Monday, April 27, 2015

No place like Home

Well, since my last blog post, a great deal has happened! Playstation Home is, sadly, no more. I first wrote about PS Home in 2008, and described it as a slicker version of Second Life made by Sony. After spending a considerable amount of time on Home after the past 2 years, I can say that there really is no place like Home. It was one of the most remarkable places I have ever been in my life. It is actually indescribable in what it contained and offered if you were willing to spend the time on there exploring and revelling in the beauty of the spaces. When the news came through that Home was going to close forever, I was shocked, even though I knew it would not continue forever. The release of the PS4 was the death knell for Home. At least several months' warning was given, with the announcement going out in October 2014 and the last date of Home being 30 March 2015. Knowing it was all going to be gone forever, I thought hard about what I could do. I got the idea somewhere of using game capture software to make videos of my beloved personal spaces. I am not sure where I got this idea from but I quickly bought the Elgato Game Capture software and got to work. Using this software was also a new experience, and I only wish I had used it long before these final months of Home as I learned a lot about its capabilities and its shortcomings. I also learned a lot about how to film spaces on Home, so my early videos are nowhere near as good as the later ones. I ended up with around 600 videos of Home in the end and many, many photos. I have not yet decided but I may upload some of these to YouTube for other ex-Home people to enjoy. The final days of Home were frantic as I tried to capture as much as possible, though I still failed to completely film everything I wanted. But I have a real archive of my personal spaces and the public spaces of Home which will hopefully help to alleviate the sense of loss, which was at times overwhelming for me and so many others who had their Home taken away. Other virtual worlds lie on the horizon and there are of course those that already exist for PC, but those will be discussed in another post. RIP Playstation Home - you achieved so much and were loved so dearly by so many.

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