Sony Home - The official thread*

[patsu]

Why do you believe it's important to "express oneself adequately and freely", and imply this is only done with an open and 3D world? I still don't see how this is the way to go, it just doesn't make any sense -- it adds a lot of friction to what should be quick and dirty tasks (communicating with friends). When I want to talk to my friends, I want to quickly get ahold of them and not have to suffer through loading screens and fumbling around in an interface so our 3D avatars get placed next to eachother and we can just talk normally anyway.

Self expression ? It's one of the underlying drivers for a vibrant community. Services like media sharing wouldn't intrigue people if they don't feel the need to express themselves to begin with. The other important dynamics is finding like-minded people.

I have a broader definition of Home's UI. I don't think it has to be strictly 3D (since you can embed HTML surfaces, and overlay 2D panels over it). But the 3D portion allows the devs and users to provide more hints for other like-minded people to find them. I think Home still need some sort of people search services though.

Finally, the openness will provide more numbers to the platform. If I were Sony, I'd open up Home so that whatever was contributed in Home can be exported to the net (to hook people back). That's assuming users can submit content and LUA scripts to customize the environment.

I want to be able to see a quick list of which friends are online and then from there initiate a chat (voice or video) virtually instantenously. Whether they're in a game or not. This is the "holy grail" of social gaming with friends, the ubiquity of the service and the lack of frustration and hoops to jump through to use it. Sony needs to differentiate themselves so they're taking this other, more flashy way to do it and the response has been overwhelmingly negative. And we really should all know why that is -- it's just not a terribly good idea for most gamers. Even if they finally get the UI right, it'll be far more clunky and far more frustrating to use than a simple invite/menu system ubiquitous across all games and services on the console. And what is the payoff for all over this overhead? Pretty virtual landscapes (that get old fast) so our characters can sit there and do the odd weirdly-animated hand gesture while we talk? The payoff isn't worth the cost here.

The ubiquitous access to communication tools is indeed extremely important for maintaining existing relationships. A quick party management facility in XMB is also important for no frill users. I don't think they are mutually exclusive to Home (Home addresses the problem of "making new friends; growing the community" better). No idea how Sony is going to address the unified communication tool problem.

What Sony wants to do in Home is not wrong/bad. Athough it's not addressing the above utilitarian needs, it can provide a viable vision/platform for Sony to consolidate all its services together. From early indication, people are willing to spend in Home. I think it is an important avenue to keep PSN free as the service scales.

Home is going to appeal to a niche audience and, despite claims to the country, it is the same niche audience that plays Second Life. It's too heavy and obtrusive for "gamers" to use, and there's no real advantages to it. The closest thing I've heard to being advantageous to gamers is the idea of hosting pre-game lobbies inside of Home (which is ridiculous given the loading times it'd require). The only real use for Home is for people who love the idea of virtual 3D worlds to chat with (think Second Life) and for companies who want to use the opportunity for advertising (Red Bull, EA, etc).

Home appeals to the niche chatter audience today (although they can grow some more here due to earlier missteps). Home can appeal to more people if Sony plays its cards right. What's valueable in Home is the user community and the way services integrate together in a unified environment. The 3D interface uses XML-based Internet calls to invoke backend services. They can easily do a 2D interface if they want to.

Sony has dramatically missed the boat on this one. There's even an allusion to the idea that the "naysayers" just don't see the potential to the service in the changelogs, which to me reinforces just how delusional the people behind Home have become. They need to focus on what people want from the service, not what they think would be cool in a virtual world. They're clearly not the same things.

No idea whether they are delusional. They had $1 million sales in 1 week. They can evolve the service based on user feedback. If people really hated the 3D interface, they can add a 2D one upon request.

The operational problems now are (i) the communication between the users and Sony is a bit broken. They are learning pretty slowly to change this; (ii) the Home team cannot deliver fast enough.

For (i), Locust_Star's post above is an attempt to smooth the communication. Originally they tried to throw whatever they could complete first over the wall to the users. That angered the community because they didn't know where Home is heading. In general, people felt like mushrooms (kept in the dark, fed sh*t). I see Sony fumbling more, but in the process hopefully they also find opportunities to calibrate themselves to the users' overall needs. They need to package/schedule their deliverables properly to maximize the mileage for each phase. Perhaps if they (or another team) are going to address the unified communication need, then they should say something soon.

For (ii), I'd just enable user-generated content in a closed Home area (e.g., the private spaces); and evolve from there.

 

[-tkf-]

BTW, if you think a considerable amount of people play WoW for the "social aspect" (hanging around chatting and playing minigames), you are very, very mistaken...they play it for the game.

Many stays in the game because of the social aspects, it plays a major part of what WoW is.

 

[one]

As an avid player of MMORPG games, including WoW back to when it was in beta...there is no comparison. WoW is a game, Home is not. The minigames in Home don't even come close to making it qualify as a game, either.

I'm not saying "virtual worlds" are worthless, just that Sony's implementation and vision one is worthless to most people who use it as a gaming framework. There needs to be a <b>point</b> to them, just the fact that it's pretty, 3D, and free doesn't cut it. Second Life has many of the same obvious failures and shortcomings -- both "Worlds" will hype how many people they had try it out (accounts/registered users), but very few people actually stick around and play them. The reason for that is it's mindless and objectiveless.

Sony's objective for Home is to provide a sense of community for the PS3, but my post was describing why that's a misguided effort -- it adds too much interface friction and still doesn't address core issues (ubiquitous functionality in and outside of games, like Live has).

BTW, if you think a considerable amount of people play WoW for the "social aspect" (hanging around chatting and playing minigames), you are very, very mistaken...they play it for the game.

Yes Home is not WoW, not a complete game. It's because Home is a complement to stand-alone PS3 games. In other words Home is media and interspace that fill up what are not covered by isolated games experiences. It's a sink of user interests. In other words, it's an add-on to traditional games that makes them WoW-like.

Also as patsu notes 3D presentation is intuitive to sense the existence of other players side by side with you. While exploring Home just because it's not as boring as browsing product catalog pages, you may become curious about games which didn't interest you before. You have to see the fact that there are people who don't like to read a lot of text info!

If you feel the current implementation is not the best form, it's an implementation issue and not a conceptual flaw. Home adds another layer to the network, but you can skip it. If you don't like booting up Home, fine, PS3 has a web browser so you can point it to B3D

 

[Asher]

Yes Home is not WoW, not a complete game. It's because Home is a complement to stand-alone PS3 games. In other words Home is media and interspace that fill up what are not covered by isolated games experiences. It's a sink of user interests. In other words, it's an add-on to traditional games that makes them WoW-like.

It is not an add-on, really. It cannot run simultaneously with other games. What it is is a highly inefficient virtual lobby system that will frustrate the vast majority of gamers and cater to a small niche of gamers who don't mind the additional loading times and complications just so they can see a 3D avatar standing next to them as they talk.

Also as patsu notes 3D presentation is intuitive to sense the existence of other players side by side with you.

3D presentation is not any more intuitive than seeing a list of people online or near you or with similar gaming interests, etc. In many ways, Home is counter-intuitive -- what exists in a Home space is a subset of the real community. And while it is theoretically possible for all of my friends to be in the same Home space at the same time, that means they will not be in the same Home space as their friends at the same time. Home is a far more complicated implementation of a community than other implementations -- this is why I find it interesting you call it "intuitive". It is really far from it.

If you feel the current implementation is not the best form, it's an implementation issue and not a conceptual flaw. Home adds another layer to the network, but you can skip it. If you don't like booting up Home, fine, PS3 has a web browser so you can point it to B3D

Yes, Home is both a bad implementation and a bad concept. I recognize you see it as being "optional", and in many ways it is. But we're still missing basic gaming functionality (compared to Live). And considering how long they've been working on Home, I think it should be pretty obvious that if those resources were spent on a more functional, less flashy system like Live we'd have it by now.

 

[Asher]

Many stays in the game because of the social aspects, it plays a major part of what WoW is.

I'm utterly confused why we are talking about the social aspects of gaming. I recognize social aspects of gaming, especially online, are of the utmost importance. You don't need Home to do that, if anything Home just makes the socializing aspect more annoying and adds additional layers of friction.

I don't know of many players who play WoW and don't actually play the game -- that stand around and chat and never participate in the level system or any game mechanics. Not even on the most ardent RP servers do they do that.

Again, you may want to re-read my post -- social aspects are important. It is my assertion that Home actually fails at most social aspects compared to their contemporaries with tons of implementation issues, and even without these implementation issues the concept is highly flawed.

 

[Asher]

Self expression ? It's one of the underlying drivers for a vibrant community. Services like media sharing wouldn't intrigue people if they don't feel the need to express themselves to begin with. The other important dynamics is finding like-minded people.

Yes, this is exactly the point. Media sharing is a terrific example of the flawed concepts and poor priorities behind Home. It's a terrible idea and in reality, VERY few people actually use it. I remember many years ago, in 2000 or so, MS hired a bunch of college grads and put them in a house to hammer out products that'd appeal to the younger generation. They came out with all kinds of ideas like this, one of which shipped as a Messenger addon that let you share media with friends -- you could stream songs, photos, etc and then chat about them in real time. The only problem was many people tried it, but no one ever used it. It's the same problem with things like the Movie Theatre -- it's actually a laughably stupid idea. The 3D theatre obstructs your views, people chatting obstructs hearing it, the loading times just are an annoyance, and there's nothing to be gained from that. The NXE has a photo and media sharing app also, and no one really uses it.

They're things that sound great to certain people, but they are not practical or useful in the real world.

As for finding like-minded people -- how does Home do that in any way? In practical terms, Home takes a small subset of the actual community and puts you in a confined space and adds insane load times and a clunky interface on top of it. If anything, it is restricting your ability to meet likeminded folks because the pool of players you're interacting with is a tiny fractional subset of the actual playerbase.

I have a broader definition of Home's UI. I don't think it has to be strictly 3D (since you can embed HTML surfaces, and overlay 2D panels over it). But the 3D portion allows the devs and users to provide more hints for other like-minded people to find them. I think Home still need some sort of people search services though.

Again, this is utterly confusing to me. In what way does having a 3D interface with a tiny random subset of the full PSN community a tool to help find "like-minded people"? I sincerely hope you're not referring to the concept of wandering into the Resistance 2 space to find "like-minded people" who like Resistance 2....because this is clearly an extra layer of obfuscation -- what happened to meeting people who played Resistance 2 when you play Resistance 2? How is that not finding like-minded people?

Finally, the openness will provide more numbers to the platform. If I were Sony, I'd open up Home so that whatever was contributed in Home can be exported to the net (to hook people back). That's assuming users can submit content and LUA scripts to customize the environment.

What you're describing is Second Life. Have you ever used it? It's ghastly. It's also in a bit of a crisis of declining people actually using it, as more and more people recognize the futility of the concept...

The ubiquitous access to communication tools is indeed extremely important for maintaining existing relationships. A quick party management facility in XMB is also important for no frill users. I don't think they are mutually exclusive to Home (Home addresses the problem of "making new friends; growing the community" better). No idea how Sony is going to address the unified communication tool problem.

It's not necessarily mutually exclusive to Home unless you think about this from an organizational standpoint. Do you think the XMB would still be without a party system if Sony invested all of the time and money put into Home into core functionality in the XMB? One is clearly far easier to do than the other. Their priorities are backwards -- build the basic services then expand with the useless addons like Home after. One of the main reasons the Xbox 360 is dominating the PS3 in North America is Xbox Live, and the longer Sony is without a full competitor to it the more they'll hurt. I've got a PS3 and an Xbox 360 and I will always, 100% of the time buy multiplatform games on the 360 simply because of Live. This is a terrible, terrible business decision on Sony's part.

No idea whether they are delusional. They had $1 million sales in 1 week. They can evolve the service based on user feedback.

This is the same kind of hype that happened with Second Life. And I was killing myself laughing as the media creamed their collective pants over how successful it was. It's all smoke and mirrors. Apps like Second Life and Home have explosive initial popularity in terms of buying virtual land and in terms of buying virtual items and in terms of raw accounts registered, but it always rapidly fades. There's a reason Sony isn't talking about Home's sustained sales like Apple talked about sustained iTunes sales with regularity when it first launched. That's because, I can guarantee you, Home virtual sales have fallen off the face of the Earth.

 

[patsu]

Just a clarification...

It is not an add-on, really. It cannot run simultaneously with other games. What it is is a highly inefficient virtual lobby system that will frustrate the vast majority of gamers and cater to a small niche of gamers who don't mind the additional loading times and complications just so they can see a 3D avatar standing next to them as they talk.

The lobby does not need to run in parallel to the game all the time. Only one of them are active at any one time.

Home is not the first or only virtual world lobby system. I believe Hotshot Golf has it too. From users' feedback, the HSG's lobby works very well for them. So it boils down to the implementation, not the concept. Home is indeed more heavy weight compared to HSG's lobbies. So hopefully they can find some 2D + 3D way to optimize the experience.

Also, it is more than seeing a 3D avatar. You can do other acitivites in Home while waiting for people to show up, or the game to perform match making on the server side. e.g., Warhawk allows you to discuss the game around a 3D level map

3D presentation is not any more intuitive than seeing a list of people online or near you or with similar gaming interests, etc. In many ways, Home is counter-intuitive -- what exists in a Home space is a subset of the real community. And while it is theoretically possible for all of my friends to be in the same Home space at the same time, that means they will not be in the same Home space as their friends at the same time. Home is a far more complicated implementation of a community than other implementations -- this is why I find it interesting you call it "intuitive". It is really far from it.

The seggregation you described is already happening in game clans, with or without Home. People have their own cliques. In Home, you can organize a party with clan members, plus non-clan members.

I don't see where the confusion is. Either you use Home, or you don't. The game will do the right thing to match everyone up.

Yes, Home is both a bad implementation and a bad concept. I recognize you see it as being "optional", and in many ways it is. But we're still missing basic gaming functionality (compared to Live). And considering how long they've been working on Home, I think it should be pretty obvious that if those resources were spent on a more functional, less flashy system like Live we'd have it by now.

Nope. Home is not suitable for you, but it is most certainly not a bad concept. It might be a bad implementation.

Also like all active communities, while Home does risk adding frictions between users, it also stand to gain from positive energies amongst them. The long term benefit is once the natural relationships between the players are formed, they can grow naturally (e.g., Mean users may be blocked by all). It helps to train and group the users according to their affinity, instead of ignoring the problem altogether.

 

[Asher]

patsu..there's not going to be a long-term benefit because few people are actually using the service. Additionally, I'm still not at all clear how Home is magically training and grouping users according to affinity. Every time I've been in Home (and I'm in right now, exploring the 1.10 update) it's been a chaotic mess of teenagers talking about female avatars' boobs or people just wandering around not saying anything at all.

I've spent a total of maybe 45 mins in Home since it came out in its various versions, and I've not yet met a single person who I'd like to ever have a conversation with let alone add to my friends list.

I think what you're describing isn't happening in the real world -- it might be for you and the people you hang out with, but I caution you that it's certainly not happening for most people. This is why Home is getting an overwhelmingly negative reception in the gaming press and gaming communities at large. It reminds me of a slightly harder to use but prettier version of the AOL chatrooms in the late 1990s.

 

[Asher]

Just an observation from 1.10...it still takes a ridiculously long time to load avatars.

I'm on a 10Mbps connection and when I enter a zone (right now, Sully's Bar) it takes full two minutes for the "ghost images" to appear with clothing/model textures. That is patently ridiculous, it's kind of a core concept of the app to see visual representations of users...it shouldn't take that long, it ruins immersion and frustrates people.

Technically, why DOES it take so long? Aren't the models and textures stored locally (if not, they ought to be -- there's not that many!), and if so it's just sending a couple bytes of data indicating which texture/model to load where.

 

[patsu]

Yes, this is exactly the point. Media sharing is a terrific example of the flawed concepts and poor priorities behind Home. It's a terrible idea and in reality, VERY few people actually use it. I remember many years ago, in 2000 or so, MS hired a bunch of college grads and put them in a house to hammer out products that'd appeal to the younger generation. They came out with all kinds of ideas like this, one of which shipped as a Messenger addon that let you share media with friends -- you could stream songs, photos, etc and then chat about them in real time. The only problem was many people tried it, but no one ever used it. It's the same problem with things like the Movie Theatre -- it's actually a laughably stupid idea. The 3D theatre obstructs your views, people chatting obstructs hearing it, the loading times just are an annoyance, and there's nothing to be gained from that. The NXE has a photo and media sharing app also, and no one really uses it.

They're things that sound great to certain people, but they are not practical or useful in the real world.

Yes, yes. Microsoft also tried MS Bob which failed horribly. They also said that motion sensing does not work in gaming. ;-)
[size=-2]Those're Microsoft's problems right ?[/size]

What a small MS group said and did last time may have very little bearing on what Nintendo, Sony or Apple tries to do. If you look carefully, media sharing is "everywhere" on the net. We do that quite often in this fora too.

As for finding like-minded people -- how does Home do that in any way? In practical terms, Home takes a small subset of the actual community and puts you in a confined space and adds insane load times and a clunky interface on top of it. If anything, it is restricting your ability to meet likeminded folks because the pool of players you're interacting with is a tiny fractional subset of the actual playerbase.

For a start, it helps PS3 owners to find people who like to social first together. If someone doesn't want to make friends, it's futile to get them involved. They can have the mic, they can have the numbers, but it means very little in real life. I get friends request from Home all the time, and some of these people genuinely make an effort to connect with me, even on my busy schedule.

Again, this is utterly confusing to me. In what way does having a 3D interface with a tiny random subset of the full PSN community a tool to help find "like-minded people"? I sincerely hope you're not referring to the concept of wandering into the Resistance 2 space to find "like-minded people" who like Resistance 2....because this is clearly an extra layer of obfuscation -- what happened to meeting people who played Resistance 2 when you play Resistance 2? How is that not finding like-minded people?

Your mistake is the Home user base selection is natural (not random). They all like to socialize. It's also more than the lobby time or gaming window. In R2, I fought betan twice (according to him !), but I hardly noticed it

What you're describing is Second Life. Have you ever used it? It's ghastly. It's also in a bit of a crisis of declining people actually using it, as more and more people recognize the futility of the concept...

But Home is not SecondLife. And SecondLife is certainly not the only 3D world in existence. There are other examples (e.g., The Sims Online, CyWorld).

You can brand everything using your own prior experience. As long as you can't see things differently, you will continue to limit your own exposure no matter how many new services you tried. e.g., You mentioned MS's failed experience above. That seems to limit your ability to accept new avenues/evolution and differences. As they all said, failure is the mother of success.

It's not necessarily mutually exclusive to Home unless you think about this from an organizational standpoint. Do you think the XMB would still be without a party system if Sony invested all of the time and money put into Home into core functionality in the XMB? One is clearly far easier to do than the other. Their priorities are backwards -- build the basic services then expand with the useless addons like Home after. One of the main reasons the Xbox 360 is dominating the PS3 in North America is Xbox Live, and the longer Sony is without a full competitor to it the more they'll hurt. I've got a PS3 and an Xbox 360 and I will always, 100% of the time buy multiplatform games on the 360 simply because of Live. This is a terrible, terrible business decision on Sony's part.

In the first place, none of us know where XMB is going. XMB's party system may be blocked because of other backend revamps. The Home team has very different skillset from an XMB firmware programmer. I highly doubt that they interfere with each other.

As for PSN competitiveness vis-a-vis XBL, as long as you're willing to pay for it continuously, then naturally you will enjoy more benefits.

 

[patsu]

patsu..there's not going to be a long-term benefit because few people are actually using the service. Additionally, I'm still not at all clear how Home is magically training and grouping users according to affinity. Every time I've been in Home (and I'm in right now, exploring the 1.10 update) it's been a chaotic mess of teenagers talking about female avatars' boobs or people just wandering around not saying anything at all.

I've spent a total of maybe 45 mins in Home since it came out in its various versions, and I've not yet met a single person who I'd like to ever have a conversation with let alone add to my friends list.

There you go ago. They are not necessarily teenagers. I have met people from 14s to 40s in Home. Your own opinion is skewing your perception.

It's a natural selection because you were not there to look for friends to begin with. Naturally, you have voted yourself out. For people who are there to look for friends, they can presumably get what they look for.

I have been to Home. Everytime I start chatting to learn more about the people there, I get friends requests from them all the time. See the difference between your experience and mine ?

I think what you're describing isn't happening in the real world -- it might be for you and the people you hang out with, but I caution you that it's certainly not happening for most people. This is why Home is getting an overwhelmingly negative reception in the gaming press and gaming communities at large. It reminds me of a slightly harder to use but prettier version of the AOL chatrooms in the late 1990s.

Like I said, it is happening in the real world. Are you saying I am making up imaginery friends ?

At the same time, I have said that the numbers are still small, but it's happening. If Sony plays its cards right to expand the base, it can grow.

 

[Asher]

Yes, yes. Microsoft also tried MS Bob which failed horribly. They also said that motion sensing does not work in gaming. ;-)

What a small MS group said and did last time may have very little bearing to what Nintendo, Sony or Apple tries to do. If you look carefully, media sharing is "everywhere" on the net. We do that quite often in this fora too.

You're talking about a different thing -- I'm talking about media sharing in a live sense. You're all watching the same video or listening to the same music at the same time. And no, this isn't everywhere on the net -- but there are many examples of failed attempts to make that popular on the net, from MSN Messenger to NXE to Home...

Your mistake is the Home user base selection is natural (not random). They all like to socialize.

Actually, the biggest trait I've noticed among the users in Home are that they exhibit many anti-social traits...I'm looking at people with names like "whopoohted" and "curbstomp" and "youguyssuck22".

But Home is not SecondLife. And SecondLife is certainly not the only 3D world in existence. There are other examples (e.g., The Sims Online, CyWorld).

Pretty poor examples. The Sims Online was a game with a lot of hype and beta interest, and failed miserably. Isn't it closed down now?

Home is far closer to Second Life than I think you want to admit. Especially when you add in user-generated content like you were talking about...

You can brand everything using your own prior experience. As long as you can't see things differently, you will continue to limit your own exposure no matter how many new services you tried. e.g., You mentioned MS's failed experience above. That seems to limit your ability to accept new avenues/evolution and differences. As they all said, failure is the mother of all inventions.

I'm just seeing Home go in the same routes as many other failed services, and it's certainly not doing anything the other services did any better. In many respects, it's a step backwards compared to the other failed services. MSN's media sharing service had a far larger install base and was far easier to use than Home's, and still failed...

As for PSN competitiveness vis-a-vis XBL, as long as you're willing to pay for it, then naturally you will enjoy more benefits.

As crossplatform game sales show, I think this attitude is what's killing Sony's game sales. I think it's clear Sony is probably spending more money than Microsoft in terms of online development -- tons of dedicated servers, Home can't be cheap to run and maintain, etc. The problem isn't funding or paying for Xbox Live, the problem is simply the design and competent developers and managers. XMB and Home are both viable case studies in botched software development, and to be honest I wouldn't be too surprised if some textbook starts mentioning them in the same chapter as the early Vista development woes.

 

[Asher]

There you go ago. They are not necessarily teenagers. I have met people from 14s to 40s in Home. Your own opinion is skewing your perception.

It's a natural selection because you were not there to look for friends to begin with. Naturally, you have voted yourself out. For people who are there to look for friends, they can presumably get what they look for.

Why do you assume I was not there to look for friends? That's precisely why I was giving it a shot. I've had PS3 since Feb 07 and I've got zero people on my PSN friends list compared to about 50 on XBL. It's something I wanted to fix, but I ended up getting disgusted by the people in Home more than wanting to add them.

Right now, and I'm not joking, "LIK_ME_BALZ" is talking to "maseov069" while standing on top of the bar saying stuff like "wnya, lol, ******, u got a car, wat citi u live in", etc. It's perplexing how you can meet somebody in this service? Maybe the Euro Home servers are different...

 

[-tkf-]

I'm utterly confused why we are talking about the social aspects of gaming. I recognize social aspects of gaming, especially online, are of the utmost importance. You don't need Home to do that, if anything Home just makes the socializing aspect more annoying and adds additional layers of friction.

I don't know of many players who play WoW and don't actually play the game -- that stand around and chat and never participate in the level system or any game mechanics. Not even on the most ardent RP servers do they do that.

Again, you may want to re-read my post -- social aspects are important. It is my assertion that Home actually fails at most social aspects compared to their contemporaries with tons of implementation issues, and even without these implementation issues the concept is highly flawed.

You seemed to make a strong point of WOW not relying on the Social aspect to keep the game strong.

My guild 130+ acounts, 2 marriages, one new born, several real life friendships (and sex of course ) buildt across country borders, alot play the game "on the side" while they socialize. Hell some just idle in the capital cities and chat.

And you said:

BTW, if you think a considerable amount of people play WoW for the "social aspect" (hanging around chatting and playing minigames), you are very, very mistaken...they play it for the game.

I can guarantee you that most of my guild wouldn´t have lasted through TBC without the social aspect. It´s the glue.

If Sony only accomplishes a fragment of what WoW has done Home will be growing forever and ever. Of course this requires that Home becomes the Hub for every game and everything you do with your PS3, and it looks like thats their plan.

 

[Asher]

You seemed to make a strong point of WOW not relying on the Social aspect to keep the game strong.

My guild 130+ acounts, 2 marriages, one new born, several real life friendships (and sex of course ) buildt across country borders, alot play the game "on the side" while they socialize. Hell some just idle in the capital cities and chat.

And you said:


I can guarantee you that most of my guild wouldn´t have lasted through TBC without the social aspect. It´s the glue.

If Sony only accomplishes a fragment of what WoW has done Home will be growing forever and ever. Of course this requires that Home becomes the Hub for every game and everything you do with your PS3, and it looks like thats their plan.

You misunderstood what I meant -- I understand social play is a big part of MMORPGs.

I was referring to people playing solely for the social aspect (as in, using it as a virtual chat room). I was hoping that would be obvious given the context of comparing it to Home.

 

[patsu]

You're talking about a different thing -- I'm talking about media sharing in a live sense. You're all watching the same video or listening to the same music at the same time. And no, this isn't everywhere on the net -- but there are many examples of failed attempts to make that popular on the net, from MSN Messenger to NXE to Home...

...then MS screwed up and you should go after them.

Even without Home, the R1 clan used to play music in the same lobby together.

Also, why should Home be limited to media sharing in a live sense ? XBL or MSN may lack the context Home has to bring people together. It's just a window or panel. There is nothing to keep people interested in any common topic. Now that would be random.

Actually, the biggest trait I've noticed among the users in Home are that they exhibit many anti-social traits...I'm looking at people with names like "whopoohted" and "curbstomp" and "youguyssuck22".

Huh ? There are plenty of "normal" nicks in Home. You'd just highlighted the controversial ones.

Pretty poor examples. The Sims Online was a game with a lot of hype and beta interest, and failed miserably. Isn't it closed down now?

It shut down in August 2008.

Home is far closer to Second Life than I think you want to admit. Especially when you add in user-generated content like you were talking about...

It's different because Home has a gamer focus and it's a horizontal platform. Marketing-wise, Second Life is more generic and is positioned as a destination itself. User generated content is what kept Second Life alive. It can help to liven up Home as well. Without game launching and other gaming-related services, Home is indeed a gamer chatting platform. This is changing slowly though.

I'm just seeing Home go in the same routes as many other failed services, and it's certainly not doing anything the other services did any better. In many respects, it's a step backwards compared to the other failed services. MSN's media sharing service had a far larger install base and was far easier to use than Home's, and still failed...

MSN these days is a hodge podge of services glued together, like Yahoo. The most valuable part of such Internet services is really the search engine. Small and more focused sites have done better than MSN. MySpace, Twitter, Facebooks are all pretty real time in terms of sharing what the users are doing.

As crossplatform game sales show, I think this attitude is what's killing Sony's game sales. I think it's clear Sony is probably spending more money than Microsoft in terms of online development -- tons of dedicated servers, Home can't be cheap to run and maintain, etc. The problem isn't funding or paying for Xbox Live, the problem is simply the design and competent developers and managers. XMB and Home are both viable case studies in botched software development, and to be honest I wouldn't be too surprised if some textbook starts mentioning them in the same chapter as the early Vista development woes.

Their execution is indeed haphazard. But I don't think Home is necessarily a bad concept.

 

[patsu]

Why do you assume I was not there to look for friends? That's precisely why I was giving it a shot. I've had PS3 since Feb 07 and I've got zero people on my PSN friends list compared to about 50 on XBL. It's something I wanted to fix, but I ended up getting disgusted by the people in Home more than wanting to add them.

Ha ha... I guess it's a natural selection then. I always end up with 2-3 friend requests after chatting in Home. The annoying people will just end up getting reported over time. It will help to enhance match making in the future. ^_^

It's rather telling that you have 0 friends in your PSN friends list. At the very least, B3D has a gamer id thread. It's just a few clicks away to get something going (That's what I did to start my own !).

Right now, and I'm not joking, "LIK_ME_BALZ" is talking to "maseov069" while standing on top of the bar saying stuff like "wnya, lol, ******, u got a car, wat citi u live in", etc. It's perplexing how you can meet somebody in this service? Maybe the Euro Home servers are different...

I am on the US server.

All the people I chatted with (long enough) were 25+, men and women.

EDIT: Ah... and there was a 19 year old wife-of-someone still in college too. She sounded pretty mature and upbeat in life despite the down economy.

 

[Asher]

...then MS screwed up and you should go after them.

Even without Home, the R1 clan used to play music in the same lobby together.

Why should Home be limited to media sharing in a live sense ? Also XBL or MSN lacks the context Home has to bring people together. It's just a window or panel. There is nothing to keep people interested in any common topic. Now that would be random.

That's not true -- both MSN and XBL have group chat/party modes that are functionally the same as standing in the same Home space.

Huh ? There are plenty of "normal" nicks in Home. You'd just highlighted the controversial ones.

There are, but those are ones I saw all within the same room. About 25% of the names in Sully's Bar where I logged in were stupid and/or controversial. And about 75% of the people doing the "talking" had those stupid and/or controversial names...

It's different because Home has a gamer focus and it's a horizontal platform. Marketing-wise, Second Life is more generic and is positioned as a destination itself. User generated content is what kept Second Life alive. It can help to liven up Home as well. Without game launching and other gaming-related services, Home is indeed a generic chatting platform. This is changing slowly though.

So, Home is nothing like Second Life except Home is just like Second Life but you can launch games from inside it. Is that right?

That's not really a strong thing to differentiate on. People can meet in Second Life then alt-tab and launch a game together too, it's just more work to do.

MSN these days is a hodge podge of services glued together, like Yahoo. The most valuable part of such Internet services is really the search engine. Small and more focused sites have done better than MSN. MySpace, Twitter, Facebooks are all pretty real time in terms of sharing what the users are doing.

I'm confused -- none of MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook feature real-time media sharing. We keep getting off-track here.

 

[Asher]

Ha ha... I guess it's a natural selection then. I always end up with 2-3 friend requests after chatting in Home. The annoying people will just end up getting reported over time. It will help to enhance match making in the future. ^_^

It's rather telling that you have 0 friends in your PSN friends list. At the very least, B3D has a gamer id thread. It's just a few clicks away to get something going (That's what I did to start my own !).

Yeah, the problem with that is even though people post on the same site they're not necessarily my friend, you know? I'm not big on spamming my list with people I vaguely know, it sort of cheapens the service. It's like facebook, I'm the kind of guy with "only" 30 or 40 friends but they're all genuinely people I consider to be friends -- other people use the service to add people they've met just once in their life or know online.

I haven't played very many Playstation games online at all and when I did virtually no one talked or otherwise communicated so it was hard to tell who I liked or not. As a result, no one added to the friends list.

I've got only a couple friends in real life with a PS3 and none of them play any games at all online, and maybe the odd game offline only -- so they're not on the list either. Most people use it as a media player/bluray player.

 

[patsu]

That's not true -- both MSN and XBL have group chat/party modes that are functionally the same as standing in the same Home space.

Yes but who uses them ? and under what circumstances ? The only time I notice people use them are for quick conferences, and then everyone hurry back to their own lives. Under that scenario, we share media (i.e., technical drawing, slides) via Email or file transfer. Background music would be the last thing on our list to share.

There are, but those are ones I saw all within the same room. About 25% of the names in Sully's Bar where I logged in were stupid and/or controversial. And about 75% of the people doing the "talking" had those stupid and/or controversial names...

Sure but if they are flocking together, then perhaps they have their own little group going. You may be out of their "league".

I can usually find someone "normal" sitting/standing around, waiting to chat.

So, Home is nothing like Second Life except Home is just like Second Life but you can launch games from inside it. Is that right?

Home is not like Second Life from marketing and business perspective.

In its current form, Home is different from Second Life because there is no user generated content, which differetiate Second Life rather well. Second Life also has controversial (paying) adult sections. In the future, *if* Home adds user generated content and game launching, then I believe they will differentiate themselves even more... because the content selection would be very different.

That's not really a strong thing to differentiate on. People can meet in Second Life then alt-tab and launch a game together too, it's just more work to do.

Yes, but Home's focus is on the gamers. The games are different. The game items awarded to Home users will be different. The organized events and activities will all be gamer centric.

I'm confused -- none of MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook feature real-time media sharing. We keep getting off-track here.

... because Home is NOT restricted to real-time media sharing. e.g., The movies are downloaded and played, the clubhouses are persistent. Those 3 services all have various form of media sharing capability (Be it text, photo, or video).