GDC 2009 marked the second anniversary of the PlayStation Home announcement, and Ars was invited to speak with Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, and Peter Edward, director of the Home platform. I started by asking how far we've come since that announcement. "I think everyone gets it, we're starting to see large numbers of people in there. The user base is active. Content is constantly coming in... when you have the Guitar Hero space you pretty much know you've made it. The fact of the matter is, every major publisher for the PS3 now has some kind of plan for Home," Buser tells Ars.

What is Home? A virtual space where gamers can get together to talk about games, play some arcade-like games themselves, explore areas based on PS3 titles, and even purchase new accessories for their avatars. The service has been treated somewhat harshly by the press and gamers for having little content at launch—and for having quite the collection of griefers, with harassment usually aimed at female avatars. Dealing with words like "gay" and "Jew" on the service has also been an embarrassment for the company; someone's religion may be used as an insult, but the term itself being called inappropriate doesn't make for the right kinds of headlines.

I'm given a short demo of the new Guitar Hero space, complete with a Simon-like guitar mini-game and videos for Guitar Hero: Metallica playing on the walls. "Spaces create a hub for the community. Here people can go and meet each other and exchange hints and tips... we also have video screens where there will be announcements and big marketing updates, around the bend they'll be featuring behind-the-scenes information, Home-specific information. You see a lot of that that one-on-one communication between the publishers and the community."

The scoreboards for the guitar minigames are pointed out as being a major feature. I may have looked slightly incredulous. "People inside Home take [high scores] very seriously," they tell me, saying how quickly the scores rise inside the virtual space. In the Red Bull racing area people were taking pictures of their best times and putting them in the forums; adding a scoreboard helped the space become even more popular.

At an earlier meeting, Lincoln Davis, who handles media relations for the PlayStation Network, laughed darkly when I said we have been somewhat critical of Home in the past. He seemed to think it was something of an understatement. Things are looking good at the new Guitar Hero space, but it seems like the space simply isn't tied into the game enough. You can't get a band together and launch directly into the game, which would have been a killer feature.

"That's certainly something that can be added later on," I'm told, and it's stressed that Home is constantly being updated and improved. "The community should expect that. It will be more of a story if the space stays static, not if things are added. There will be events, the space will change, the franchise spaces will grow with the series itself." Everyone hopes that, eventually, the line between the game and the Home spaces will be blurred.

This of course leads to marketing opportunities. For Killzone 2 the company had Sony employees simply walking around the virtual spaces in Helghast and ISA Trooper outfits. The only way to get those outfits? Preordering the game through Amazon.com. "It was an amazing way to tie what was going on in the virtual world to the physical product... there is a minigame in the Resident Evil 5 area that you can't play unless you have the Blu-ray disc in the drive!" Buser tells me—he's obviously excited by the idea.

The best online plans never survive the first 50 people

Have there been problems policing the community? There is a long pause as they both think about the question.

"The average time people spend in home is 40 minutes. That's four-zero. People find secret ways to get up on top of stuff. At first we didn't like it very much, but the community loves it."

Some light parkour isn't exactly what I was referring to, but the other problems are downplayed. "Any online communities have their scare stories and naysayers. Home is part of the PlayStation Network, it goes by the same standards and guidelines of the PlayStation Network, we have established moderation practices... fundamentally, it's the same thing. Since Home is a 3D avatar-based service there are different interpretations of griefing, and we adapt our practices accordingly. We take action against users who abuse the system. I don't know what more to say," Edward says.

"If you go into Home for long enough you'll see someone... doing something, and in short order you'll also see one of our moderators," Buser adds and then chuckles. "But it's not just the moderators who do the moderation... people police their own community."

They draw a parallel with real life, where if you're chatting with some people and you get harassed, you can call the police, tell them to get lost, or move to another area. "People will convey their displeasure to other users."

A path out of beta?

The other major issue is the fact that the service is still in beta, which leads to an easy out when discussing these growing pains.

I ask when we'll get to a full, all-the-way-there release. "For me, it's not an issue. We're already at a stage where anyone with a PS3 can get on, we're at more than five million downloads of the client. Home is there, it's not going away," says Edwards.

But when will they lose the beta status? "I'm certainly not going to give you any information on it," I'm finally told.

"I can tell you why we like the term open beta, and why we've been sticking with it," Buser says, stepping in. "We really want to emphasize this idea of an evolving platform. What you see now is very different from what you'll see in a few months, and that's very different from what you'll see after that." I'm getting slightly frustrated by their inability to give a good answer. World of Warcraft is another fluid, evolving experience, and that's certainly not in beta.

"That's fair enough, but for us it's really, really important to drive that message home, even in the name of the product: Home, Open Beta. Come in, check it out, check out what we're offering, but come back! It will be different when you come back. Other products are changing like this, but it's very very unusual... we've really embraced those words—Open Beta—we're really comfortable with them. We haven't made any announcements about when we'll be moving past them or if we hit a major milestone or anything like that." There is a long pause. "We're becoming quite fond of the words!" Everyone laughs, but the tone is also slightly uncomfortable. "There's nothing really to say beyond that. It's a nonissue in a way."

So take it away then! Say it's out of beta! Buser thinks about it for a moment. "It's changing so fast at the moment, so when would something significant happen that would shadow all the other changes, and make it significantly above that to justify making a big fanfare about it coming out, it would be..." he trails off. I note that it almost seems as if they're trapped by the designation "open beta" at this stage.

"To be honest, we don't think about it, internally. We have our short-term plans, our updates, we're more focused on getting as much out there as possible." We shake hands and I leave, perhaps on a different note than we began the interview. What's clear is that Home has come a very long way... and it has just as long to go.