Home-a-phobia

It's taken quite a long time, but Home, PS3s virtual world and social networking tool is finally online. It's a place where gamers can gather for fun and chat, even engaging in mini-games such as bowling to occupy their time. Since I don't have a PS3 I can't join in, but in the weeks since launch I've heard a lot of complaints about various aspects of the service.

The first problem people were facing was simply an inability to connect at all. This has been mentioned on numerous sites and podcasts, with some folks trying for hours to jump in. A fix for this was soon issued by Sony, but the patch unfortunately blocked voice chat, which had to be re-added in later. However, in an attempt to stop filthy old men from perving over the one or two females on the service, chat has been limited to private areas only, with all public talking expressed by keyboard (ah, communicating with IM - that takes me back!).

Now, Home was never meant to be a game on it's own, but rather a place where people could gather to play other games. Of course, it would be nice to have something to do while you're tooling around the virtual world, but options are severely limited. Those who don't want to dance are confined to things like bowling or pool, but there are only a set number of tables and lanes for these things, so one must wait in line to play. That's right, wait in line! It's a virtual world with potentially limitless boundaries, yet they only include a small number of activities for the millions of people they hope to attract to the service? I guess that's why folks are inventing their own ways of amusing themselves instead!

In the last few days though, another big issue has presented itself: Namely, the incredibly strict profanity filter. Obviously, Sony doesn't want people running around calling each other bad names, so have blocked the use of anything they consider offensive, and they consider a lot of things offensive. Connecticut resident Michael Marsh ran into this problem when attempting to start a gay/straight alliance club, only to find that they words 'gay', 'lesbian', and 'bisexual' were all blocked, despite the fact that these are the preferred terms among the gay community. He worries that blocking these terms is basically calling them profanity, and lumps them in with much more offensive expressions. This is not the first time online gamers have been disallowed to discuss their sexual preference, but it's still a shame to see people running into these kind of issues.

Sexual words are not the only things blocked; any words considered religious, such as 'Christ' and 'Jew', will also find themselves asterisked out, so forget about trying to form any religious-based community within Home. In fact, just to show you how incredibly stupid the filter is, even the word 'Hello' can't be typed as it contains the word 'Hell' within it. Stop laughing, I'm not kidding. I've never heard of such a ridiculously strict chat environment, even in Nintendo's family-friendly world of Animal Crossing, and I hope they make some changes or I'm never going to be able to start my Shitzu appreciation society!

Of course, Home has only been up and running for a few weeks now, so they have plenty of time to iron out any problems and streamline the experience, but they haven't exactly had a good start. When I first heard about Home, it sounded like an excellent service that would separate the PS3 from it's competition, but the final result sounds very disappointing so far. It's especially apparent in the weeks following the launch of the New Xbox Experience, which added a lot of useful functionality to Microsoft's console, much of which cannot be done on Sony's box, despite the constant firmware updates. After they've had some time to make adjustments, Home may end up being fantastic and everyone will forget about the rough start it endured, but they had better do it soon before everyone writes-off the service altogether. Of course, they did just add in support for beards, so things are looking up; lets see where they can go from here.