Our “job” in video games quite often is to save the world from the looming apocalypse. Heroically battle the legions of doom, triumph, and roll the credits. But for me, Playstation Home was different, the “legion “big baddie” was a corporate balance sheet, there was no way to avert Armageddon, all you could do was witness the lights go out in March of 2015. In the weeks before the end, I wanted to document my final tour of Playstation Home.

I remember leading up to its release, Playstation Home was touted to players as the next great social media platform, a “metaverse” before it “metaverse” was buzzword wankery, where you can meet up with fellow gamers, chat and play. An evolution of Second Life, sanitized for corporate marketing without the flocks of winged genitalia flapping about. For the most part despite all its flaws, Playstation Home was a fun experience, and its influences can be seen today in the modern social hubs of games like Street Fighter 6 and Fortnite. But at the end of the day, not enough people were buying digital clothes and furniture, nor were marketers all that interested in creating branded spaces and content for a dwindling user population to make the whole endeavor profitable.