When it comes to PlayStation Home, internet forums echo with a frequently reoccurring mantra that goes something like this: “I tried Home when it launched, and it was a boring, pointless mess”. ‘Launch’ was over a year ago (Home first hit PlayStation 3 in full public Beta on the 11th December 2008) and much has changed since that difficult early period. What hasn’t changed, apparently, is the opinion of the majority of gamers who see Home as Sony’s folly – an ill conceived money-pit that has failed to live up to the promise and optimism that surrounded the project when it was first announced during the Game Developers Conference in March 2007; but is this fair? Is Home the technical, commercial and PR failure that many would proclaim? Has it failed to deliver on its promise? Or, did it simply get off to a bad start in arriving on the scene behind schedule in an incomplete form that was too hard to stomach?

I was fascinated by Home when it was first announced and have spent a lot of time exploring it and watching the world develop with great interest and therefore consider myself fairly well placed to write an assessment of where Home stands today. While I obviously accept – and to a great extent understand – the views expressed by Home’s many critics, I do feel that it is a project that deserves a fair hearing and, most importantly, should be applauded for trying to do something new and different within the realm of console gaming.

The question that seems to be at the root of many of Home’s PR woes is this: What is it? What is the purpose of Home? Is it a social hub? Is it a tool for launching games? Is it merely an advertising space through which companies can flog their latest wares? Is it a game? Sony give the fairly straight forward description that it is a ‘3D social gaming service’ – sounds simple enough, right? The problem is that many gamers can’t see the need for a 3D social gaming service – they socialise in the games themselves, chatting away while shooting each other in Modern Warfare 2, or reminiscing about the old days over a game of FIFA 2010; for many, the games themselves are a 3D social gaming service. Which brings us back to the question: What is Home?

For me, Home is a place – as simplistic as that may sound! ‘Place’ can be defined as ‘any area set aside for a particular purpose’ – and this is Home – it is an area that is open to all PlayStation 3 users, where they can go and…er…that’s it. That’s my summation – Home: A place to which you can go (I bet you’re glad you’ve read this far for that little insight!). But that’s boring right? Well, yes, it can be; in the same way that going to the shops can be boring, or going to work can be boring. Also, let’s be honest – gamers aren’t starved of exciting virtual locations to visit – places where they can shoot aliens/humans/animals/anything, complete quests, become sporting heroes, beat up fantastical creatures or collect apples and chat to a pigeon in a cafe…

This brings us neatly to Nintendo’s classic, Animal Crossing, a title that I believe shares much in common with Home. It is a game in which there are few goals, no levels and nothing you are forced to do. Like Home, Animal Crossing is little more than a place to visit; a little slice of virtual real-estate that you can amble around doing not much more than tweaking the layout of your house, picking up a few apples and just seeing what’s new. You could say it’s a ‘Pottering-about Simulator’, or indeed, a ‘Life Simulator’ (remember, in life we don’t get a stat boost for levelling up or points for successfully navigating our way past a traffic jam!). While on some levels comparing Home with Animal Crossing may be unfair (Nintendo’s game is a product of a singular artistic vision rather than, as in Home’s case, a more organic world developed and maintained by multiple parties), I think similarities can be drawn nonetheless.

Anyone who’s played Animal Crossing will never forget being driven to the village by a large cartoon turtle, before being welcomed by Tom Nook; it’s a cuddly, chirpy and welcoming experience. Entering Home for the first time however can undoubtedly be a strange, decidedly unwelcoming and underwhelming experience. Unlike similar massively multiplayer experiences such as Second Life or World of Warcraft, the ‘player’ (should we even use this term?) is unceremonially dumped into an attractive, but empty apartment. On their own. With nothing to do bar walk out on to the balcony, look at some yachts and admire the ocean. It’s like a 3D postcard that you can wander around – nice and sunny, easy on the eye, but ultimately pretty shallow. Leaving the desolation of your apartment to arrive at the Home Square (or Home Plaza in the US) isn’t much better: Home Square is a large, pristine plaza; attractive, yet lacking in character, sunny, yet strangely cold. The content in the Square is also fairly slim and can easily inspire little more than indifference – some advertising posters to look at, some billboards streaming game trailers and a couple of tables on which you can play chess or drafts (though, I have to admit, I am rather partial to a quick game of Helicopter Hit now and then!).

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