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Habbo Hotel
File:Habbo Hotel logo.svg
File:HabboAUGuestRoom.png
Developer(s)Sulake Corporation
Publisher(s)Sulake Corporation
Platform(s)Cross-platform
ReleaseFinland August 2000
United Kingdom January 2001
United States September 2004 (full list)
Genre(s)Massively multiplayer online game
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Habbo Hotel is a virtual community owned and operated by Sulake Corporation. Habbo Hotel is aimed at teenagers, and it combines the two concepts of a chat room and an online game. The original conception of Habbo Hotel, namely Mobiles Disco, was created as a small project by two Finnish men, Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä.

The chatrooms that make up each Hotel are large, computer-generated graphics that use isometric projection. The game is centered around Habbos, virtual representations of its members. Each character has a different name, and is identified solely by this name. The service's other focus point is virtual furniture, which is often called "furni" by players. This virtual furniture can be bought by players using credits, which are bought using real-life currency. This furniture and the credits used to buy them can also be traded between users.

The game is also centered around The Habbo Way, which are the standards and rules which all Habbo players are expected to follow, or face a ban from accessing the hotel for a certain amount of time. Players are urged to report any breach of it using a system which notifies the hotel's moderators.

The service began in 2000 and has expanded to 32 local communities,[1] with new communities opening in Panama, Uruguay and Venezuela. As of July 2007, over 78 million Habbos have been created worldwide and there are 7 million unique visitors to the virtual hotels around the world every month.[1]

History

The Hotel's original concept came from a 1999 project by Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä, namely, Mobiles Disco, created for the band Mobiles. The idea was successful, and so Karjalainen and Kyrölä created "Hotel Goldfish".[2] The name was scrapped, and replaced with a new name, "Habbo Hotel", and in August 2000, the two launched the service to Finland.[3]

The service was then launched in the United Kingdom in January 2001, and has since been expanded to over 30 countries over five continents in total.[1]

In August 2007, Habbo Hotel's Chinese community closed down temporarily, for unknown causes.[4]

Features

Many activities and features that do not appear on the Hotel itself, are available on the Hotel's website. These include some of the following features:

File:HabboHomeAU.png
A default Habbo Home page owned by a player is depicted.
  • Habbo Home is a feature allowing players to customize their own web-page displayed on the Hotel's website. The web-page can be accessed from inside the hotel,[5] and allow for player interaction with the home page of the Hotel, as well as interaction within the Hotel. The web-pages are displayed with the player's character appearance and motto. Players can customise their web-page with a selection of widgets, stickers and backgrounds. Various widgets, stickers and backgrounds can be purchased with credits to add to the small default range of features. Players who subscribe to Habbo Club receive more benefits for their personal web-page, including advertisements on the side of the page removed.[6]
  • The Habbo Groups feature was released to all servers running version-13.[7] Players can create groups and design a badge to display on their Habbo Home next to their avatar while in the Hotel. Each group also has a homepage which acts similarly to a Habbo Home, but the group owner and group administrators can edit it.

Virtual activity

Once a player logs in successfully, they are brought to a screen colloquially known as Hotel View. From this screen, players can edit their character appearance, contact another player via the Habbo Console, purchase a subscription to Habbo Club and use the Navigator to navigate their way to either a Public Room or a Guest Room (see below).

Players can contact another player in the Hotel via the Habbo Console. Apart from communicating with other players in the same room, the Console acts as the main form of communication throughout all areas of the Hotel.

The center for all navigation within the Hotel is the Navigator. The Navigator shows basic information about the room (i.e. name, description, owner) but also shows the total capacity and the current amount of players that the room can hold. Using the Navigator, players have two types of rooms they can choose to enter:

The Habbo Hotel interface; pictured is a public room.
  • Public Rooms, which are rooms common to a normal hotel, including lobbies, a kitchen, pools, lounges and a theatre. The selection of public rooms differs from hotel to hotel. Several public rooms contain an automated avatar, known as a bot, that proclaims comments that usually have something to do with the room itself. Public Rooms cannot be modified at all by players.
  • Guest Rooms, which are the section of Habbo Hotel which players can customize to endless lengths, filling with virtual furniture and other items. Along with wallpaper and floor patterns players can buy with credits, players can also choose from a range of room templates that determine what shape the room is. Members of Habbo Club have access to more advanced and larger room templates.

Virtual furniture

In Habbo Hotel, furniture (referred to as furni by players) are virtual items which can be placed in guest rooms, traded amongst the community, purchased from the Catalogue and won from competitions held by different hotels.

Many players strive to collect more rare and exclusive furniture. Rare furniture is often sold in the Catalogue, but some items are never released, and thus increasing their value. Some items are kept for larger competitions and for managers to display in their own rooms. Many "trading rooms" are created in which the room is specifically for trading and discussing rare furniture with other players.

A feature recently released to many Hotels including are the Habbo Trax machines. The machine allows players to play music inside guest rooms, and can be heard by all players inside the room.[8] Players can also purchase in-game compact discs from the Catalogue, and are able to customise the tracks on the disc. The United Kingdom Hotel had their machines removed from the Catalogue, after receiving complaints about malfunctioning machines.[9] The machines were then returned to players' who had purchased them on the afternoon of their release.[9]

Furniture items can be purchased with credits in the Catalogue, and then traded amongst players. The Catalogue is a menu of all of the purchasable furniture at any one given time which can be purchased for credits. Every so often, rare items are offered for sale in the catalogue for a short period of time. There are also themed items of furniture available at respective times throughout the year; for example, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Olympics and Christmas.

File:HabboHotelR12Trading.gif
The new version-12 safe-trading dialog box, demonstrating the ability to trade Hotel currency between players.

Players can trade their virtual items for other player's items, using the safe-trading box (pictured right). Players usually discuss what is being traded beforehand and then request to trade via the box afterward.

In February 2007, servers running version-12 released a feature which enabled players to trade in-game credits in the trading box, namely, the Habbo Exchange.[10] The credit system transfers player's in-game credits into actual pieces of furniture which can be placed into private rooms and seen by the community. The credits can then be traded through the safety trade box for other pieces of furniture, making the Hotel sustainable in the effects of virtually "buying" furniture from other players. Prior to the release of this feature, trading credits was impossible to do safely.

Currency and other incentives

Habbo Credits are the Hotel's currency (also known as coins in other Hotels). Credits are used to buy virtual furniture from the Catalogue, and to purchase Habbo Club subscription. Credits are also used to purchase game tickets. A new feature allows players to purchase special pieces of furniture from the Catalogue that can be redeemed for credits (see above for more information). Credits are stored in the player's purse accesable in any public or private room as well as on the Hotel view and while Logged in on the Main Habbo page.

Credits can be purchased using a variety of different services, such as credit cards, a telephone service and via SMS. Credits are often given out as prizes in management-run competitions as well as player submitted competitions where users submit a competition entry and choose a prize.

File:Habbo Club badges.gif
Shown are two types of badges worn by subscribed players.

Habbo Club (often abbreviated to just HC) is a subscription club inside the Hotel, purchased using credits, that offers many additional benefits, unavailable to non-subscribers. All subscribers to Habbo Club receive a badge, that is placed next to their avatar, and can be seen by all other players. Players who are subscribers for under 12 months receive a bronze badge (shown on the left of the image), whereas players who are subscribers for more than 12 months receive a gold badge (shown on the right of the image). Badges are kept only for the duration of the subscription.

Subscribers have a separate queue from non-subscribers in public rooms, and is often used to the subscribers' advantage during events such as celebrity visits, etc.[11] Subscribers also gain two new commands available to use inside rooms: the :chooser command;[12] a player types ":chooser" and a list of every player inside the room at the time is brought up; and the :furni command; a player can type ":furni" in a guest room and it brings up a list of all pieces of furniture inside the room.

March 2007 saw the release of 15 new pieces of furniture available to members. Some older pieces of furniture were removed, and replaced with newer furniture.[13] On several occasions, competitions are held exclusively for club subscribers, in which extremely rare pieces of furniture are given as prizes.

There are also many games available to players that require credits to be played. These games are often more popular than the free games available in other areas of the hotel.

  • Wobble Squabble — a game played on inflatables in a swimming pool in the Hotel. Players must nudge, slap and push their opponents off the inflatables and into the water using various keys on the keyboard.
  • Snow Storm — Players must throw snowballs at the opposing team. More snowballs thrown by a player that hit, the more points that player gains for their team. There are also many different scenarios and maps that players can choose to play in.
  • Battle Ball — a game played on "space hoppers". Teams of a minimum of 2 must try and "claim" as many squares as possible, by bouncing on them with their individual space hopper within the time limit set. When a square is bounced on by a player, it changes the colour to the team's colour. A recent update to the game was released to some hotels, including many new features.[14]

Moderation and management

There are 18 office branches globally operated by Sulake employees; these office branches are the workplace of the respective hotel's senior staff.[15] These staff generally include a "Hotel Manager", or Content Manager, who oversees the hotel as a whole by communicating with the players through newsletters, creating competitions, and managing the content of the website; a Community Manager, who is responsible for moderation and guidance throughout the virtual community by managing in-game Moderators and Habbo eXperts; and a Country Manager, who manages the business side of the community such as sales, finance and administration.

Office staff may also consist of player support staff, who respond to queries sent via contact forms by players; and graphic designers who create the vast amounts of pixel imagery used both in-game and on the community's website.

Automatic moderation exists in the Hotel's language filter, the "Bobba Filter", which replaces offensive text with the simple word "bobba". Replacement applies anywhere from mild to highly offensive words, phrases, and even websites. The filter also stops players from giving out personal information about themselves and others, for example, their email address. The filter varies from hotel to hotel, and is applied discretely; for example, words such as "harbl", while seemingly meaningless, are censored for their association to, and usage by, Habbo trolls (see below). In this way, the filter assists in moderation of Habbo Hotel.

Habbo Hotel's moderation is covered by paid moderator staff; police vetted Sulake employees.[16] Tools utilised by moderator staff allow them to send messages to individual Habbos in the hotel, which appear as in-game popups. As well as this ability, moderator staff can also kick Habbos from any room, mute them (prevent them from speaking) and ban them from the hotel entirely.[16]

Habbo eXperts

File:HabboBrandedPublicRoom.png
An example of a public room; branded by Habbo Hotel sponsor Axe.

Habbo eXperts (often shortened to just Habbo Xs – although names differ throughout many Hotels) are experienced players who volunteer to welcome newer players to the hotel and explain its features.[17] They are not employees of Sulake and have no powers or abilities except for being able to enter rooms which have reached their occupant limit.[18] eXperts also tend to host games and other events; an example of this is "Carnival X" found in the U.S. hotel, however the name of the event tends to vary on each hotel.

Sponsorship

As a website geared towards teenagers, Habbos Hotel often attracts sponsorship from outside entities. This sponsorship includes visits by musicians and bands[19] (such as The Veronicas, Gorillaz,[20] Skye Sweetnam,[21] Little Birdy, Stephanie McIntosh, Operator Please and Evermore), as well as various corporation giants.

As Habbo Hotel is targeted at teenagers, and 90 per cent of its players are between the age of 13 and 18,[1] it receives much attention from youth organisations, who educate players about many topics such as Internet safety, and drug education.[22]

Reviews, awards and criticism

In November 2001, The Daily Telegraph ranked Habbo Hotel in seventh place in "Top 10 sites: chat and instant messaging", along with other chatroom giant Yahoo! Chat. They described it as "great-looking" and "proving popular with teenagers".[23]

On October 21, 2006, an in-depth article about Habbo Hotel written by British travel writer Tim Moore was published in the Daily Telegraph's Telegraph Magazine.

In 2005 and again in 2006, Habbo Hotel Australia received the NetGuide Online Web Award for "Best kids’/youth website [sic]".[24][25] Then in September 2006, Sulake won the Deloitte's Fast50 competition.[26][27]

The Hotels are often victims to various Internet troll groups, "raiding" certain public rooms and making rude gestures and comments.[28]

Hotels

Current Hotels

There are currently over 30 Habbo Hotels in operation.[1]

Country URL Opening date Country URL Opening date
Australia http://www.habbo.com.au/ November 2004 Malaysia http://www.habbo.com.my/ July 2006
Austria http://www.habbo.at/ May 2006 Mexico http://www.habbo.com.mx/ July 2006
Belgium http://www.habbo.be/ May 2006 Netherlands http://www.habbo.nl/ February 2004
Brazil http://www.habbo.com.br/ February 2006 New Zealand http://www.habbo.co.nz/ August 2006
Canada http://www.habbo.ca/ June 2004 Norway http://www.habbo.no/ June 2004
Chile http://www.habbo.cl/ July 2006 Portugal http://www.habbo.pt/ March 2006
China (temporarily closed[4]) http://www.habbo.cn/ January 2006 Russia http://www.habbo.ru/ October 2006
Colombia http://www.habbo.com.co/ July 2006 Singapore http://www.habbo.com.sg/ December 2004
Denmark http://www.habbo.dk/ November 2004 Spain http://www.habbo.es/ September 2003
Finland http://www.habbo.fi/ August 2000 Sweden http://www.habbo.se/ December 2003
France http://www.habbo.fr/ November 2004 Switzerland http://www.habbo.ch/ August 2002
Germany http://www.habbo.de/ March 2004 United Kingdom http://www.habbo.co.uk/ January 2001
Ireland http://www.habbo.ie/ July 2006 United States http://www.habbo.com/ September 2004
Italy http://www.habbo.it/ September 2003 Venezuela http://www.habbo.com.ve/ July 2006
Japan http://www.habbo.jp/ February 2003

Former Hotels

There has been a closure of China's Hotel as of August 2007. "哈宝中国". Sulake Corporation Ltd. August 2007. Retrieved 2007-31-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)</ref>

Country URL Opening date Closure date
China http://www.habbo.cn/ January 2006 August 2007

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Habbo - Where else? - Sulake". Sulake Corporation Ltd. June 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-05.
  2. ^ Helsinki (2004-01-30). "Making Business with Virtual Furniture". eFinland. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
  3. ^ "History - Sulake". Sulake. Retrieved 2007-08-05.
  4. ^ a b "Habbo China". Sulake. Retrieved 2007-08-31.
  5. ^ "Sulake Press Releases". Sulake Corporation Ltd. 2007-02-01.
  6. ^ "Habbo Club: For Your Habbo Home". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  7. ^ "Get Into Habbo Groups!". Sulake Corporation Ltd. 2007-04-26. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
  8. ^ Lost_Witness (2007-06-01). "Music arrives in Habbo Hotel". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-06-11.
  9. ^ a b Lost_Witness (2007-04-06). "Trax Has Returned!". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-06-11.
  10. ^ "Habbo Hotel February Update". Sulake Corporation Ltd.
  11. ^ "Habbo Club: For Your Room". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-05-13. When loading rooms, as a Habbo Club member you can jump the queue
  12. ^ "Habbo Club Extras". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  13. ^ "Habbo Club has been updated!". Sulake Corporation Ltd. 2007-03-21.
  14. ^ "BattleBall: How To Play". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
  15. ^ "Local Offices - Sulake". Sulake. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
  16. ^ a b "Habbo Hotel Australia - FAQs - "Moderating"". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  17. ^ "Habbo Hotel Australia - FAQs - "Habbo X"". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  18. ^ "Habbo Hotel Singapore - FAQs - "Habbo X"". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2006-12-17.
  19. ^ "Habbo: Celebrity Visits". Sulake Corporation Ltd. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
  20. ^ "Sulake Press Releases - "Gorillaz live at Habbo Hotel"". Sulake Corporation Ltd. 2007-08-17. Retrieved 2006-07-03.
  21. ^ "SkyeSweetnam.com - "Skye Chats LIVE on Habbo Hotel"". Retrieved 2006-07-03.
  22. ^ An example of an organisation educating players about drug education on the UK hotel's website, can be found here. [accessed 2007-08-05]
  23. ^ "Top 10 sites: chat and instant messaging". Telegraph Media Group Limited. November, 2001. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |acccessdate= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ Link to Habbo Hotel Australia's website
  25. ^ "Australian NetGuide Online - NetGuide Web Awards Winners". ACP Publishing Pty Ltd. Retrieved 2007-05-14. Best kids'/youth site: Habbo.com.au
  26. ^ "Technology Fast 50/500". Deloitte. Template:Fi icon
  27. ^ "Sulake wins Deloitte's Technology Fast50 competition". Sulake Corporation Oy. 2005-09-15. Retrieved 2006-10-12.
  28. ^ Phil Shuman (2007-07-26). "FOX 11 Investigates: 'Hacker Gangs'". Fox Interactive Media. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
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