Will you feel at home in PlayStation Home?

The meat in the man sandwich
Besides the dancing, the other thing a visitor to Home can’t help but notice is the ratio of men to women … and the caveman-like behavior this inequity seems to inspire.

For the record … I am not hot. And my avatar (as close an approximation of myself as I could get) isn’t especially hot either. But she is a she, and that seems to be the major requirement for hotness in Home.

And if you are a she in Home, you will certainly not suffer from a lack of attention, wanted or not. “Back off, she’s mine!” I witnessed one guy tell a group of dudes crowding around a particularly attractive female avatar.

Sometimes these guys will be perfectly pleasant people interested in nothing but a bit of polite conversation … sometimes, not so much. During one visit to Sully’s Bar, a number of people in the room were asking if anyone knew the secret code to unlock one of the locked doors. I knew the code and offered it up. Did I get a single thank you? Nope. But one guy did ask me, “Is that the serial # to your booty?”

During a visit to one of the hidden “Drake’s Fortune” rooms, another woman and I struck up a conversation. A flock of men promptly descended upon us like vultures in a scorched desert. One of them sat on the floor at my new friend’s feet and began petting her leg (using the “wave” function). “Do you like that?” he cooed repeatedly.

It could be that the average Home user simply happens to be a hormone-fueled adolescent yet to develop manners beyond those of a water buffalo's. But I suspect the real problem is that anonymity will always encourage a certain amount of bad behavior. Hide behind the digital mask of an avatar and it starts to feel like you can get away with almost anything. Certainly the bad behavior in Home is not unique to this particular virtual world. Players of “Second Life” and “World of Warcraft” have seen it all before.

“Just like the real world, there’s always going to be trouble makers,” Buser says, pointing out that Home is a heavily moderated space and that there are a number of ways to prevent harassment – you can block annoying players and report them to Sony.

Buser also believes that as people become more familiar with Home in the coming weeks, “you’ll start to see this kind of behavior settle down.” And he may be right. After this video of a couple of guys pulling a prank on some creepy Home players made the rounds, I noticed a decrease in the freak factor. It seems pawing at women avatars isn’t as much fun when you realize they may not be women after all.

Building your dream Home
Ultimately, I think visitors to Home are bored. It’s a sleek, always-sunny place lustrous in its digital perfection. But you can only spend so much time people-watching in the central plaza or buying furniture to fancy up your summer home. You can only dance the running man so long before you maybe go looking for trouble – just to spice things up a bit.

But Buser insists there is still much to come. He says Sony decided to go public with a beta, rather than a finalized product, because they wanted to reinforce the idea that Home is “a living, breathing, evolving world” … and that this is merely the beginning.

“What you see here today in week one is going to be totally different from what you’re going to see six months down the road,” he says pointing out that they have a “hugely packed pipeline of content” that’s on its way. Though he wouldn’t give specifics, he says there will be new virtual items, new spaces, new features and “a lot of events” to explore.

He says right now Sony wants feedback from Home visitors – suggestions of features, functions and other things that would make the experience more enjoyable and entertaining. He says they are listening closely to the people.

With that in mind, I’d like to submit a request from the ladies hanging out at Home: How about some virtual pepper spray?

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