Roleplaying In Habbo

Other players build rooms for roleplaying situations -- like a police station, where the players dress like police and pretend to monitor Habbo. Next up, Habbo Hotel a recreation of a famous restaurant chain. "This is McDonalds -- there are people who are roleplaying a minimum wage job... it's all roleplay, you can't carry the food or anything. They're just emoting." There are also other factions -- "There's lots of armies. Mafias are really popular as well. They can't do anything... they're just wearing the suit and standing there. They'll emote that they're punching something." 

People also roleplay as horses in a stable environment, and other players pretend to pet them. The developers pondered putting in horse characters but decided against it, as the players seemed happy just to roleplay. "The players are coming up with all the cool stuff they're doing. We're not trying to define what the product is about. We're poking in and if it looks like they're introducing elements we don't want" they'll put a stop to it."

Haro compared it to small children playing in the real world -- "If you look, little kids will play for hours... but teenagers are reaching the age where that's not socially allowed anymore. We're providing an environment where that's OK." The in-game tools allow players can do what they want as soon as it's cool -- they'll know what thye want before Habbo will. So the tools are there for them to provide it for themselves.

"If you are thinking that community management isn't necessary, habbohotel coins or that you don't have to put a lot of energy into it, you're wrong," Haro warned. "But you also have to understand that there are a lot of different ways to do community management. [In many games] community managers can become superstars, and we're trying to avoid that like crazy, because the players forget that the player-created content is the core of the world."

When it comes to adding those new features at the Habbo level Haro noted, "We do weekly surveys and focus groups -- we're asking new things from the users every week. We do a new build every month so something could be in the game within 30 days." He also commented on the development of Habbo: "We switched to Scrum last year and it's doubled the productivity of the teams. But Scrum is kind of hard to do. You need to fully embrace it -- that means that people have to really let go."