Interviews// VP of Sony's Worldwide Studios, Jamie MacDonald

SPOnG: It was almost like a turning point when Home was announced at GDC, certainly for the hardcore gaming community, who up until that point had mainly been singing the praises of Xbox Live, really…

Jamie MacDonald: Yes, that was our intention and I was pleased that it was received well there, because our view about PlayStation 3 is that it always was about being connected straight out of the box. We knew that we had to have a network experience which matched the capabilities of the machine. It’s interesting, people have asked me in the past: “So PlayStation Home is just a response to the MySpaces and Facebooks of this world?” Frankly, no. If you know anything about how long these things take… the first time I heard of things like MySpace or Facebook, we were probably a year or two into the development of PlayStation Home.

It reminds me of things like the development of the light bulb or the developments of the early aeroplanes. There are a bunch of people in different parts of the world working on the same ideas. It’s like that with PlayStation Home… It’s kind of in that same space, but it’s a very specific and particular consumer experience.


SPOnG: Yves Guillemot [Ubisoft CEO] was talking at Edinburgh in his keynote speech about the ways in which gamers are increasingly leading two or more different lives. They are leading their real lives and they are also leading their lives in online worlds. How do you think Home will integrate with people’s ‘real lives’?

Jamie MacDonald: People can get a bit too hung up on this whole ‘having a virtual life as well as a real life’ – to my mind it’s just people's leisure time and these days that’s what people choose to do in their leisure time. But I do think that right from when you are a kid – and start reading books and watching movies and so on – we as people have a rich imagination and a rich fantasy life.

The whole idea of living an alternate type of life is very appealing and always has been – you know, from playing Pirates or Cowboys and Indians as a kid through to people who enjoy being members of Civil War societies and dressing up on a Sunday afternoon. It’s all part of the same thing, really. People enjoy being part of an alternative reality that they inhabit occasionally and PlayStation Home is just another example of that.


SPOnG: Talking about making use of users' imaginations – another Web 2.0 favourite is of course user-generated content. We can see how PS3 is making use of this with SingStar, for example, with people creating and posting their own SingStar videos. What other types of plans have you got for user-generated content?

Jamie MacDonald: Well in PlayStation Home we’ll be bringing out content creation tools so that you can create items to furnish your apartment or clothes to wear and so on. In the longer term we are hoping to have independent sort of artisans within Home who might make clothes or items to then sell onto people… It’s very much part of the Home DNA for there to be user-generated content.


SPOnG: What about safety and security in Home? In what ways are you going to ensure that users have a safe and happy and comfortable experience? How do you keep them feeling happy and safe and secure?

Jamie MacDonald: Well the great thing about Home is that it is built on PlayStation Network – so it uses all the security and grief-reporting features which are part of the PSN. And although we don’t like to publicise it too much, to be part of PSN you have to register your machine, register where you live and things like that.

So, we do have the ultimate sanction that we can ban a particular machine. Ultimately we can turn off the machine and we know where you live! So if somebody is getting really out of hand they would have to move house and buy a new PS3 and that strikes me as a pretty strong sanction!


SPOnG: [laughs]

Jamie MacDonald: Having said that though, we have a plethora of grief reporting and moderation tools and so on, just like any online forum.