neotopia is a new virtual world project for Playstation 4 on Kickstarter; let's take a look, shall we?
Led by game industry veterans David Dow and Ed Gladwin, who both worked on the recently closed Sony Home, the world comes with a lot of themed areas (steampunk, zombie, etc.), virtual currency and customizable apartments, and for Kickstarters, a voice in the world's direction:
Have a voice and help shape the world! Citizens will be able to vote on upcoming features and content in world and via the internet. Secure your citizenship, get exclusive items and get voting now via the £30 pledge or earn your citizenship post-release.
Looks like fun, especially for PS4 owners craving for some virtual world action, though like Sony Home, there's one big missing piece of the puzzle:
Not a single mention of 3D user-generated content (beyond the limited set of options the developers give you). Lack of UGC is almost certainly what killed Sony Home (or least, was a key factor in its demise), and at the same time, the UGC-friendly Minecraft is a huge hit on Xbox 360. Anyway, the citizenship aspect is a kind of UGC, and a very interesting one, so they got that going for them. Give it a fuller look here.
Much thanks to Patchouli Woollahra for the tip!
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Ummm Hamlet, you're reading too much into things.
1. Home "Will be" closing...next year. It's not "closed" which implies it's not running now...which it is.
2. Lack of UGC is not what "killed" Home...that's the PS4. It wasn't very popular for several reasons:
2a early on, there wasn't much that was seriously fun, unless you were a hardcore chess or saucer pop player. Once some of the better game spaces (Sodium, Novus Prime) were created that changed, but by then Home's reputation as place with nothing to do was sealed.
2b. quite a few folks were turned off by the microtransaction centric nature of Home, which was one of the first games, if not the first game on PS3 to have this model. You know how some people refuse to spend money in SL? Home has that same problem.
2c. Home has some of the same technical issues SL does. Loading times are high.
3. Minecraft doesn't have UGC on the console platforms, while it does have downloadable texture and character packs, UGC is NOT why it's popular on consoles. The game is because the fun of minecraft isn't in the UGC, it's in the base gameplay. The game is enjoyable WITHOUT any mods
Posted by: CronoCloud Creeggan | Friday, October 10, 2014 at 01:04 AM