The Pensive Gamer

Posted 03/13/2007 @ 06:30:43 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: PlayStation 3 , Product Feedback , Product Ideas

When rumours of Sony's PlayStation 3 Home first came to light I couldn't help but think of books like Neuromancer, Snow Crash and the movie The Matrix. Now that we have a good idea of what Home is, I thought I would put forth some of the more (or less) reasonable additional ideas that what went through my head when I first read the rumour.

Note: I'm purposely not outlining how any of this could be monetized.

Avatars

• The avatar should be customizable such that it may not even look human (think Spore).
• Reward exploration of Home, time spent in Home or certain actions in Home. Example rewards:
  • Allow better looking/more sophisticated avatars (read Snow Crash)
  • Gain abilities like flying, swimming, jumping (e.g. Crackdown)
  • Earn homes in more exclusive locations
  • Create in-game scripts, objects and even full spaces (e.g. Second Life)
• Users can get in-Home portable media players so that they can watch/listen to music and video accessible to their console while anywhere in the Home world.
  • The accessible media should include what is on their PC (similar to media center extensions and media connect in the Xbox 360)
  • The media player can be shared with another user while both users are online (like how you can share headphones in the real world).

The Home World

• Make a proper sandbox with sophisticated physics that is fully explorable and appears as one contiguous world with no loading screens (except when teleporting).
  • Fully connected internationally; public spaces exist for each geographic region but any location can be visited.
  • Spaces can have environmental effects (e.g. day/night, rain/snow) based on current conditions in a real-life geographic location
  • Certain spaces can only be discovered by exploring. This may require abilities like flying/swimming (see Avatar abilities above).
• Allow communities/clubs to register to have large invite-only spaces in Home.
  • Support existing web communities (e.g. Evil Avatar, Kotaku) by allowing single sign-on so users of those web communities have instant access to the Home space.
  • Support reading the web community news inside the community space (Sony already mentioned they could show web sites within Home).
• Support in-Home exclusive events:
  • Have tie-ins to real life events viewable through video feeds (e.g. be front-row at GDC while sitting in Home).
  • Like a massive multi-player game, support Sony and community driven challenges including tie-ins to alternate realty games.
• All locations, including personal spaces, are persistent and accessible to people with authorization to enter.

Personal Homes

• A user can give people keys to access their home and keys can be revoked any time.
• Some areas of the home can be fully private/invite only.
• A person's personal space can take on any look/style.
  • A person can have an outside area that is customizable, from gardens to sky, or environmental elements like rain.
  • The outside of a house is customizable (e.g. dilapidated shack)
  • Internal rooms are fully customizable (e.g. you can have a cell-shaded room).

Not Game Trophies, but Game Rooms

When you buy a game it gives you a whole new room in your house. Achievements can stack up in this room, but you can do plenty more.

• Rooms are styled after the game (e.g. dungeon for an RPG or garage for a Racing game).
  • Allow atmospheric music from the game
  • Allow animated figure/models from the game (e.g. a racing game's garage room could contain the cars you own in the game)
  • Your avatar could optionally change to the character from the game. When guests join you in the room and they own the game, you see their avatar change to their game's character.
  • If the game developer didn't create their own room then a room can be auto-created randomly from a series of templates created by Sony based on the genre of the game.
• Save games could be launched here.
  • Take on appearance suitable for the game (e.g. garage doors for racing games or a portcullis for fantasy games).
  • Multi-player/co-op games could use this as the launching point to a particular save game for the group.
• Support accessing tie-ins to other spaces or web properties. For example, if a game has an auction house to sell cars, then it could be directly accessible in this room.
• See your friend's scores/achievements from here, including a portal to their room.
• Support optional mini-games (e.g. if an RPG has an in-game puzzle/card-game, it could be made available here too).

In Closing ...

Home has garnered a lot of attention but hopefully this gives you some insight as to why I was a little under whelmed, particularly after seeing LittleBigPlanet. To engage gamers and the gaming community I believe the missing elements include:

1. a sense of creativity
2. a feeling of personal involvement
3. reasons to want to spend more than an initial investigation in Home

Posted 01/30/2007 @ 06:00:00 AM by Joseph Molnar Filed under: Accessories , Product Ideas , Xbox 360

Most of my family and many of my friends live a few thousand miles away. Sure, you can use web cams to communicate but sitting at a computer isn’t a great social or family experience. While the Xbox Live Vision Camera can be used for family room video chats it is still largely a solo experience since a headset must be used.

Now imagine an accessory, I'll call it the Xbox 360 Wireless Communicator, that acts like a good speaker phone (or for those that are familiar, a Polycom Soundstation). When combined with the Xbox Live Vision Camera you can have true room-to-room video chat. I would love for my family to have weekly video chats with grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, etc, where everyone can participate. Even if that doesn't sound exciting to you the Communicator is the perfect party gaming experience; you can trash talk an entire room.

The features would be as follows:

• 100% wire-free
  • Communicates with the Xbox 360 wirelessly
  • Runs on battery (same charge packs as the controller), though can use AC
• Mute button
  • Coloured LED to indicate when mute is on or off
  • Anyone in the room can easily see the LED and now the status
• Full duplex audio (i.e. send and receive sound at the same time)
• Echo cancellation  (i.e. prevent sound from looping back on itself)
• Works with the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

From Microsoft’s perspective, the Communicator requires no software changes on the 360 since it is essentially an Xbox 360 Wireless Headset. Just let me emphasis that this must have superior sound quality; as close as possible to a Polycom Soundstation.

This is as a device that could further expand the target audience of the Xbox 360. In conjunction with being a media extender, having downloadable movies and later in 2007 adding Internet television, the Xbox 360 would be front row as a true family-room social media appliance.

I would buy the Communicator for family members with 360s (currently a couple do) and would consider buying 360s for those that don’t once a price drop happens. I can certainly think of one Xbox team member that could have put it to good use.