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| uk.playstation.com |
I registered, the first menu bar informed me, luckily in the hour I could choose a sponsored theme avatar. I could either enter this ethereal quasi-world as a human person or in the guise of a giant spray can of Lynx Deodorant with legs. I chose the humanoid because, ironically, I didn't want to repel anyone.
Selecting gender, hair type and eyeball length was simple enough. Then up popped a menu for my avatar's attire options.
I spent longer scrolling through my avatar's wardrobe of clothing than I do when I am getting dressed to go out. Into the REAL world. Where REAL people judge me.
I actually pondered if I, through the embodiment of my avatar, could pull off sneakers with combats. In REAL life I select the necessary items of clothes so I don't get funny looks/arrested that happen to be nearest the door. Now I was scrolling between a grey jumper and a green polo shirt 5 times like a mild form of OCD.
Once I settled on an outfit, I confirmed my choices and was transported into Home. I was on a plaza precinct at a shoreline.
Home is, in fact, the best single example of what would definitely happen if the real world adhered to the physics of cartoons and combined with the moral values of Twitter.
Yes, PlayStation Home is a godforsaken place.
Basically, if everyone in the real world, outside the TV screen, was s(h)macked clean off their nips all day, like the addled bloke I saw a few hours ago who periodically jabbed an accusingly pointed finger at the postcard carousel display outside a corner shop while simultaneously spinning it round with his other hand at breakneck speed, conveniently ignoring his senses informing him of everything else around him, such as the tourist wondering if he could be swift enough to pick out a postcard [Which incidentally leads me on to: why do hard drug addicts insist on wearing grubby sports fashion? They are fooling only themselves with that] then there would be no difference between this and PlayStation Home.
If you don't believe me, there is plenty of footage on YouTube to back this description up. Look at this video [from around 2:30 you begin to get the idea] :
No one is having fun when you instruct your avatar to dance. Trust me.
My avatar - clean-cut, colour and textile super co-ordinated - and I both looked around feeling like the guy taken on a Star-Trek away mission wearing the red top who the main cast keep getting his name wrong until they eventually settle on “buddy”.
We stood motionless as tens of other avatars mainly walked into street furniture, their bamboozling avatar names floating above their heads, or stood like mine, in uncertain wonder at the polygon crowd chaos, our bamboozling avatar names floating above our heads.
I began to take my avatar about the streets. BBC i-Player had to be around somewhere.
I wandered until I got to the Fair Ground Zone or whatever it's meant to be. It was not as well populated which was a relief, but generally avatars seemed more intent on avoiding contact more than anything. I suppose we all had our reasons. Possibly the strong suspicion that everyone was not who they might seem.
That avatar shaped and coloured in as a hot nurse? Definitely a 45 year old man who lives in his parent's basement between night shifts at the old meat compressor factory. That innocently apparelled man other than the out of place cowboy hat? FBI Agent. The huge dude with the afro throwing gang signs by himself? 12 year old from Dorset.
As For me? I just wanted to watch this weeks' episode of the Apprentice on my PlayStation.
Home is a world populated wholly by lunatics and people who just want to find the way out. I think that sums it up.
I took my avatar to a bench and gave him a seat. There was no legitimate reason for this. He doesn't get weary and I was already sitting down. Two avatars in the middle of the street, one dressed as a panda angel [I kid not] and one looking like a reject from a boy band were grinding hard at each other as close as the spacial impact coding would allow, in my vision. It was both deeply depressing and disgusting. I got my avatar up and moving into the fun park.
And as God is my witness I had a go on the Ferris Wheel. Jeezus.
Of course I didn't actually go on a Ferris Wheel. I pressed X and my avatar stepped on and sat down in one of the booths. Then my avatar and I went round on it for 6 or 7 minutes. That was 6 or 7 minutes of my actual REAL life spent, I guess supposed to be enjoying the experience of sitting watching a representation of me enjoy a ride on a Ferris wheel that I had made it get on because I didn't want to watch... whatever... that was with the panda thing back there.
And I felt like I had formed a bond with my avatar. I didn't want our relationship to be sullied by him thinking I enjoyed watching that kind of futile act of perversity now animating some 60 feet below us.
If Oscar Wilde had his writing career over again today, he would undoubtedly write the modern schlock novel, The PlayStation Avatar of Dorian Gray.
Dorian would be out in the world, dancing at people, dancing by himself, giving meaningless gestures in crowds, hanging about arcades, making sexualised approaches to anything with legs and wonderng if he has the ability to jump over this bench that he just can't seem to walk round, while his avatar grows unhappy, scarred, old... his blue T-shirt with white under shirt becoming splattered with photo-realistic blood customisations of real life murders of those who learn of Dorian's secret.
After the 4th revolution, and my avatar doing a spectacularly creepy impression of a horror character dawning on me: it being the only "person" riding round and round on a slightly rusty, creaking and dated Ferris Wheel, I decided that none of this going on was worth The Apprentice.
I took my avatar to his minimalist apartment overlooking the sun kissed marina.
Every avatar gets an apartment in Home. You can "invite" other avatars over to it. Why, I genuinely haven't a clue. You can store more options and accessories in a chest of drawers there, I think. By far the best feature of the apartment, as I could make out, is you can sit on your IKEA styled sofa and contemplate how you ended up here, without interruption.
In your apartment, you can arrange your furnishings how you like. But, being a virtual world, you are not presented with a floor plan schematic and able to point and click to where you want the chair, no, Home provides you with the full immersing joy of having to grab and drag the chair across the floor in real time. Thereby wasting my REAL time.
Once I dragged my chair about for a bit [is this one of their online Home games that Sony rave about?] I could take no more. It was time to end it here.
I walked my avatar to his veranda and got him positioned to gaze out over the coded clear sea, listening to the Wav. File of clinking boat moorings.
And as I left him there to wonder how he came to be placed in this strange place and if his next leap would be his leap home, I swear I heard Simon & Garfunkle's Sound of Silence play, tinged with foreboding, in my head.
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| Honestly, they should make prisoners play it in their cells |
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