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Sony Home designers want UGC, worry about bad eggs
- March 13, 2008 07:17 AM PST
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Sony Home developers said this week that with time and a lot of regulation they hope the service will become a paradise for user generated content.
Extreme makeover: Sony Home edition
Taking a page from the upcoming "roll your own" title LittleBigPlanet, Sony designers and developers hope Sony Home will one day be a mecca of user generated content.
The tough part, they said, is making sure everyone plays nice.
In an interview with GameIndustry.biz that echoed some very Nintendo-like sentimentality regarding the risks of online interactivity, Home creative director Ron Festejo and lead artist John Venables said they hoped to slowly introduce more and more tools for Home as it becomes more mature, to the point where the users themselves are creating the content.
"Obviously the Holy Grail is to give people the tools to create their own things, but it's a difficult path to tread I think," Festejo said.
Festejo said something as simple as an avatar's clothing could be a problem. If users are allowed to import their own textures, he said, how can the developers guarantee a safe environment for younger users? "At this point in time we can't do that just yet," he said.
So, the team will take baby steps, introducing tool sets one at a time to see how users react to new clothing lines and customization.
"[F]or PlayStation, and the type of audiences we appeal to, I think there's a certain level of responsibility that we have to ensure that offensive stuff isn't in the universe that we create," he said.
Sure thing, Sony. Why not try some Friend Codes on for size?
For Sony, the problem with Home is that they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they impose Nintendo-like sanctions on the service they'll be labeled too soft and restrictive; and if they allow it to be a wide open expanse of UGC with no filters the moral values proponents in Washington, D.C. will rack the service up for being the cause of everything from school shootings to teen pregnancy to school shootings that happen because of teen pregnancy. The slow and steady approach detailed by Festejo will take a while to get going, but could ultimately be the service's best bet.
