The Playstation 3 just debuted a new social networking based interface. Basically think second life, avatars wandering around, private rooms, but instead of hordes of customizability you get integration with arcade games and tools for co-op. Penny Arcade tour it apart for things like pointless scarcity, apparently the bowling lanes fill up and there’s lines for arcade games, not to mention loading screens.
Part of the problem is technology, but as the third panel in the comic wants, there’s a real problem with unwanted attention and personal space. As the MTV News crew found, females get a constant and obnoxious level of attention. More from Tracey John:
Wanting to bust a move myself, I left my avatar doing “The Robot” and went to the (real-life) kitchen to grab a snack.
But when I returned, I had some unusual encounters…
Still doing “The Robot,” I had four male avatars dancing around me. One asked where I was from; others said, “hey baby!!!” and “i like your ***s” (censored by PlayStation, but you can guess what that meant). Another asked “will u marry me?” All this without me having said a word to anyone. I had also received three friend requests from players that were not immediately present…
From what I’ve heard there’s a certain amount of this in the background of most MMOs. Trouble here is that it’s consistent enough to move to the foreground. This could be because it’s just starting out or could be the demographics of the PS3 Home community are just different. Anyways, sounds like they need to do some combination of safe spaces and a complaint system.
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