Upon receiving my Home beta invite this week, I couldn’t wait to finally get a glimpse at what the Home experience was all about. After a quick install and a bit of trouble getting in, I got my first look into Sony’s new world. My first impression was that it was pretty unreal. I’ve pretty much played only console games my whole life so I’ve never played an MMO, I’ve also never been on Second Life, so this was my first time to see that many people in any online arena at once. The layout is somewhat of a Sony utopia where huge screens playing ads for video games dominate a very pleasing landscape. A theater, mall, and bowling alley all with fully interactive or soon to be fully interactive pieces give me the feeling that Home, while pretty cool now, has the potential to be great. They have made a cool online world where there inhabitants all have at least one thing in common, they all own a PS3, and are, therefore, easier to advertise games to than any other group in the world. I’m not at all saying that’s a bad thing, in fact, more power to them. If a company can come up with something that is beneficial to themselves and the consumer, then kudos. In short, I think Home will be huge for Sony and for many, many PS3 owners.
However, my initial jubilation was soon cut short by a sad realization for me. You see, with the NXE and my Home beta invite arriving in the same week, I realized something, I’m an anti-social gamer. It dawned on me that I had no interest in my friends’ Xbox Avatars and I tended to spend a lot of my time in Home running from people that might try to talk to me. It’s not that I’m an asshole, in fact, I think it’s the opposite, I just didn’t feel like talking and I didn’t want to be a dick to anyone by not responding when they tried to start a chat. And, then came another sad realization as I wondered why I didn’t want to talk to these people and thought, “Am I too old for this?”
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