I was recently playing Locoroco and fiddling around with the house builder mini-game where you can find toys and gizmos in the main game to decorate and play with in this digital house area. It's a very cute idea, and makes unlockables feel unique and special! But as I used it, I kept thinking back to Sony's abandoned PlayStation Home service, a pseudo-Second-Life virtual social space that also had a house-decorating mechanic. But hardly anyone was an active user of Home, as it was a slow service that's mostly siloed off from the rest of the PS3's software. But what if it wasn't?
Sony's biggest attempt to jump into this niche of the social network market was Home, but as I mentioned, is was mostly just another app on your PS3 - it didn't do much to integrate itself into daily use, and there was no easy way to tell what was new in Home or what your friends did in there without opening it up - a task which itself took a while due to the system's less-than-ideal loading times. Even cosmetics and decorations in Home could only be purchased and used in Home, assuming they weren't just outright advertisements, further isolating the experience. Sony just didn't give users much reason for users to check Home, and didn't make it easy for those who were interested.
Now, we can have a very valid debate about the practicality of "spatial" social networks (I really want to avoid using the word "metaverse" lol), but over the whole life of the internet, they certainly still keep getting made regardless, and they're at least appealing on a surface level. We won't be arguing that, but instead let's just focus on how it could have been a better user experience that made more players want to come back. I may not be a particularly smart UX Designer, but here are my best suggestions for making it work.
𝟭. 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗫𝗠𝗕 This is a pretty simple addition, just add a list of relevant friend activity, new content, and messages/visitors in the PS3's XMB. Major messages/notifications could possibly be sent through the PSN Messages system, but content updates would only be visible in the feed when focus is over the Home icon in the XMB. Funny enough, Sony ended up ALMOST fixing a similar problem for the Vita's OS with LiveAreas, a wonderful idea sadly ruined by putting too much faith in the user to swipe up on a game's LiveArea to see said info. Putting it in view for this Home example would make it impossible to miss.
𝟮. 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗣𝗦𝟯 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 The only way you could get new decorations and clothes in Home was to purchase them inside Home, or get them from promotions in Home. This was a pretty big turn off for new players, who didn't have tools with which to engage with one of the main mechanics of Home, and selling them on a mechanic they may not even like is a pretty tough sell. What I propose is the ability to earn decorations and clothing while playing other PS3 games, possibly attaching them to trophies. If you're playing Sly Cooper, maybe you can get a real Thevius Raccoonus book with a few readable pages to put in your room if you get the platinum trophy, or his staff as a clothing item if you get a different trophy. This does a few things from a UX perspective: It gets a user invested in their Home presence before they even try it, it gives them a good variety of items to play with when they do decide to try it, and ensures that their "starter kit" already has stuff relevant to their particular interests. You could totally still have paid cosmetics for more premium things like home space expansions or really big decorations, but giving users a toolbox that's ready to go is very important.
𝟯. 𝗙𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝘁, 𝘄𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝘄 Okay, here's a big one, so I'll need a while to explain. Nintendo solved a lot of the aforementioned design issues in Animal Crossing, as those games have much more space to flesh out very similar mechanics into a whole game in itself. They give users easy ways to get new house items, teaches them early on about why they should check back over the course of the day with the introduction of timed daily events and tasks. Even items themselves are often organized into sets to encourage users to complete each set give depth to the act of getting new stuff. While I don't think the addition of busywork makes as much sense for a more social network oriented experience like Home, players still need to be able to have self-set goals and a revolving set of experiences to see. I'll talk more about specific event ideas next, but always having something to do around the clock is key.
𝟰. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘀 Base Home actually did end up amassing a good amount of interactive content, but as we discussed, it wasn't easily discoverable for users. Having activities tied to real time clock times and teaching users about their utility early on is critical for user retention. So here are some ideas on ideas for events to draw in users. -Competitive mini-tournaments for PS Home Games to win rare items and meet other users with similar interests. If they were willing to be REALLY ambitious, they could let players compete for the chance to win in-game items for normal PS3 games inside home, too! -Movie nights where Sony occasionally streams an old movie from their own backlogs. Maybe a bit unrealistic for a decade ago, but it is something that's more common these days on Twitch. -If not this, perhaps a user could invite another user to watch a movie together in Home if they both rent/own it on PSN, much like the early version of the Netflix app on the Xbox 360. -Room showcases with daily rotating subjects. Home would showcase creative and clever room designs from users which submit them, rotating in and out on a daily basis, visible from main hub areas to show off to curious onlookers. Winners could maybe even get a PSN trophy or exclusive Home item for being selected to encourage users to submit their rooms. -Small stuff like more holiday events, time-of-day-exclusive areas, and integrating the short-lived Life With PlayStation data into Home. -Okay this may just be me alone who wants this but c'mon put Miiverse in there goddammit Sony for real just steal the Splatoon Miiverse Plaza idea for yourself and put it in Home no one will call you out on it just yoink that idea and run with it Sony why aren't you returning my calls Sony So-
𝟱. 𝗙𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝘁, 𝘄𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝘄 Please for the love of god, ditch Home's ugly "realistic" look, and pivot to a more stylized anime-ish look like the avatars for PSP's cancelled R∞M social network. What's that, you ask? A big topic that I don't have time to get into, that's what. (As an aside, I had written a whole paragraph about making R∞M into a portable client for Home, but I ended up deleting it after realizing all assets would likely need to be made in duplicate for PS3 and PSP, and not many social features would be useful on a singletasking portable, making it likely not worth the effort of maintaining. Sorry PSP, I still love you <3)
All these suggestions come back to the core idea of tying Home into the existing PS ecosystem, making it feel like a natural extension and hub for games users are already playing, instead of an isolated experience no one wants to bother with trying. I'm still very skeptical about the utility of spatial social networks as a whole given users always gravitating towards the more convenient, simpler alternatives, as well as the fact that the worst douchebags in tech are currently going all in on such ideas (Again), but this was more an exercise for me as a designer, trying to imagine the best possible version of a dubiously-useful idea.
I didn't expect Locoroco to lead me to writing a whole-ass essay on the shortcoming of PS Home and the broader shortcomings of spatial social networks, but hey, that was still fun to write! If you are still interested in Home even knowing of all of its faults, it appears there is a team working to bringing it back online with custom servers, so maybe look into that! Anyway, thanks for sticking with me through my long UX ramble!
