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Level 3
On Friday 1st May the SCEE Home Community Q&A was held. Below is the Summary of the Q&A.
Drexl: Home is now being focused more on being a gaming platform, by that, I don’t necessarily mean you will only come here to play games. But that everything you can do in Home should be gaming-related, where possible. A couple of years ago it was in the wilderness, we knew we had a platform that was potentially very powerful, but we hadn’t really decided what we wanted to do with it! So now we try and give a clear gaming focus to everything we do, and although we’re a little light on content at the moment (which i’ve apologised for before), you will see that whatever appears in Home has that gaming link. Even talking to non-gaming partners, for instance. Red Bull being a good example.
Drexl: With a 3D trophy room, only your friends would be able to access and view. If we’re serious about working towards making Home a great gaming service, then we have to offer an easy way for you to walk up to someone and see immediately what they like and what their strengths are. That’s why the decision was taken to shift development away from that for the meantime. That’s not to say we won’t look at an implementation of some sort later on, but for now we feel we can better spend our time building other things in Home.
Drexl: Music in Home is really important to us (and to me – I’m a drummer, so it’s close to my heart). Here’s the thing about Listen@Home, In SCEE we are using an older version of Home Square. Our colleagues in the US decided to rebuild there’s a little while ago. Ours, being an older design doesn’t have sufficient memory allocation to cater for multiple interactive objects within it. Like a music player for example. There are also really complex licensing issues in our regions, which prevent us simply being able to allow you guys to play music to each other, which is unfortunate. But, I’m talking to a couple of companies at
TedTheDog: The idea is, we know people want to listen to music whilst they chat. So some means of providing you with a choice of music you can listen to as a group is called for.
TedTheDog: One thing we’ve learnt from the bubble machine is we need to ensure items can’t be used to grief players. We all know the bubble machine is quite a weapon in some contexts.
Drexl: The key thing, i think, is making sure that interactive objects actually enhance being in Home. So we want to develop objects that allow you to collaborate, and play together. Whether we are building spaces ourselves, or whether they are built by a partner like EA, we try and encourage interactivity, and where possible, multi-player activities. We’re really focused on getting you new content at the moment, It’s possible that the Stuff Store will be removed and replaced by a different store altogether. We don’t know yet, we’re trying to work out the best thing to do with it!
TedTheDog: Yes, the ability to talk to a group, perhaps your club, across instances is in the plans. Text chat is a great medium, and the idea that it’s limited by only being in a single space is understood. So more traditional chat style features are something that will be added. I’m someone who’s asking for that.
Drexl: We’ve fed a number of requests like this into the core team. Again, being honest, these are “nice to haves”, not “essential” at the moment. When it comes down to whether the developers should focus on, for instance, cross-instance chat, or building previews in the store, I’m sure you’ll agree, there is a clear winner. A lot of Home is about priority, and trying to focus energy on the most appropriate tasks. It’s an ongoing situation, we’re tinkering all the time, but there is a core development list that we try to stick to first.
Drexl: A good example of what would be nice, but that in reality didn’t work, would be... When we first started talking about having 3D shops in Home, so like walking into HMV, or whatever, and looking at virtual shelves, it quickly became clear, though, that the best and most efficient way of shopping in a virtual world, was a 2D interface. It just makes things quicker and clearer. This doesn’t preclude suggestions like yours though, which would be effective enhancements. We’ll get there, bit by bit.
Drexl: I personally took the decision to release in English honestly, and in an incomplete state to demonstrate to you that i intend to act on what i’ve said in my response to the open letter topic. Yes we intend to try and simultaneously ”ship” wherever possible in the future. It’s not always in our hands, especially where 3rd party publishers are concerned. Companies don’t always launch games globally, and the same thing applies to Home. But when we can, we will.
TedTheDog: Some of it yes, some of it has been quite a surprise. Our traditional online audience has always been male dominated and the female audience has appeared seemingly from out of nowhere in Home. Which was partly behind the poor ratio of male to female clothing in the stores. From a moderation angle it’s about what we expected, we knew the old moderation adage “people are the problem” and planned for lots of people, which logically extends to lots of problems. However, people seem well empowered with the grief reporting tool. The worst cases of behaviours seem to be also policed by the community to an extent too.
Drexl: OK, here’s the vision... Every game we produce should have game launching built into it by default. Although remember one thing with PSN games, much smaller budgets, much smaller teams. So therefore, quite often, a team might not think game launching is as important as another game play mechanic. So it might not happen. But it’s a long and twisting road. Remember that at any one time, every game is at different points in its development cycle. And things like game launching need to be built in from the start ideally, although we can patch sometimes, as well. We’ll get to a point when it’s just a default feature, but it’s going to take a while to reach it.
Drexl: Hehe! Simple answer is Yes... I’ll say this... What you doing next Thursday? :-) And i’ll leave it at that.
People present:
Drexl – SCEE Home Manager
TedTheDog – SCEE Home Community Manager
Drvixx - Host
Milnerant - Witness
Carly_Alexander - Witness
TedTheDog – SCEE Home Community Manager
Drvixx - Host
Milnerant - Witness
Carly_Alexander - Witness
Does Playstation Home have a brief on what it needs to deliver? If so, how has it changed from the early development days into the present, in open beta?
Drexl: Home is now being focused more on being a gaming platform, by that, I don’t necessarily mean you will only come here to play games. But that everything you can do in Home should be gaming-related, where possible. A couple of years ago it was in the wilderness, we knew we had a platform that was potentially very powerful, but we hadn’t really decided what we wanted to do with it! So now we try and give a clear gaming focus to everything we do, and although we’re a little light on content at the moment (which i’ve apologised for before), you will see that whatever appears in Home has that gaming link. Even talking to non-gaming partners, for instance. Red Bull being a good example.
There were plans for Trophies to apart of Home back in closed beta. Will Trophies still be implemented in some way?
Drexl: With a 3D trophy room, only your friends would be able to access and view. If we’re serious about working towards making Home a great gaming service, then we have to offer an easy way for you to walk up to someone and see immediately what they like and what their strengths are. That’s why the decision was taken to shift development away from that for the meantime. That’s not to say we won’t look at an implementation of some sort later on, but for now we feel we can better spend our time building other things in Home.
TedTheDog: The sharing your trophies thing is quite important i think. Look at the number of people in the forums with signatures that have their trophy information in them. We know people want to share and friend’s lists are limited.
Listen@Home is an interactive music player in the Central Plaza of the US Home. Will this or a similar features, like a TV be brought into the EU Home?
Drexl: Music in Home is really important to us (and to me – I’m a drummer, so it’s close to my heart). Here’s the thing about Listen@Home, In SCEE we are using an older version of Home Square. Our colleagues in the US decided to rebuild there’s a little while ago. Ours, being an older design doesn’t have sufficient memory allocation to cater for multiple interactive objects within it. Like a music player for example. There are also really complex licensing issues in our regions, which prevent us simply being able to allow you guys to play music to each other, which is unfortunate. But, I’m talking to a couple of companies at
the moment who we’re going to work with on music in Home, and some of the stuff is really exciting. I can’t give too much away until we sign the deals, but it’s going to involve music-themed games. Like artist appearances and interviews, exclusive music content (audio and visual), merchandise and items. And an element of shareable music, that you can enjoy together – but this bit needs fleshing out.
TedTheDog: The idea is, we know people want to listen to music whilst they chat. So some means of providing you with a choice of music you can listen to as a group is called for.
We already have a bubble machine in our inventory to play with. What new items can we expect to see in our Inventory/Stuff store in the future?
TedTheDog: One thing we’ve learnt from the bubble machine is we need to ensure items can’t be used to grief players. We all know the bubble machine is quite a weapon in some contexts.
Drexl: The key thing, i think, is making sure that interactive objects actually enhance being in Home. So we want to develop objects that allow you to collaborate, and play together. Whether we are building spaces ourselves, or whether they are built by a partner like EA, we try and encourage interactivity, and where possible, multi-player activities. We’re really focused on getting you new content at the moment, It’s possible that the Stuff Store will be removed and replaced by a different store altogether. We don’t know yet, we’re trying to work out the best thing to do with it!
Currently you can only have a phone call between two people in Home. Are there any plans to implement a type of conference call feature? Where a phone call can be held between more people and over different spaces?
TedTheDog: Yes, the ability to talk to a group, perhaps your club, across instances is in the plans. Text chat is a great medium, and the idea that it’s limited by only being in a single space is understood. So more traditional chat style features are something that will be added. I’m someone who’s asking for that.
Are there any plans for a ‘Clothing/Item Preview’ in the shopping mall? So you would be able to have a better look at the item before you buy. Maybe try the item of clothing on your avatar ect?
Drexl: We’ve fed a number of requests like this into the core team. Again, being honest, these are “nice to haves”, not “essential” at the moment. When it comes down to whether the developers should focus on, for instance, cross-instance chat, or building previews in the store, I’m sure you’ll agree, there is a clear winner. A lot of Home is about priority, and trying to focus energy on the most appropriate tasks. It’s an ongoing situation, we’re tinkering all the time, but there is a core development list that we try to stick to first.
TedTheDog: Also applies to the wardrobe too. Where you have a long list of items and sometimes it’s hard to remember what’s what. Again, been fed into the core team, but the priorities still have to be tackled.
Drexl: A good example of what would be nice, but that in reality didn’t work, would be... When we first started talking about having 3D shops in Home, so like walking into HMV, or whatever, and looking at virtual shelves, it quickly became clear, though, that the best and most efficient way of shopping in a virtual world, was a 2D interface. It just makes things quicker and clearer. This doesn’t preclude suggestions like yours though, which would be effective enhancements. We’ll get there, bit by bit.
It seems the EA space has been a success. There are positive comments on the English language board as well as all the non-English boards. As such it seems that language localisation at release is not an issue for non-English speakers. Given this, what are the prospects for more SCEA/SCEE simultaneous releases and releases solely for SCEE in English-only at release?
Drexl: I personally took the decision to release in English honestly, and in an incomplete state to demonstrate to you that i intend to act on what i’ve said in my response to the open letter topic. Yes we intend to try and simultaneously ”ship” wherever possible in the future. It’s not always in our hands, especially where 3rd party publishers are concerned. Companies don’t always launch games globally, and the same thing applies to Home. But when we can, we will.
From observing the way Home has been used, especially during the open beta, is the interaction of users what you expected?
TedTheDog: Some of it yes, some of it has been quite a surprise. Our traditional online audience has always been male dominated and the female audience has appeared seemingly from out of nowhere in Home. Which was partly behind the poor ratio of male to female clothing in the stores. From a moderation angle it’s about what we expected, we knew the old moderation adage “people are the problem” and planned for lots of people, which logically extends to lots of problems. However, people seem well empowered with the grief reporting tool. The worst cases of behaviours seem to be also policed by the community to an extent too.
What is the future of game launching? Will we see PSN games launching from within Home?
Drexl: OK, here’s the vision... Every game we produce should have game launching built into it by default. Although remember one thing with PSN games, much smaller budgets, much smaller teams. So therefore, quite often, a team might not think game launching is as important as another game play mechanic. So it might not happen. But it’s a long and twisting road. Remember that at any one time, every game is at different points in its development cycle. And things like game launching need to be built in from the start ideally, although we can patch sometimes, as well. We’ll get to a point when it’s just a default feature, but it’s going to take a while to reach it.
We currently only have two personal spaces and one clubhouse available to use. Will new personal spaces and clubhouses be released in the future?
Drexl: Hehe! Simple answer is Yes... I’ll say this... What you doing next Thursday? :-) And i’ll leave it at that.
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Home Fashion Week - Top Winners |
||
|---|---|---|
Points |
Online ID |
Country |
| 6 | APPIE1615 | Netherlands |
| 3 | MoPiFy | Spain |
| 3 | JJ_Wal | Spain |
| 3 | x-SourApple-x | United Kingdom |
| 3 | Legendary_Vicki | United Kingdom |
| 3 | noarlyne | France |
| 3 | Marilya | France |
| 3 | Psychopax122 | Austria |
| 3 | Spyke20 | Portugal |
| 3 | Basti__SOAP__ | Germany |
| 3 | Unicorn3107 | Germany |
| 3 | AmeliaTH | Russia |
| 3 | VADA_rio_RUS | Russia |
| 3 | xWisnia_PL | Poland |
| 3 | Kirsii | Finland |
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