treasure what I gained here, friends, and most of all a great following of readers I will never really come to know, yet somehow feel like family. I hope that you, the readers of this magazine, follow us as we start yet another journey in life.
I am gonna try and guess the names of the avatars starting from top left and going to top right and back to left and back to right..etc….I hope I get at least 8 outta 12. One thing I thought I did differently from most users of Home was to have the PSNID’s and club names turned off..It gave a different perspective to Home for me..so with that said..Olivia,Phoenix,”Strom”,KLC,me,Orion,”Jers” but I’m thinking Ted Estim,NuJin,Burbie,IDK actually-Bonz? HIW? Ted? , Melissa..Thank you to everyone who put time in to read HSM, put time in to contribute to the articles posted on HSM and a sincere and humble thank you to Jason,Melissa,Jamie,Jersquall and Mike for going forth with an idea and providing a platform for the community to express itself from a perspective I thought was unique to HSM- ’nuff said.
My already broken heart is breaking even more. I wormed my way in to the HSM staff so I could become (famous… joking) a voice that could help shape our Home.I didn’t realize at the time that my words would mean so much to me. I don’t know how much what I wrote affected Home or the people in it but I know they changed me. I am a better person from what I have learned in Home and even more so from knowing and coming to love the staff at HSM. I don’t know if my style of writing or subject matter could or would transfer to Loot. I only wrote when I was inspired to. I am not a writer, never have been. But writing for HSM is one of my all time proudest achevements! I will not even try to mention all the people that have been ingraved in my heart from this experiance because I fear I would leave someone out. But I give my most heart felt thank you to the mangment and staff and to the readers. So for now, I will end with my signiture sign off… “Hugs and kisses and sniper misses”
With the heaviest of hearts, I’ll hope that something down the road will replace the Home size hole in our hearts and we will dance the virtual social dance again soon!
Truly,
Olivia_Allin