On January 24th, 2023, we gathered former Habbo players and employees for a talk about the talent that emerged organically in Habbo between 2000-2010.
I highly recommend all of you to listen to the podcast (in Spanish) if you're interested in Habbo and you will feel the excitement with which all participants talked. Below is a written summary of each person's individual interventions, in order of participation.
Introduction: What is Habbo?
Habbo is a virtual world founded in the year 2000. The most famous gamified social network for teenagers in 2010, it had over 16.5 million active users, 250 million registered avatars, and generated over 600 million dollars in its digital economy. An absolute success ahead of its time, it even collaborated with artists and celebrities like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.
Habbo users, known as Habbos, can do almost anything in the virtual world. Interact with other users, play, create, build new dynamics... the possibilities were endless.
Above all, Habbo tried to facilitate interaction with other users, dynamics, games, and contests organized by the Habbo Staff (the employees of Sulake, the parent company) and participate in activities created by the community itself, thus rewarding their creativity and proactivity.
The latter was especially important in achieving the success of the platform: it is the users themselves who create the community and entertain themselves in chat rooms, parties, contests, and an infinite number of imaginative activities.
Easier to see than to explain:
Speakers
Javi (@jgonzalezferrer)
As a pro player in Habbo, I understand the metagame of these digital communities and economies. In 2010, I was selected as Habbo of the Year by the habbo.es community, which had 6.5 million monthly active users. I also sold virtual objects for real money worth thousands of euros.
The biggest opportunity I see in virtual worlds is the talent that is generated organically through product usage. It's still difficult for me to understand and explain (COCOBAY was born to explore this hypothesis).
That's why I've brought several of my digital friends from adolescence to tell you about Habbo from their point of view and how it has positively impacted their professional and personal careers…
Manu (@ManuAF9)
I started on Habbo at the age of 10 because my school friends were playing. I was dedicated to trading and creating and managing roleplay games within Habbo.
I founded Habbo Wars, a game based on the Star Wars saga. At our best time, we were a community of more than 200 users.
I highlight the amount of talent I met within Habbo, especially for the age we were at then. Now I am a historian, researcher, human resources specialist, programmer, and COO and co-founder of COCOBAY, where I manage the community, among other things…
Miguel (@miguelcasanova_)
Like many, I started playing Habbo because of friends from the neighborhood. From the first moment I was fascinated because it was something totally new. For the first time, I could project myself and be what I wanted with total freedom, without anyone being able to condition me because inside that world I had another identity.
I met wonderful people and understood from a very young age that there existed other realities.
Personally, I was dedicated to exploring and understanding the role of the game, as well as being part of the Empire community, which were companies within the game that had an important role.
Víctor (@v0ctor)
The greatest potential of Habbo is creativity. I started in the game when I was 12-13 years old. I was completely blown away by the revolutionary concept for the time. From a call center, which was where I connected, I created a fan website called Habbos (later Habtium), a community where we shared news, innovations, and activities from the virtual world. It eventually became the number one Habbo fansite in the world.
Recognition from Habbo was very important for the community. We saw it as something that had to be recognized for the effort and passion we put into it. The official fan websites arrived very late, we having desired it forever.
If I hadn't played Habbo, I doubt that I would be a computer scientist right now. It completely determined the path we have followed.
Habbo didn't know how to adapt technologically. From the migration to Flash, the transition to mobile, and outdated payment models. It gave the impression that they were afraid to modify something that worked and that they never thought that if they didn't react and change they would lose everything. They have died from their own success.
Fahd (@SrFahd)
I started playing Habbo in 2005. There were some guys in the school, in the computer room playing and it caught my attention.
My evolution within the game was from trader and contest player to scripter. I loved breaking the rules as a teenager. At one point, we even made such a mess that we destroyed (several times) the virtual world's economy.
Later on, I regret some of the things what we did, but if it wasn't for that, we might not be talking now. Surely, I wouldn't be a computer engineer if it wasn't for Habbo.
Habbo made many mistakes. From the global mute, the delay in the mobile version, or the disaster with the Flash transition. They started losing a large user base that has left the game half dead. Also, care should be taken with excessive automation of moderation in social networks.
Toni (@Tonisteiger)
I started my journey with Habbo in 2007, also from an internet cafe. I was very involved in help center communities and now in trading. As a consequence of my work in help centers, I believe that's why I'm now a social worker professionally.
I was first a PC user and now I'm a mobile user of Habbo. It's a more limited app and I only use it to talk and trade, you can't build comfortably.
In my opinion, people who connect to Habbo today do it out of nostalgia. There's nothing new or comparable to the events of 2010, when the game was at its peak.
Each part of the community has made the community grow and contribute its grain of sand. The community can revive the game with initiatives like those of COCOBAY.
Rafa (@Initsogar)
I registered in Habbo around 2004, after my cousin told me about it. I loved participating in contests, working in Empires, and earning credits by trading.
My obsession was finding vulnerabilities to take advantage of in the game. I began to learn and develop utilities and tools for everyone, including fan sites around 2010, which motivated me to learn programming and now work as a software engineer.
César (@Hellsin66)
I started playing Habbo in 2004 because I saw my cousins playing. My interest increased when I had access to the source code of Habbo, a packetlogger developed in Visual Basic. I was 14 years old and I started to learn how to code because I found it too interesting to understand what was happening beneath Habbo.
I was programming and learning about everything about the code base and protocols that take place within Habbo every day. Seeing what could and couldn't be broken. Not breaking for harm, but we did it for an artistic reason.
Later, and thanks to Habbo, I started working as a programmer even though it wasn't what I studied. Also, with what I sold on Habbo for real money, I started studying and developing in blockchain. Trying to understand the protocol of Bitcoin or Ethereum and all the technology behind it. For me, a new generation of the Internet begins with which we can use old tools that we have and improve them with decentralization.
Many of the things we did were too advanced for our age and for what was happening at that time. That's why I've seen many of the friends I made on Habbo go on to have very interesting professional careers.
For me, the real value of Habbo is talking to friends. The value within Habbo is an emotional and nostalgic value, but not so much a real economic value. If you're playing a game that is a chat, the most important thing is the chat. I'm still meeting people and talking to old friends in the game.
The games had a big impact on the virtual world. That combination of people, mechanics, and games. Competing with people for plates or exclusive items. They're part of the role-playing we did. And the position we take as a player within a game where you can literally do anything.
Good and bad acts are part of Habbo, part of society. It's fun to see it in a pixelated digital format. People discussing politics or football. That's more important than anything, the fact that you can have a virtual personality, within a game, without needing $$$, gaining reputation and friends over time.
Cheeto (@Sr.Cheeto)
I joined Habbo in 2005-2006 because people from my school and neighborhood were playing it. I used to spend my time in game rooms like football and in trading rooms, where I tried to build rare trades, places where very rare items were exchanged.
What surprises me about Habbo is that it was the first gamified social network; a chat and a game at the same time. It was amazing to connect with friends in rooms within that virtual world. Additionally, they were pioneers in doing influencer marketing on the Internet, bringing in people from Antena3, for example.
For me, one of the most interesting parts were the fan websites and their forums. I still have many friends from that time, as it was my first contact with social networks. It was incredible how we could channel and manage such creative people through games like a San Fermín.
There was magic within those pixelated furniture that were limited, but when combined in a certain order and manner, they had a meaning within that allowed you to play and create whatever you wanted. I remember the feeling of having achieved something as insignificant as entering the room of a competitions organized by the Staff.
Habbo stagnated because similar products emerged, that is, the supply increased. New generations no longer consumed only text and the content was more volatile: in 5 seconds I want something different. Imagine the possibilities for Habbo, such as incorporating YouTube into the game.
They didn't know how to adapt. The mobile app arrived late, the model of paying for everything, and excessive moderation in security. For example, I lost the account I registered with when I was 12 years old and never got it back.
I hold onto the Habbo that created a generation that has a different way of seeing the internet. Fresh blood and people with new ideas are needed to innovate.
Carmen (@Carmiuka)
I mainly dedicated myself to contests in Habbo and role-playing. I became a designer on Habtium (a well-known fan site) and a room builder.
Habbo gave me the opportunity to surpass myself and to bring the perception of perfectionism and demand that I had within the game to reality. I consider that today as a nurse, part of that professionalism that I have is due to what the game gave me when I was younger.
It is worth mentioning that one of the best experiences I have had in my life is putting a face to a digital friend in person.
Adrián (@AdrianSotes)
My opinion is from the other side as a Habbo employee. I was in charge of making users have fun and enjoy themselves within the community through official contests, games, and competitions.
One of the issues that concerned me the most was the safety of a minor audience. As previously mentioned, in some areas we were not at the forefront and we arrived late but also arrived soon to many things.
The community is all of you. I feel proud that many things we did in Habbo positively influenced in some way, even if it was just 1, 5, or 10 percent. My battle horse was how to reach everyone, the thousands or millions of users. It was impossible to reach everyone at a personal level. The tools and workforce available at that time were not ideal.
From the worker's side, there is also an emotional side. In the end, you are people telling us your things in a very emotional way. Sometimes you would react in unimaginable ways with unbelievable stories to events that we had put a lot of effort into. I always tried to do things that everyone would like. Sometimes we made a minor change but some people surprisingly received it affectionately.
It was difficult to cover a very broad audience from many different countries with different time zones and it was difficult to offer the same level of visits to all those markets. I have not seen another product that generates those feelings and that sense of community yet. At the time, it was the best there was.
How can I get more people to come here? So that the same 10 people don't keep coming in. Maybe it's part of the game's charm that it's something that only a few can figure out how to be here and those people become the influencers within the community, the personalities who have it all and have the talent to stand out among the others. This generates frustration for those who can't make it and they complain a lot: "the same ones always win." Although on the other hand, those who won expressed feelings of self-esteem and achievement.
All of this has caught my attention and I have tried to make it more scalable so that more people can reach it. And that's with the available tools and workforce because you can't have an unlimited number of people because, in the end, it's a business and you have to pay salaries and it's not viable. Nowadays, it's easier to do, talking to Javi once he says yes, he promises it can indeed be done.
It was also a technical issue, I remember that rooms (lands) started to multiply in my last days there. We were playing the same game in several rooms so that more people could enter and then the same people entered in all the rooms to take the prize several times.
You also said that users were given little participation. And I don't completely agree. We were like an extra of the game. We tried to give everyone a voice, especially in my last stage by making games with fansites and builders. It's very complicated because we are few intermediaries trying to interact with thousands of people and giving voice to people. It was difficult to find people to delegate the small actions. You have all the success in the world but a small seal of quality was needed. You are the ones chosen to make this game.
There is a lot of the community that doesn't know why many things happened. Why they didn't work, stopped working or never worked. There is no exact science. We were learning little by little and seeing what happened. It was very fun.
It didn't matter what we did, there was always going to be a minimum friction in everything. I always tried to manage all those people with desires and wants to have a good time, although it was complicated, like in all relationships between people.
Conclusion
The Habbo community is still magical after 20 years of life. The talent that has emerged by the creation, innovation and management of virtual worlds in a seemingly accidental way is a field that I am passionate about and want to keep investigating further.
Thanks to everyone for stopping by to talk and participate in the conversation💙: