It’s not really the end of the world, but whoever cooked up Sony’s new Playerbase competition may be having a rethink today.
The idea, as announced on the PS Blog yesterday, is to “celebrate” the PlayStation community by putting you in its games, starting with Gran Turismo 7.
However, in this initial phase there’ll only be one winner, and you’ll need to pass a video interview to be in with a chance. While the PS Blog post claims the video interview is designed to “learn about” you and your “connection to PlayStation”, it all sounds like an unpaid casting call to us.
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As a result, of the 1,000 PS5 fans we polled, a staggering 62% of you said you weren’t interested in this. A further 27% said you had security concerns.
The terms and conditions are vague but it does sound like you’ll effectively be giving Sony consent to use your likeness and data, which isn’t ideal in this age of AI algorithms et al.
Considering the kind of people who tend to visit our site are highly engaged PlayStation fans, almost 90% saying they’re not interested in a program designed to celebrate the fanbase feels like a massive miss to us.
The comments on the PS Blog have been even more forgiving.
One user said: “Nobody asked for this. Bet this won’t last long either. Make games.”
Another added: “You are more and more disconnected from reality/your fans by the day. Who wants this? I hope this wont be used to train some f*cking AI.”
We’re sure the company will still get plenty of entries and the Gran Turismo 7 contest will go ahead as planned; we sincerely hope the winner has an awesome time.
But this whole initiative seems like it could do with a rethink to us.