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PS3's Virtual Home Is Inhospitable
Although the real you may be infinitely more attractive, your PS3 Home avatar may get a better online response if you spend a little to, ahem, "upgrade" its appearance.
(Photos By Mike Musgrove -- The Washington Post)
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Yawn. The only thing playing here is a trailer for the vampire flick "Twilight," which runs on an endless loop. But wait, there's a fight going on in the crowd between two angry gamers! No fists are thrown -- that's not one of the system software's limited options -- so it's just a bunch of avatars standing around awkwardly in a heated conversation that eventually descends entirely into asterisks.
As I lurk by the plaza craving small talk, one avatar tells me optimistically that he thinks Home "has a lot of ***ential." It takes me a second to grasp, then it dawns on me that the pesky language filtering system is at work again: No marijuana references, okay people?
Buser told me that he sees Home as a place where people will talk about anything from HDTVs to books, but my own non-videogame-related conversational forays go nowhere. I offer up: "Dude my 401(k) got pwned this year!" (Pwned is Web slang for brutalized.) Then: "Anybody know a good eggnog recipe?"
Feeling like a loser as the crowd ignores me, I retire to the mall to upgrade my image, investing in a snowman head and a gray business suit. Never was $1.50 better spent: On my return to the Home central plaza, I find the new appearance makes me a hit, especially with the "ladies."
"Sup Frosty!" one asks, "why aren't you melting?" I quickly win a handful of friend requests from gamers amused by the "business snowman" look. Success!
Home, at times, looks like a world of narcoleptics. People -- the real ones back at home on their sofas -- sometimes wander away from their game controllers, and leave their avatars standing unguarded in the virtual world. When that happens, after a few minutes, their avatar appears to nod off and Z's appear over his or her head in a text bubble.
Back in the real world, a few imaginary Z's appear over my head as I consider firing up Home again the following day, but as I look at all the new "friends" listed on my PS3, I feel a bit warmer. There ain't much going on at Home yet, but who knows. A few dozen mandatory updates down the road, and this virtual world might have some ***ential.
