The Ultimate Article on Playstation Home vs. Second Life – Part A

Santa brought me a PS3 for Christmas (OK, I admit, I forced him) because I was interested in Sony’s Home platform. It is a great Blue Ray player, too: sleek and very quiet. But back to Home. I finally found a little time to check it out after New Years Eve and spend some 10 or 12 hours inworld over the course of a few days. It was a mixed experience – and a little disappointing all in all.

Home is NOT “Sony’s Second Life” – much less, actually, than you might believe

Many publications (online and offline) could not refrain from comparing Home to Second Life – usually dissing Home with such comparisons, as it s still common wisdom in the journalistic crowd that SL was this huge hype and failure of 2007. Wasn’t it? ;-) Alas, while such a comparison is not without merit (both platforms constitute a virtual world), the conclusions drawn from it are utter bullshit.

The four most important facts in the context of such a comparison:

• Playstation Home has a lot less similarities with Second Life than a cursory first look (especially a look at static pictures) will reveal
• If Home succeeds this will not be a stamp of approval for virtual worlds or Second Life
• If Home succeeds this will be no indication that SL (or virtual worlds) are “doomed”
• What is missing from Home might actually be those features, which are most important to the success of Second Life – which leads to some of the most annoying disappointments with Home

More on that “below the fold”.

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But first: This article is NOT about dissing Home. Actually I liked Home right from the start. There are many reasons to like it:

• It is extremely easy to install and setup. As soon as you have registered an account with Sony’s Playstation Network service, two or three clicks on the x-Button will lead you into this virtual world. Depending on the manufacturing date of your PS3 a software update will be necessary. But even this just means two more clicks on x and a few minutes spent waiting
• It is easy to use. Navigation inworld is easy with the standard game controller, Even (limited camera) movements can be learned in a minute. Each possible action and interaction is clearly labeled. The menus are context-sensitive and well structured. “Learning” the basics of Home will usually take no more a few minutes for someone used to virtual worlds or RPGs. It might take an hour for others (and a good tutorial is missing currently)
• The visual experience is pleasant. The visual quality is great (though not as great as the promo videos might lead you to believe). Most sceneries are brightly lit and beautifully designed
• The avatars – well, most of them – are beautiful and well designed
• The platform allows the implementation of “real games” with a performance that rivals dedicated console games
• Etc. etc.

Playstation Home certainly is not a “bad” product.

Still it suffers from some major “issues” (and those are very interesting especially in comparison with Second Life):

• The visual quality is not as great as expected (as was already mentioned). It is significantly better than SL typically. But Home is NOT HD quality. Probably in an attempt to save processing power, the software uses a reduced resolution with clearly visible pixels and artifacts. And the avatars – while able to move very realistically – actually do not look as good as a well-done avatar in Second Life. Especially the faces look like they were done in a video game from at least one generation before the PS3.

All avatars are … kids! Or, to be honest: they are optimized to look like humans in the age bracket from 14 – 24. The software offers many elaborate functionalities to personalize your avatar (not as much as SL, Twinity, There or IMVU, though). But no matter, how hard I tried, I always ended up with an adolescent boy.

• All avatars dress in one style: streetwear. There are many options for t-shirts, sweatshirts, and short pants available. The only skirt in the standard inventory for women is an ultra-short mini. Shoe selection is limited to sandals, sneakers or going barefoot. To sum it up: It was not to easy for me to “identify” with me avatar ;-) Actually this might be a temporary issues, as new clothes will be created and someday Sony might add something like “skins” to Home. Who knows. This is still Beta.
• Home offers a very limited world to explore. You can “see” some nice landscapes in the distance – but you can’t go there. Where you can go is: your “apartment”, a shopping mall with less than half a dozen shops, a movie theater, a bowling alley combined with a collection of arcade games and an open air dance floor. That’s it! After a little more than one or two hours, you will have seen most of what is to see in Home.
• Moving from location to location is always accompanied by rather long load times. It’s even more annoying than in Twinity. There is no way to smoothly walk through a door and enter a building. Every door triggers a scene change and each scene change takes from a few seconds to more than half a minute – more, when you enter as scene for the first time.

And – yes, I know this sounds arrogant – most conversions consist of endless variations of “How r u?”, “This sucks, major!”, “Yr cool”, “Where r u from?” “What other games you play?” And nearly any conversation between avatars of different (apparent) gender starts with the three questions “Where u from?”, “How old r u?” and “U have a myspace?” in exactly this order. I still fail to see, why this should be important in a virtual world. But these guys obviously come with a different set of expectations. To illustrate that a little: If you design yourself a female avatar (which I did, of course) and dress this avatar with a little more style than what is “standard” (selecting a preset and changing hair color) you can not walk more than a few meters without receiving friendship offers by the dozen. Horny young males can be fairly aggressive …

This is nothing new to Second Life veterans of course. It is probably just emphasized by the socio-demographic profile of Home’s user base. ;-)

But … as friendship (and virtual romance and more …) are important features of virtual worlds, is Home an interesting alternative for people using other virtual worlds currently?

I am not sure. Lets look at the major activities, which people like to do in the more advanced virtual worlds:

Activities for which Home (currently?) is not well suited

For those, who like to go clubbing ... there are no clubs and there is no way to play individual music streams. For those who like to decorate their virtual homes, there are no decorative elements available other than two dozen pieces of furniture two cacti and two plants. For those who like to “play Barbie”, the selection of clothes is too limited. For those, who like to go shopping … there is not much to buy. For those, who are looking for virtual romance, the platform is severly limited. You cannot style your avatar sexy, or elegant or … “different” at all. Virtual sex is nearly impossible. Avatars cannot move in any other way than by applying two dozen pre-defined moves and text chat is automatically censored. For those, who like to “create stuff”, there is no way to do that. For those who like to “play entrepreneur”, there is no way to deal with other avatars. For those, who like to explore, there is one Main Plaza and less than 10 other locations.

I know that this might sound utterly unfair. Home is still in early beta, of course. I am afraid, that some of the limitations I have mentioned, are intentional, though, and not a sign of an unfinished platform. I can’t be sure of that. Sony did not publish any kind of development roadmap. But there are certain indicators about the direction Sony is going and about which business model they are trying to apply.

In its current incarnation, Home is basically a relatively small chat platform with a few dozen different “rooms”.

More details on that in Part B …

Comments

[Thomas]

"You cannot style your avatar … “different” at all." This sounds like the biggest disadvantage to me. Imho virtual worlds are a lot about visually expressing your (inner) self (alongside with commuinating). Not being able to style yourself different than anybody else or worst case: meeting dozends of look-a-likes will prevent any user of vw today from using Home.

[Torrid Luna]

The strange, reptilian look of all non-SL avatars is most prominent. One just cannot identify with that, no matter what clothes...

Nb., cybering "against" an activated explicite-language filter could actually be interesting... I propose the term "Text-Karezza" for it. ;-) #nsfw

[Madame Maracas]

Frankly from what I've seen in promos and read online I suspect Home should be compared to There.com, not SL more fairly for it's vetted, semi-homogenized content, and smaller range of real estate.

IF they do the things that There.com does well (games, physics, vehicles) they might have a chance seeing as they have the built-in muscle/drawing power of the platform to bring folks in world. However, I suspect most game/world developers have severely underestimated what it really takes to make a viable "world" of content and community.

Hubris stings.

[Gaby Benkwitz aka Consiliera]

Good points. Avatar cusomization: I was able to make the avatar much older by adding lines and by tweakingt the head shape as far as I remember. The only thing that really annoys me is
1) there is no long blonde hair available, not even for money
2) we can't build (no UGC)

And #1 is the direct result of #2

[Aleida aka Cecille Enoch]

That's right Sony's HOME is NOT Sony's Second Life. In a way I don't believe HOME will evolve into a platform such as Second Life. For now it does offer a nice variation on other console owner interaction like those of the Wii or Xbox 360.

I like how easy it is to navigate through Home. It's much easier than making your first steps in Second Life. I'm also a little disappointed about the limit character customization.

I have to make a sidenote about the conversations you mentioned in HOME. They are actually quite similar to the first lines I read when I started out in Second Life in April 2007. When I was busy with customizing my avatar on Orientation Island, I immediately got hit on by a guy who asked if I had an msn/cam account. And during my first weeks questions like "Where are you from?" and "Do you have msn?" were pretty common.

[rpg games]

Yeah i totally agree, there are a lot of differences between SL and Home. Both are great, in their own way and both bring fun, games and social interactions. Great article, i have always been amazed by how complex and amazing some virtual worlds became!