HABBOHOTEL: May 2005

INTRODUCTION

Hi everyone, Welcome to my case study based on the Social Community : HabboHotel.

With the advent of the internet and computer mediated communications (CMC) the world has become a global village. This case study will look at the interactive virtual community HabboHotel. In our tutorials we have identified groups of interest as one of the major entities of a virtual community. Therefore, this case study will also look at whether it is necessary to have groups of interest among the target audience to make this interactive online environment a virtual community.

WHAT IS A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY?

Before I go any further let us look at the definition of Virtual Communities. In his book The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier Howard Rheingold (2000, p.5) defines Virtual Communities as “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace".

These “long enough public discussions” which according to Rheingold forms webs of personal relationships in cyberspace can occur within newsgroups, support groups and online fan clubs in a text based asynchronous form.

WHAT IS A SOCIAL COMMUNITY & HOW DOES IT WORK?

The Internet has become a way of life. Virtual communities have thrived on the social networking software’s interactivity. Not only scholars, academics or groups with specific interests but children as young as 13 years of age are becoming part of the Interactive virtual communities. People are going online with the intention of making friends and socializing in a more interactive environment.

Most of the online social communities need software that could be used as a common interface between networked users. Some of this software such as The Palace needs to be downloaded on to the user’s desktop. Other software such as HabboHotel is web-based and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

CASE STUDY : HabboHotel as a Social Community Online

Target audience: 13 -17 yrs.

Fast Facts about Habbos inventors (Greenfields & Nuytemans, 2004)

Habbo Hotel is a product of Sulake Labs Ltd.

The online game market is estimated to be worth US $5 billion by 2005 (Source:
Interactive Entertainment, Sector Review, CSFB). Overall consumer spending on games
has already exceeded box office revenues of the movie industry.

Sulake Labs' turnover was about 5 million in 2003.

In September 2003, Sulake Labs was awarded an Ars Electronica Golden Nica Award for Habbo Hotel, in the seventeenth annual Prix Ars Electronica Awards. Ars Electronica is considered to be the most prestigious cyber arts award in Europe with 2,714 entries this year from 85 countries.

Just recently Sulake Labs has raised 4 million to finance the company's international expansion. One of the leading venture capital companies, 3i Group plc, is investing 3 million, and Sulake's biggest shareholder, the Finnish marketing communication group Taivas, 1 million.

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION of HabboHotel.

Habbo Hotels is a web based interactive gaming software that runs on macromedia shockwave. They have got hotels in 16 countries around the world.

Australia
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Norway
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
USA

I checked into Habbo Hotel Australia a couple of months ago and have been a regular Habbo.

CHECK IN

Habbo Hotel is a graphical chat and gaming environment for teenagers to hang out, make friends and have fun. Users have to sign in and create a virtual character (avatar!) whose appearance can be personalized (clothes, skin, hair, shoes.) and hang out in a virtual hotel. Once you are signed in, you become a Habbo officially. Habbos are able to eat, drink, talk, shout, walk, dance and swim, and can change appearance at any time. They can decorate their rooms, play games and interact with other Habbos.

Click here if you want to check in right now.

HABBO ROOMS

HabboHotel consists of 2 categories of Space. Public Space such as:

The Welcome Lounge
The Chill out room
The Swimming ‘ool (pool)
The Opera House
The Main Lobby
The Club Woop Woop (my favourite!)
The Pizzeria and more.

And Guest Rooms which are created by Habbos themselves. Guest rooms ranges from games rooms to theme rooms or just bedrooms. Some of the guest rooms are password activated and some are free access rooms. The trick is to make your room the most visited room in the hotel.

Users can visit different Habbo Hotel public rooms by using the navigator interface on the Habbo Hotel site or visit the guest rooms created by other Habbos. In the hotel's various rooms, Habbos communicate with each other by chatting. Each user has a Habbo Console for locating and communicating with their friends (instant messaging). This console also indicates who are online and who are not and where they can be located.

HABBO CREDITS

Habbos are able to dive at the swimming ‘ool (not a typo, this is the Habbo way of saying Pool) using Habbo credit, buy furniture for their rooms or buy gifts for their friends from the Habbo catalogue. There are 6 ways of buying Habbo credit. It can be bought using a home phone, mobile phone, ezypin, sms (only available in Australia), money order or cash.

HELP AND SECURITY

There are very simple rules which all Habbos must follow when on HabboHotel premises. Follow the rules and you will have heaps of fun and break them to get yourself banned from HabboHotel.

In order to protect the Habbo privacy, they have a privacy policy, FAQs as well as a parental guide. Habbo Police (Hobba) also patrols the premises and helps maintain a safe and non-threatening environment.

HELP AND SECURITY : THE BOBBA FILTER

It is very important that Habbos watch their language when they are in this online environment. Due to a large number of young Habbos using this environment and also for protection and security reasons Habbo Hotel uses a technical filter that replaces certain words and phrases with the rather unusual word 'bobba' - the Bobba Filter.. Anything that goes against the Habbo Way - this includes swearing, racism, explicit sexual comments and also email addresses and phone numbers are now in the filter so that Habbos can't give them out. The Bobba Filter is constantly updated - sometimes several times a day - with new words and terms.

Some of the unacceptable words are - control, msn, cocktail, horny and pussy.(please excuse me for typing them on this page).

ANALYSIS

It is interesting that when I first signed it to HabboHotel, I did not expect to enjoy being around a population of teenagers. However, as weeks went by, I totally enjoyed chilling out by the pool during the day and go dancing on the WoopWoop dance floor at night. I used the Labyrinth when I needed a moment to myself and to reflect upon my experiences online. It was on one of the days I spent in the Labyrinth that I started wondering whether my life online was real or virtual. Whether I would call these computer mediated communications (CMC) a virtual community.

This feeling led me to question my beliefs so far about the notion of virtual communities. According to Watson (1997) scholars have attempted to prove that “a group of people sharing something online are in fact a community”. Therefore, the simple fact that I am a Habbo makes me part of the Habbo community. Yet, I did not feel like I am part of a community. It was more like living in a neighbourhood.

To explore further, I decided to ask some questions. Six of my online “friends” with whom I have been interacting online over the past couple of months allowed me to interview them.

INTERVIEW : Why do people join the HabboHotel?

Jilla: Why did u join HabboHotel?

Buzz : to meet with people and to make new friends.
Adam : to hangout with people my age.
Rocchic : meet with people
Carmen: to get a boyfriend
Finladen: to irritate people.
Roxychic: just to be myself.

So, the main reason why people join HabboHotel is to meet with people, to make new friends and to socialize.

INTERVIEW: How much time do people spend in HabboHotel?

Jilla: How long have you been in HabboHotel?

Buzz : 4 weeks
Adam : me too
Rocchic : 3days
Carmen: not so long
Finladen: 1day
Roxychic: months

Jilla: Do u come here often?

Buzz : everyday after school
Adam : I sign in from work every night
Rocchic : after school
Carmen: every now and then
Finladen: after school
Roxychic: all my free time

From this second set of questions, it can be seen that there is a continuity of presence among them. This was their place to hangout with their friends after school. They might know some of these friends from school but the rest would be from all over the world (mostly from Australia and NewZealand).

INTERVIEW: Ease of use & is HabboHotel a VC?

My third set of questions was: Do you think using HabboHotel is simple? Do you enjoy being here? And do you think HabboHotel is a virtual community? All the interviewees found that it was very easy to use HabboHotel and there was always someone to ask for help if you get lost. All of them enjoyed being a Habbo and being on HabboHotel from day one. However, when it came to the third question of this set, Most of them had never even heard of the word “virtual community”. I had to rephrase my question by asking them whether they feel that their involvement in HabboHotel is real or virtual to them. And their answers were “pretty real” except two guys who thought it was just a place to make a friend and then they would prefer to continue outside HabboHotel (on msn or offline).

CONCLUSION

According to our in-class discussions (tutorials) and on the online blog, we came to the conclusion that a (virtual) community happens when a community share common interests, share proximity, share common experiences, communicate and commune with each other.

So is HabboHotel a virtual community? Well, the community there has:
a shared interest of meeting people and making friends, (but not interest groups)
a shared proximity of the HabboHotel environment,
common shared experiences of playing Falling furniture or singing at the Opera House.
Several modes of communicating with each other.

Sure! all of these happen in the HabboHotel’s virtual environment. And also,
HabboHotel’s aim and objective is to provide a safe environment for teenagers to meet with each other and make new friends. From my involvement and observations I found that these aims and objectives are being met. Therefore, it can be said that HabboHotel is a virtual community and a successful online networking software. However, I could not put my mind at ease because I still felt a sense of removal and a lack of complete and serious commitment around this virtual environment. The level of communion was low in HabboHotel.

HabboHotel’s lack of communion and commitment indicates that it is not a perfect virtual community. It was very interesting to find that my evaluation of the HabboHotel environment has made me realize that “sharing a common interest” does not necessarily have to be regarded as “groups of interest”. Therefore, I have to conclude HabboHotel is a Virtual Community in some ways and it is not necessary to have groups of interest as an entity of an interactive Virtual Community.

My Last Say :P

“If I had encountered sociologist Barry Wellman and learned about social network analysis when I first wrote about cyberspace cultures, I could have saved us all a decade of debate by calling them 'online social networks' instead of 'virtual communities’.” (Rheingold as cited in Cervini, 2003)

Well, I feel that perhaps it is time we broaden our horizons by thinking outside virtual communities. With the popularity of online networking software such as HabboHotel maybe we should start thinking about “Virtual Neighbourhoods”.

Comments and thoughts are welcome.

Thank you & have a good day :)

REFERENCES

Cervini, A. L. (2003). Network connections. Retrieved on May 6 , 2005, from http://stage.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~alc287/thesis/thesis_networkanalysis.html

Greenfield and Nuytemans. (2004). Make New Friends. Where Else? Retrived on May 1, 2005, from http://www.ogilvy.com/viewpoint/view_ko.php?id=41318&iMagaId=-1

Rheingold, H. (1996). The virtual community: introduction. Retrieved on May6, 2005, from http://www.well.com/user/hlr/vcbook/

Further Readings

Interview with Howard Rheinegold. Retrieved on May 1, 2005, from http://www.well.com/user/hlr/texts/mindtomind/frontline.html

Nip, J.Y.M (2003). The relationship between online and offline communities: the case study of the Queer Sisters. Retreived on May 2, 2005, from
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~jour/documents/joyce/Queer_Sisters.pdf

Online community resources (2004). Retrieved on May 1, 2005, from http://www.fullcirc.com/commresources.htm

Rheingold, H. (1998). The art of hosting good conversations online. Retrieved on April 27 , 2005, from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html

White, N. (1999). Interview with Howard Rheingold. Retrieved on May 1, 2005, from http://www.fullcirc.com/community/hrheingold.htm