An avatar based chat room, empty of people and activity, but full of adverts.
Overall, it is a beautiful looking but entirely empty world, with a limited selection of "arcade" games that you can participate in. I don't know how many people it can hold, or whether or not there are multiple copies of these spaces to stop it from becoming overcrowded, but the entire thing just seems completely devoid of people and really corporate and tacky, as though it was only created to push as many products at you as they could. Some of the games are fun, there is bowling, and pool in the bowling alley as well as arcade games. The Echochrome demo is fun. There is chess, draughts and a multiplayer balloon game in the plaza. There are many things you can do while there, but all are short, with poor interaction from the avatars (mine bowled several seconds after the ball had launched itself across the room) and are terribly cheap. They only have limited places, which seems odd to me, particularly with the arcade games. If all you see while you are playing them is the game, and all anyone else sees is you standing near an arcade machine, why make it 1:1 person to machine? Why not allow anyone within a certain distance able to use it, and have it cached like a flash game? I can understand with the bowling and chess, as the avatars sort of look like they are playing. The loading times between each area are long too, particularly as you have to download each area. The only good thing about that is that it lets you download areas in the background, so you can go and do something else.
The text interface is quite badly done, although I understand that you can get a keyboard which would make sense. It took me a while to get to grips with the controls, which made for an embarrassing first hour. There are some handy short-cuts tho, which you can access through the left and right trigger buttons.
This does make for some incredibly repetitive conversations, all along the lines of "Hello. Where are you from?" "I don't have a keyboard" as well as some hotkeyed "interaction" movements, such as dance, laugh, cheer etc.
The cinema seems to be quite pointless at the moment as well. You can go in and view trailers, but there are only about 5. Not only that but you have to go to a different room to view each one. Why not have a long advert reel? Or a menu that allows you to look at a few without wandering around? Your character doesn't even sit down on the chairs when they go in, I felt quite disappointed. The cinema has so much potential, I could go and see a film with my friend half way across the world. You could pay a small sum (or use PS3 points) and then sit and watch it, and be able to chat to your friends. The zoom function would be good then if you actually wanted to see it, so you could block out the surrounding details. Or if it was some schlock horror, you could have your own mystery science theatre set up, and slag it off the whole way through, and only your friends could come.
The gallery spaces seem just as advertising heavy, at the time of writing this it was inundated with Fat Princess characters. The minigame was quite fun, and on completing it I got a new Fat Princess piece of furniture. The idea is good, and some of the arcade games have also capitalised on this method of advertising. I got an Echochrome suit, and I have seen many people wandering around with white ninja coats on. Sadly, most of the world is just covered in uninspired billboards and posters.
The video screens are not much better. Many of the screens take ages to buffer, or don't even work at all. In a world which is only there to plug new products, I think this is very shoddy. The bowling alley has a screen toward one end of the hall, and it repeatedly plays an advert for its "jukebox" feature. I heard the song "Bonkers" by Dizee Rascall play about 20 times in the time I was there, and it isn't even the whole thing. I could not work out how to interact with the screen other than to look at it, so I assume that you cannot change what it is playing. How cheap! Surely they could have had a small selection of free songs to play? Along with this repetitive music, were a group of people who insisted on dancing with their avatars. Now at first that must
seem pretty neat, but seriously, where is the fun long term? I've had two or three "guys" who walk up to me and ask me to dance, but the whole things just feels really stupid and fake, just like watching the Sims have sex. I don't really feel like I'm doing it, and it doesn't communicate anything, so why bother? Can't I have a middle finger? Or a "You pulled" fist movement? The behaviour of the inhabitants of Home is also dubious, but I appreciate that Sony cannot be held accountable for that. Swear-words seem to be self-censoring, but I have not tried to swear, so I can't verify that. I was asked for sex within about 10 minutes of first logging on, and although that has seemed to died down, I do see people trying to "pull" in front of me.
The only part of this massive marketing campaign that seemed any fun was a long series of puzzles and minigames called Xi. It was an interactive hunt starting with some graffiti appearing on the walls, and then a few virals appeared on the screens. Slowly puzzles appeared, and there was new content every day. However it still didn't feel as interesting as some other online treasurehunts, such as PerplexCity. Everything was a bit shallow, and all seemed to be geared towards some market research. I suppose that all of the "rewards" you get are, currently Buzz are giving away Tomato heads for people to wear. While it is cool that you get something for participating, it is still free marketing for them, and I feel that is a bit cynical.
I understand that Sony wanted to jump on the Second Life bandwagon, and it must be quite hard on a console versus the limitless internet, but technical issues aside, I just don't feel like they are trying. There is a half-hearted attempt to "create a community", but in truth a community will create itself around pretty much anything it has in common, so this just feels manipulative. If there was more to do for free, and fewer adverts, or at least a better attempt to make the advertising fun, then more people would join in. Sony have missed the point of escapism by plastering their creation with product placement. It has the potential to be so much more, but at present it is a knock off of a dying world, empty of life, soulless and obsolete.