Home, Sweet Home

One of the most anticipated releases of 2008 isn't a game, it's a social platform that will be served up free to any PlayStation 3 owner with an internet connection, and provide users with the ability to meet, play and customise their experience in a beautiful virtual environment.

That platform is Home, and has been in a beta test phase for almost a year - originally slated to be released late in 2007, the evolution of design has led to a more freeform approach and a gradually increasing base of beta users.

GamesIndustry.biz spent some time with the project's creative director, Ron Festejo, and lead artist, John Venables, to find out some of the thinking that's gone into the what will become a very significant member of the virtual world community.

Ron Festejo: From my point of view, looking at Second Life - because it has been mentioned a lot in the same paragraph as Home, and people make that comparison - I'm amazed at how many people go on there.

I've got a high-end PC and even on that, the level of detail on the characters isn't good - the flying around, the stuff like that. And the interface, for me personally, I really lost my way in trying to do the things that I wanted to do.

I couldn't tell if people were really there, I tried communicating with them, got nothing back, it really wasn't a great experience.

Looking at something like that, personally it looks like an easy task to try and take that idea, but the really relevant and good things, and use it get people more interested in that sort of thing.

John said in a presentation that for a lot of people, their first experience of online play is to "log onâ¦get shot in the face, log onâ¦get shot in the face" and actually that's true - people tend to not go into that because of those experiences.

Personally, looking at other models, a lot of them are too hardcore, a lot of them are garish in the way they look. I think what we've done with Home is have the best-looking multiplayer world - and actually the most user-friendly that I've seen as well.

We don't have anything in there that's appealing to that kind of geeky audience that you might find in Second Life.

John Venables: I've been involved in Home since its first concept on the PlayStation 2, so I've seen it through a lot of iterations, as you can imagine. But essentially, with the Second Life example - and partly the disparity of the graphics, because you have to cater for the lowest-end PC whereas on the PlayStation 3 it's a level playing-field - with something so organic as Home, with features being added, it's difficult to set that benchmark of how many polygons to throw around, and how many to save for future things that we may or may not want to do.

I think the PS3 platform has given us an advantage in terms of keeping a polished look, and it not to look like Second Life. I don't want to dis Second Life, obviously they've been successful and they have to cater for people with old Pentium IIs and whatever, so I can understand why it looks the way it does.

So it's not to criticise them, it's just that as a PlayStation 3 online space it was very important that there is a quality bar that we want to hit.

JV: We've got a small beta team testing it out and we want to listen to people's feedback. To be a social space, you have to be social in your thinking, and take on board people's criticisms, and be seen to be doing that as well.

If people think something's not quite right, they'll see it's an organic, evolving service.

JV: That will continue for the lifespan of Home, yes. It has to; otherwise people will get fed up with it, and won't use it.

RF: I think with the PlayStation community that we have, a lot of people log on to the forums and actively get involved in beta trials, which is great. Home being the way it is, it's a great resource, because those are the guys that are at the forefront of gaming - the casuals won't be in the forums, it's the guys that are already gamers.

They want to get involved - I think that because of the time they've spent on games they do know what they're talking about, they know what they like. As we continuously evolve features within Home, that's a great way to try things out.

We ask them what they think - the character customisation within Home has changed several times, and every time is does we ask them for feedback. The response is varied, as you can imagine - some people thought it was much better, but it's the guys who were really complaining about things that you have to look at.

What are the things they're not finding quite right? It's then up to us to try and modify that, and make that better, so by the time we release the next version for them to try, they'll like it a lot better.

JV: We have so much to do as well, we do have to prioritise tasks, and sometimes we have to save fixes for later, put them on the second priority list, and so on. It's expectations, isn't it? I think you'd need a team of 8000 people to achieve everything that everyone wants.

JV: Well, it's been slowly expanding as far as I'm aware. As with any online trial you start small and then grow and grow, so you can slowly load-test servers, and I think that's how it will go from now on.

RF: Yes, and that's really important to do. There was an article a few months ago that mentioned we were going to delay releasing Home, and everybody wondered what was going on, but I think that's a valid point. Senior management should be commended, because with a proposition like Home you only get a few chances at getting it right, and you've got to look at the product to see if it's the right time to release it.

And if it isn't, I think the phased approach of inviting more and more users is a valid one.

JV: For me - and just me - the word "release" doesn't really work. For me, it's like turning the tap on bit by bit, rather than a light switch. Home will slowly open the floodgates, that's how I see it.

If there is a delay, we'll just turn it slower for a little while.

RV: It is a quality thing. It's a strange one actually because we're trying to get as much done within the community, and giving them regular updates, and even then they want more and more.

Like I said, you need to get things like this right, and I think that you only have a few chances to do it.

JV: From day one we're going to give them basic customisation, analogous with other games. But we will hopefully be increasing the tools that we give to users over time, to give them more control, maybe to ultimately provide their own content - what do you think Ron?

RF: Yeah, it's something that we talk about all the time. Obviously the Holy Grail is to give people the tools to create their own things, but it's a difficult path to tread I think.

JV: Well, there's a huge moderation issue.

RF: And I think that the problem is, at this point in time we can't do that just yet. We've got some moderation tools in there where you can report people, but I think we've got to do this in baby steps - see how people react to the clothing that we give them, and we're working with partners to provide a huge variety, to appeal to different types of people.

In the future we'll continue to listen to what people have to say, and of course - if it gets to the point where the tools become sophisticated enough to do these sorts of things there's a whole bunch of work that we need to do behind that to make sure there's nobody walking around with an offensive T-shirt.

On the PS3 it doesn't work like that - you'd probably get away with something like that on PC because it's such an open platform, but for PlayStation, and the type of audiences we appeal to, I think there's a certain level of responsibility that we have to ensure that offensive stuff isn't in the universe that we create.

JV: Yeah, to summarise, we want to push user-generated content as a feature, definitely - however, moderation and the quality bar are big issues. As Ron says, iterative steps, and maybe the toolset will slowly expand over time.

We don't know where Home will be in five years' time - hopefully it will be a huge, vibrant online world that everybody is enjoying, and that it continues to grow.

RF: And I think it will be, as the years go on and there are more PS3 ownersâ¦I mean, think about how many PlayStation 2 users there are now. PS3 isn't going to go away, it's selling at an astonishing rate with all the different models, and Home is free to anybody that has one.

So the more people that jump onboard, the more popular it becomes, and the more requests that we get through, we're open to listening to what users want. User-created content is the Holy Grail, with games like LittleBigPlanet that's all about user-created contentâ¦that's going to be an interesting litmus test for us to see the kinds of things generated by users because those guys are also pushing the boundaries in that area.

JV: EA's best-selling franchise is The Sims, and tools [like those in The Sims] are franchise winners.

RF: Yeah, that's a valid point. I'm not sure which version of the HDK that we're up to now, but it does give developers the opportunity to build their own lobbies, design clothing, furniture for apartments - all of these things are in there right now, and it's just at the infancy stage right now.

At the moment it's currently available only to people that are registered PlayStation 3 developers, but give it another year and that will grow, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to open it up to people to make their own content.

JV: That would be great, to have a Home development community buzz, that would be fantastic.

RF: With things like that, I believe it's impossible to stop. Whatever tools you give people, whatever way you get them to come into your world, they will find a way to express themselves in a way you never imagined. I'll stake Johnny's house on thatâ¦

RF: Well, we're working with partners across the board with Home, obviously I can't talk about specifics, but in the cinema we definitely have partners interested there, and people creating their own lobbies.

Plus we have partners getting involved in game launching, that's a very important feature of Home, so the interest is there, so we're just getting everything in order to make sure we're partnering up with the right people for the first version.

RF: They'll be available from the virtual PSP, and you've also got a world map which can take you to all the places.

JV: The lobby doesn't necessarily need a 'real world' entrance, it's up to whoever is building that lobby for whatever purpose.

RF: We've had this conversation many times. I think when I first joined I would have loved to have seen Home grow as a massive world, but it's just not possible.

JV: If you give everything its own entrance, then that defines a geographic landscape where everything must have its own place and coexist with everything else - and I don't think that's a realistic prospect to create or even manage those dependencies for the size we expect Home to become.

I think it would be a constraint in the end, it would get in the way of developing good content for the service.

RF: We put chess and checkers in first because they are probably the easiest to understand. But you look at any board game that's out there - I'd love to pursue a business relationship with those companies and do something in a similar vein to Xbox Live - there's no reason why we can't do anything like that for those tables.

JV: Even the arcade games as well - within the HDK you're able to create your own games, whatever you want. I'd expect more to come online.

RF: With that, if games companies like Capcom decided it wanted to bring Strider back - hypothetically speaking - that would be possible.

But it's tough - everybody sees the massive potential, and it's very, very difficult to get people grounded and take things step by step. It will grow over time, but it's just managing that.

RF: Well, if you're a single player playing pool, anybody can join as it stands now, you just go in and it becomes a two-player game.

RF: If you want to play on your own, in the future with the Norwegian Lodge it's possible to buy your own pool table to have, and then you can just play.

The thing is, what you're talking about isn't really what Home is about - it's about meeting people, that kind of experience.

JV: That's a choice you could make in your own space, because your apartment is under your control. But the game spaces are social spaces.

RF: Hogging is something that's high up on my personal agenda, because one of the things that I hated growing up is going to the most popular arcade games and watching - there are several ways that we can deal with that.

JV: That's a good question. Essentially there's a lobby capacity of 64, although that's soft-capped at around 50 I think, so if I was to enter that lobby [and it was full] a new instance would be spawned.

I believe if you have a person on your friends list it will try and intelligently relocate you to the correct instance. Although you could have three friends across three different instances, in which case it's impossible to be with everyone at once - but you can go to friends via the PSP, or invite friends to you.

RF: There are tools in place to make sure you can find and go to your friends very easily.

JV: The instancing thing was a very difficult one, in that how much do you communicate that, because it's a hardcore online gaming idea, and it's very difficult for non-games to get their heads around - what's an instance?

RF: That's something we've put to the beta testers, and it's something that's being tested now.