Well, we asked for further stories and one Dominique Louis came straight back with this piece on his vision for Home…
I have a dream about Home. A dream that offers choice and, hopefully, an interesting angle on Home integration. It is a vision of user created content being developed to its full potential.
Step through a door; not of sight and sound, but of mind…
Imagine the following… You create your Home avatar, customise it to have the features you like and use it as Home allows you to. But then when you start a game, where you are the protagonist, you have the option to either use your Home avatar, in game, or you can play as the character the game developer intended. So, there’s the potential of a personalised you in every game.
Sony should think about creating a service whereby game developers offer the gamer the chance to use their Home created avatar within their games. This would require considerable liaisons between the Home team and the Sony PS3 committed developers, as they would need to work out a more formalised way of skinning the avatar so that it fits into the various game genres as well as dynamically loading the bone animations required for the avatar to do all the things that a particular game character can do. Crouch, roll over, play dead etc would all needed to be handled/loaded on a game by game basis at start-up.
If the avatars are boned and skinned correctly this will add to the immersion of *you* as a gamer in each and every game, if you so choose. So you could use the same avatar in MGS4 if you wanted to be Snake, or as part of LittleBigPlanet if you don’t like the look of the sack boys. Again, if you prefer the built in game characters, just use those.
This would certainly give something unique to PS3 owners. Sure, I’m not saying it would be easy, but it’s certainly possible, if co-ordinated correctly.
Even better….we can use the avatar, that we’ve created in other games, like EA’s Tiger Woods Golf, where we can import a face image and model our own image in the game….that’s where things get interesting.
Comment by DonRWatters — Feb 4, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
While this is a good idea, however it would not “give something unique to PS3 owners” as a much more simplified form of this is already available on the Wii. Sadly, as nice as this would be, making these into a game’s main protagonist would be substantially more difficult to implement, not just because of your suggestions but mainly due to the evolution of more complex character design.
For instance, this could not work with such detailed facial animations of Uncharted, or MGS4. The same applies in the variation of character types, from Unreal Tournament (HUGH!) to LittleBigPlanet (tiny). However it would be great to see implemented on a more casual basis, just like the Mii’s in Wii Sports or Mario & Sonic Olympics.
Sony could really take your suggestion on board for things like racing games like Wipeout HD or casual titles like Buzz and other titles which use basic animations for it’s avatars.
Comment by Sky-Writer — Feb 4, 2008 @ 7:38 pm
I’m liking these….
More More!!!!
Comment by JohnSketch — Feb 4, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
Excellent idea. Hopefully we’ll be able to use a camera (PSEye?) to capture our own images then transfer them to the application to use as our avatars. Giving us the opportunity to tinker with our creations in Photoshop then upload back would also be greatly appreciated.
This probably isn’t such a far-fetched idea considering LBP, UT3 and Warhawk’s (Insignia & Paintscheme contest) User Created Content.
Comment by Divine — Feb 4, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
This is not a new idea
In fact Sony has stated on many occasions that this is a possibility and are looking into it with unnamed developers.
Comment by Joel — Feb 4, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
Well done. A nice opinion piece. For me part of the attraction of gaming is the escapism of being somebody / something else. I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed uncharted as much if I played as myself. For it to be realistic my avatar would probably collapse from exhaustion after every gunfight. My avatar probably wouldn’t score with whatshername neither
Comment by reakt — Feb 4, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
I think you have something here… it is possible. An easier approach would be to take the FACE features only into the game, since those are the ones that you can really customize in Home anyways!
Ofcourse here comes the difficulty of balancing quality between a developers character to the generic Home character… but if organised well enough… I’d like to play as Nathan.
Comment by Fraser JK — Feb 4, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
Brill idea….any news on the actual product?
Comment by elephant_stone — Feb 4, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
Anyone else not give a flying toot about Home? I bought my PS3 to play awesome games and watch Blu-Ray movies, not wander round some anti-aliased rendition of Facebook.
Comment by rooee — Feb 5, 2008 @ 8:52 am
Taking the concept further, since Home will have the concept of the Trophy room it could show that you had battled with many monsters, trekked across deserts to plunder lost tombs, assassinated many a heretic and raced a mean 24 hour le-mans
(all in a week). The trophy room could have a picture of your avatar in hunting garb with your “foot on a dino’s head and blunderpuss” alongside a picture of you in your driving rags and a highly polished/crashed F50 etc etc. Maybe when you or other people visiting your Trophy room mouse over your achievements, it shows a short clip from that game showing your character in action.
I think this would be way better than the Xbox 360’s achievements, which is essentially just a 2D list system. This version of Home would be truly next-gen!
Comment by Savage — Feb 5, 2008 @ 9:41 am
This is not the direction I want Home to go, what a “Mii too” ripoff.
I’ve yet to see the supposed success of Mii’s on Nintendo’s platform. Until now only 3 or 4 games have them, all by Nintendo and besides that Harvest Moon game not a single third party developer is interested in them. EA completely passed the opportunity with MySims, what a more perfect game than that.
In resume, the technical difficulties are great to overcome and the rewards are so tiny that it would be almost foolish to embark in this endeavour.
Home is a virtual world with endless possibilities within itself. It doesn’t need at all to be present in other games whereas the logical order of things is that it’s the other games who need to be present in Home. I find much more appealing avatars dressed as Snake or Kratos wandering in the lobbies. A guy with a mohawk and dressed in torn jeans and a black t-shirt killing soldiers in the Middle East in MGS4 would look utterly stupid.
Comment by Omaesan — Feb 5, 2008 @ 11:53 am
@11. It would still be nice to have the option. I would rather play as snake, but some games I wouldnt want to be the lead character.
Comment by elephant.stone — Feb 5, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
@11: The game’s skinning would take precedence over Home’s skinning.
So your avatar would dress exactly like Snake does, only the face and body etc would be your avatar’s. It would be silly to suggest that what ever your avatar is wearing in Home would have them appearing in someone’s game. It would break the immersion.
Just as an actor gets dressed up appropriately for each and every part they play, so too would you avatar for each and every game that you want them to be a part of. Hence why in the trophy room you would be dressed up as the character in each specific game. Again it would be up to the gamer to decide whether to use their character in the game. It would not be forced on anyone. Also to maintain the game developer’s vision, maybe the ability to play as your Home avatar could be an unlockable after you have completed the game. That way the game developer’s vision is not compromised and it gives an extra option to the gamer. Win/Win.
Also I think this would be way better than Mii, as your not just a head with appendages, but a full 3D avatar.
Anyway, that’s my take on it.
Comment by Savage — Feb 5, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
Yeah man I’d be up for that in games like SKATE, tiger woods, bowling etc.. in fact all single player sports games would suit it well… and RPGs could work too… the agency etc
Comment by Rob — Feb 5, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
@ 9 rooee
I agree, I couldn’t be less interested in this debacle and potential invasion of privacy.
Comment by Ton Capone — Feb 5, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
@13
If you only allow the face of your avatar and not its body, then it’s nothing new, it has been done with the PS2.
I’m talking about eyetoy face captures. Only marginally used in some sports games and for the occasional gimmick like the driver’s license photo in Burnout Paradise.
Phil Harrison talked about the possibilities of your approach when Home was presented last year. He recognized the huge technical difficulties this would ensue both for game developers and Home developers and said that’s not the direction they are aiming for, but left a door open if someone wanted to do it (while he was probably thinking “they would have to be crazy to think so”). SCEE already considered this and decided their time was better spent in other areas, and I agree with them.
Comment by Omaesan — Feb 5, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
i really wish you’d stop banging on like this is something new. do any of you remember worlds.com? and the miriad of similar virtual worlds, even the biggest and best - second life isn’t that great, and sony seems intent on taking everything that made those places successful and removing them from home, the ability to fully customise your avatar, your world, things to buy and sell. none of these are in home.
home will be a vile, sterile lab’ experiment where sony will have us all running around like rats looking for the cheese, but the punch line is, there is no cheese.
also how are sony planning on dealing with minors in the home environment? absolutely no word on this, or infact much to do with home really.
sony also goes out of it’s way to stop beta testers posting videos up from inside the world on youtube etc too, many not lasting on sites more than a day or so. just makes me think they have something to hide.
just give us VR like we were promised in the mid 90’s yah gits, or is that still in development and beta testing -haha- i refuse to believe our current (and last gen) hardware couldn’t deal with it.
Comment by mobiletone — Feb 5, 2008 @ 6:52 pm
I fear Home is intended to be some sort of vile marketing scam. I think it is just going to be one massive advert and cynical money making exercise masquerading as a “fun” social environment where you are bombarded constantly with adverts for “stuff”.
Comment by Ton Capone — Feb 5, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
@ 9 rooee
I agree with you mate, I didnt buy the PS3 so I could see myself getting shot or eaten by zombies… maybe if I could put the ex in there…
These are nice ideas granted but don’t forget people, they have been going on about Home for ages now, dont give them any more excuses to delay it.
Comment by Terry — Feb 6, 2008 @ 10:23 am
@17
BIG POINT
Child Safety - how are they going to stop weirdos grooming kids on there!!
Comment by Terry — Feb 6, 2008 @ 10:26 am
Sorry if i’m spamming the thread a bit - last one, but to follow on from what I just said about Child Safety how will they know who is on there. If its tied to our user profiles many will know how easy it is to have false accounts. I live in a hotel in America so I can access US store content.
Comment by Terry — Feb 6, 2008 @ 10:31 am
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