Habbo Hotel

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Habbo Hotel

URL	Multiple
Type of site	Massively multiplayer online game
Registration	Required
Owner	Sulake Corporation
Created by	Sulake Corporation

Habbo Hotel is a virtual community owned and operated by Sulake Corporation, the 12th fastest growing technology company in Europe^[1]. It combines the two concepts of a chat room and an online game. The original conception of Habbo Hotel, Mobiles Disco, was created as a small project by two Finnish men: Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä. It was intended to promote a rock band called Mobiles. The pair later sold their project to the Finnish telecoms giant Elisa Oyj^{[citation needed]}.

The game is centered around Habbos, virtual representations of its members. Habbos can be dressed by each user individually using pre-supplied virtual clothing. Each character has a different name, and is identified solely by this name. The service's other focus point is virtual furni, which can be bought by Habbos using credits via a variety of payment methods, including, but not limited to, SMS, home phone, pre-paid cards, credit card and money order. This furniture can also be traded between users.

The game also is centered around The Habbo Way, which are the standards and rules which all Habbo users are expected to follow. Users are urged to report any breach of it.

The service began in 2000 and has expanded to 29 countries, the latest community opening in Russia. As of December 2006, over 66 million Habbos have been created worldwide and there are 7 million unique visitors to the virtual hotels around the world every week^[2].

Contents 1 History 2 Features 2.1 In the Hotel 2.2 Habbo Club 2.3 Activities 3 Moderation 3.1 Moderator staff 3.2 Habbo X 4 The Info Bus 5 Sponsorship 6 External links 6.1 Current Hotels 6.2 Press Releases 6.3 Other links 7 References

History

The major launch of the service in Finland was in August 2000. At the time, it was dubbed Hotelli Kultakala, Finnish for Hotel Goldfish. The company soon decided that a more neutral name for the service would be required to attract larger recognition. The word Habbo was chosen following the submission of a team member.

The second member of the Habbo brand was launched in the United Kingdom in February of 2001. Since then, the Hotel chain along with its user base has continued to grow.

Features

To play Habbo Hotel, one must first create an avatar. The sign up process includes the selection of a desired Habbo Name and Mission (A brief description of the user, displayed underneath the Habbo's avatar). The newly registered Habbo now has the option to choose from a variety of clothing, shoes, hair and skin colour. Once the person is finished registering, he/she is transported to a screen known as hotel view. These options, and the mission option can all be modified at any time.

In the Hotel

The chatrooms that make up each Hotel are large, computer-generated graphics that use isometric projection. There are two main types of rooms: Public Rooms and Guest Rooms. Public Rooms 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. Guest Rooms are fully customisable rooms made by Habbos. The variety of customisations are endless; many examples include nightclubs, gaming rooms, trading rooms and even whole houses. There are templates for the size and shape of the rooms, which can be painted and filled with virtual furniture.

Habbos can send messages to each other by way of the Console. The console also allows users to keep track of who is and who isn't online. A Navigator allows Habbos to choose between a public or guest room. It holds lists for a Habbo's own rooms and his/her list of favourite rooms, as well as a search feature enabling searches by room or a room owner's Habbo name.

Furniture for guest rooms can be purchased from the Catalogue. Catalogue items can either be purchased with credits or traded between Habbos. The Catalogue contains a wide selection of items. Every so often, rare items are offered for sale in the catalogue for a short period of time. There are also seasonal items available at respective times throughout the year; for example, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Olympics and Christmas.

Habbo Club

Habbo Club is a popular subscription in Habbo Hotel that offers additional benefits unavailable to non-members. Some examples include a wider array of hairstyles and clothing, a special rare piece of furniture for each month of subscription, additional guest room layouts, member-only Public Rooms, three extra dance moves, and more. There have been many cases of discrimination against non-HCs, mainly because HCs are stereotyped as being rich and powerful^{[citation needed]}.

Two features of Habbo Club include the Chooser (accessed by typing ":chooser"), which lists all occupants of a room, and the Furni command (":furni"), which lists all the furniture within a guest room. Members of Habbo Club are also able to turn their badges on and off at their own discretion. There are two badges available - one is for those who have been a member for under 12 months and one for those who have been a member for 12 months or more.

Activities

Many Habbos engage in the collection of rare furniture. This furniture is originally sold in the Catalogue for a limited time. However, this furniture can also be obtained by winning competitions, both official and those run by fansites. Habbos also attempt to collect as much furniture as they can, by way of trading with others. As demand increases or decreases, certain pieces of furniture increase or decrease in value, and this enables Habbos to profit from the sale of particular furniture at particular times.

Habbos also build virtual casinos and bet their furniture in efforts to win more furniture. Although these casinos are discouraged by hotel staff^[3] due to the potential for Habbos to be scammed, most hotels have not explicitly banned them and hence many Habbos engage in the practice anyway. Methods that a casino can scam a customer include providing vague rules and instructions (for instance, in Blackjack, not specifying whether the house wins ties, or if there is a limit to how many "cards" one can draw), or by kicking customers out after they pay furniture to the house (but before they receive payout). The casinos operate by way of virtual dice furniture, with a modified version of blackjack being the most common type of game played.

Some Habbo fansites also produce lists of rares known as rare values, which are used by some Habbos to gauge the supply and demand and hence value of each individual rare.

Games in Habbo Hotel are typically games of skill and chance. Since most games in the hotel offer prizes such as virtual furniture, they tend to attract many people who are unable to pay for furniture in real currency. Most of these games are legitimate and fairly operated, while others are run by scammers with ulterior motives.

Moderation

Each branch of Habbo Hotel has an office associated with it. Operated by Sulake employees, this office is the workplace of the respective hotel's senior staff. 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 pixel artists who create the vast amounts of imagery used both in-game and on the community's website.

Automatic moderation exists in Habbo'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 people from giving out personal information about themselves, for example, their email address. The filter varies from hotel to hotel, and is applied discretely: for example, words such as "harbl" and "mantrain", while seemingly meaningless, are censored for their association to, and usage by, Habbo trolls. In this way, the filter assists in moderation of Habbo Hotel.

Moderator staff

Habbo Hotel's moderation is covered by paid moderator staff. Moderators are police vetted Sulake employees who work from home. Office staff moderate the hotel during local office hours, and are relieved by moderator staff outside of these times. Moderators will always have the prefix "MOD-" in their account name and have a Habbo Staff badge.

Moderators utilise in-game commands as well as a separate web based tool known as Housekeeping. These tools allow moderator staff to send messages to Habbos in the hotel, which appear as in-game popups. These prove to be effective in preventing minor infringments of the Habbo Way, the guidelines that govern the community. As well as this ability, moderator staff can also kick Habbos from any room, mute them (prevent them from talking), and ban them from the hotel entirely. Bans are placed on individual Habbo accounts, however, many more serious offences are punished by a Macromedia Shockwave ID or IP address ban.

Habbo X

Habbo X is short for "Habbo eXpert." The Habbo X badge, a blue bubble with a yellow "X" in the middle ("L" on Habbo Spain for "Habbo Lince"), is given to successful applicants. Generally, to become a Habbo X one must: be a registered user on the hotel for at least six months, have entered the hotel two hundred times or more and have had no major bans on their account. Habbo X players have no tools or commands but do have the ability to enter full rooms; public or guest. The job of a Habbo X is not to moderate but to welcome all new Habbos to the hotel and explain its features.

The Info Bus

As a website filled with teenagers it is important to teach internet safety, they do so by using the Info Bus. The info bus is a virtual bus parked in one of the Public Rooms in the hotel. Through a schedule the bus doors open and the Habbos that are in the room at the times are allowed in. Inside the bus a representative from an organization will teach the Habbos about online safety and other topics depending on where the representative is from. Some organizations that run the Info Bus are Unicef, Red Cross, Ontario Provincial Police and the FRANK anti-drug group.

Sponsorship

As a website geared towards teenagers, Habbos Hotel often attracts sponsorship from outside entities. This sponsorship includes visits by musicians and bands (such as The Veronicas,^[4] Gorillaz,^[5]Skye Sweetnam^[6] and Evermore), as well as corporations (such as Lego, Garnier, Nintendo, Virgin Mobile and Starburst).

External links

Current Hotels

There are currently 26 Habbo Hotels in operation^[7]:

Country	URL	Opening Date
Australia	http://www.habbo.com.au/	November 2004
Austria	http://www.habbo.at/	May 2006
Belgium	http://www.habbo.be/	May 2006
Brazil	http://www.habbo.com.br/	February 2006
Canada	http://www.habbo.ca/	June 2004
Chile	http://www.habbo.cl/	July 2006
China	http://www.habbo.cn/	January 2006
Colombia	http://www.habbo.com.co/	July 2006
Japan	http://www.habbo.jp/	February 2003
Mexico	http://www.habbo.com.mx/	July 2006
Netherlands	http://www.habbo.nl/	February 2004
Norway	http://www.habbo.no/	June 2004
Portugal	http://www.habbo.pt/	March 2006
Russia	http://www.habbo.ru/	October 2006
Singapore	http://www.habbo.com.sg/	December 2004
Spain	http://www.habbo.es/	September 2003
Sweden	http://www.habbo.se/	December 2003
Switzerland	http://www.habbo.ch/	August 2002
United Kingdom	http://www.habbo.co.uk/	January 2001
United States	http://www.habbo.com/	September 2004
Venezuela	http://www.habbo.com.ve/	July 2006

Press Releases

On Saturday 21st October, an in-depth article in the Daily Telegraph's Telegraph Magazine was published about Habbo Hotel^[8], by British travel writer Tim Moore (writer). He asked people at Habbox Forumabout Habbo Hotel.

• http://sulake.com/pressroom.html/

Other links

• Sulake Corporation

References