Interview: Habbo's Sulka Haro Talks Design, Social Dynamics

Habbo Hotel is immensely popular worldwide, with over 90 million Habbo characters for the graphically-based social space created as of 2008. 

Sulka Haro is lead concept designer for the game/service, and helps guide facilitate user experience in both predictive and reactive ways. Haro is always thinking about the industry, other titles, and what can be done for the service, in a very deep level, almost academic way.

Atop the Hotel Torni in Helsinki, one of the tallest buildings in Finland, we continued a discussion that began on a nature hike by his father’s cabin (Haro is also an amateur nature photographer). It unfortunately leads to some rather baiting questions on my part, but which brings about a number of excellent points.

In this interview, we discuss social dynamics and style in MMOs,habbohotel coins local markets versus foreign expansion, single- versus multiple-sharded environments, and how to predict where your game is to go, when all major play content is essentially player-driven.