Sony announced The Playerbase today, a kinda competition designed to put people like you – yes, you – in some of its biggest first-party games.
I understand the company wants to establish a closer relationship with its core players, but is this the best it could come up with?
This reminds me of that other scheme it revealed recently where it’s giving players who earn a Platinum Trophy the opportunity to purchase overpriced exclusive merch.
For those of you who didn’t see the announcement, it all sounds like some kinda reality TV type premise, where you have to submit an application and then pass an interview process to be accepted.
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Now in this first instance, it looks like the winner will be flown out to Los Angeles in order to have your face scanned for Gran Turismo 7.
To be clear, you won’t be appearing in the crowd or anything here; you’ll be one of those character portraits that guides you along the menu, so you’re just going to have a professional photo put in the game. You’ll also get to design a livery.
The insinuation from the lead image suggests this could evolve further, where you may be eligible to appear as a villager in the next Horizon game or a zombie in The Last of Us. I suppose that’s cool.
But the way Sony’s phrasing all this makes it sound like it’s effectively a Hollywood casting opportunity without the promise of pay.
In the PS Blog post, global marketing vice president Isabelle Tomatis describes this as a way to “celebrate our gaming community”, but only one person will be selected to win.
And to pass the test you’ll need to “participate in video interviews” where the company will “learn about” you and your “connection to PlayStation”.
Forgive my cynicism, but I don’t believe those interviews will have anything to do with your “connection to PlayStation”; if they’re putting your photo in the game, they’re going to want to ensure you aren’t some ugly neckbeard, right?
So, I don’t think it matters whether you can name the game director of Uncharted 2 and the team behind Patapon – this is all about finding someone who looks right. Right?
To be honest, in this day and age, there’s also a very real data concern here. Does winning the competition and participating in the 3D scan give Sony the license to use your likeness in perpetuity? Or train algorithms and models based on it?
I’m not saying the company would necessarily do that – I certainly hope it wouldn’t – but at the time of writing the competition’s terms and conditions are ambiguous, as all legal documents tend to be.
There is mention of “consenting to the processing [...] of facial geometry data” which “may be considered biometric data in some jurisdictions”.
However, there’s no word on how long they plan to store that data and whether it can be used in other games or technologies.
Regardless, I suppose I can understand the appeal of something like this; I famously spent hundreds of dollars helping to fund Shenmue 3, and I think it’s cool my name is in the game as a consequence.
But that’s different, I supported the game because I wanted to support it. This is a thinly veiled competition masquerading as a celebration of fans.
I think if Sony truly wants to recognise its most loyal users, there are better ways to do so. For starters, maybe it could start talking to us again? The company has been famously closed off for years now.
Or perhaps it could bring back initiatives like PS Stars, which actually recognised our custom with real, tangible monetary rewards.
I don’t want to write this off entirely with my cynicism; maybe it’ll be cool and the winners will have a permanent memento of a competition they won. That’s awesome.
But at best this is a weak celebration of the PlayStation community and I think Sony could do much better.