Habbo Hotel

Habbo Hotel is a virtual community that combines the concept of both a chat room and online game, owned and operated by Sulake Corporation. The original idea behind Habbo Hotel, Mobiles Disco, was created as a small project by two young Finnish men, Sampo Karjalainen and Aapo Kyrölä using FUSE Technology, which they created, and was intended to promote a rock band called Mobiles. The pair later sold the project to the Finnish telecom giant Elisa Oyj.

The major launch of the service in Finland saw it dubbed Hotelli Kultakala, Finnish for Hotel Goldfish, in August 2000. 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 January of 2001. Since then, the Hotel chain along with its user base has continued to grow, and Habbo Hotel is currently one of the largest non-violent online game communities on the internet, operating in 17 countries.

Features

To play Habbo Hotel, one must first create an avatar, referred to as "checking in for the first time." The Hotel will ask the person if they are a specified age limit, dependant on geographical location. The player must provide a habbo name and, if they may, type in a mission, which is a descriptive line shown when the player is clicked on by another habbo. The system will not register any offensive names or any that closely resemble any of the player's personal information. The newly registered Habbo now has the option to choose from a variety of clothing, shoes, hair and skin colour, all of which can be edited later.....

In the Hotel

The chatrooms that make up each Hotel are large isometric structures that usually feature furniture, lighting and beverage dispensers. There are two main types of rooms: Public Rooms and Guest Rooms. Public Rooms are those that supposedly could be found in a normal hotel, including lobbies, a kitchen, pools, lounges and a theatre (see photo to the right.) The selection of public rooms will differ from hotel to hotel. Guest Rooms are fully customizable rooms made by Habbos and can be used for a wide variety of purposes: nightclubs, gaming rooms, trading rooms and even whole houses. There are templates for the size and shape of the room, which can be painted and filled with furniture (known as "furni"), all of which is purchasable from the Catalogue (see below.)

In guest rooms, Habbos and all furniture appear much larger than in public rooms; as a result, the isometric grid is much larger and guest rooms consist of much smaller grid sizes than public rooms (the largest guest room has 104 squares, where the average public room has three times that.) In either room type, the words of a Habbo will appear above their head in a long, one-line thought bubble that is colour-coordinated to match the colour of the respective Habbo's shirt.

Habbos can keep track of their friends through the Console, which allows Habbos to send and receive messages to each other. It also allows them to keep track of who is online and which room they are in (though it will only say "in guest room" if they happen to be in one.) There is also a Navigator which allows Habbos to select a public or guest room to enter. The navigator holds lists for a Habbo's own rooms and their favourite rooms, as well as a Search feature enabling searches by room name or owner's name. Recent versions of the Navigator sort both Public and Guest rooms under various categories for easier navigation.

Furniture for guest rooms can be purchased through the Catalogue. Catalogue items can either be purchased with credits or traded from Habbo to Habbo, as long as they are in a guest room which allows trading. Credits are bought by paying actual money (usually by text message, credit card or mail orders) to Habbo Ltd. Habbos can purchase a wide selection of items for their guest rooms from the catalogue. They can also purchase cats and dogs to occupy their room(s). Every so often, rare items will be sold through the catalogue for 25 credits for a period of around 14 days. There are also seasonal items released a month in advance of such days as Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween and Christmas. Furni, as well as credits, Habbos and guest rooms cannot be transferred from one hotel to another.

Habbo Club

Habbo Club is an exclusive service in Habbo Hotel that enables a Habbo to:

• select a wider array of hairstyles and clothing
• receive a special rare furniture once a month
• have priority access to the hotel when logging in (actuality of this is in dispute)
• create exclusively shaped guest rooms
• enter special HC-only public rooms
• choose from a selection of four dance moves as opposed to one default dance (the "Hab-Hop" on English speaking hotels)
• have priority in queues to enter full public rooms
• ability to have a larger friend list

Two very useful additional features of Habbo Club include the Chooser (accessed by typing ":chooser"), which lists all occupants of a room, and Furni (":furni"), which lists all furni within a guest room. Members of Habbo Club are also able to turn their badges on and off at their own discretion.

Moderation/Guidance

Office staff

Each 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.

Moderator staff

Habbo Hotel's moderation is covered by paid moderator staff whom work in 4 hour shifts. Moderator staff 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 office hours. 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 seperate web based tool known as Housekeeping. The tools in Housekeeping, as well as in-game controls (through commands typed with the syntax :command parameters), 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 eXperts

Habbo eXperts are commonly known throughout the hotels as Habbo Xs. This recently devised system is designed to present Habbo Hotel as a welcoming environment to new members. This is done through the selection of a number of regular Habbo players of any age, who are known to have a solid understanding of the Habbo Way and the Hotel in general. These players (the number of whom varies between hotels but is usually between the range of 20-30) recieve a special badge to identify them to new players.

The system, although praised by many, is also disputed by some Habbos as a form of favouritism, with many Habbos well known within their respective communities being selected for the program. The system has not yet been implemented on all hotels worldwide, however is in operation throughout all English speaking hotels.

Hobbas

Hobbas were volunteer Habbo users who assisted moderators with moderation of the hotel. Hobbas were split into three groups - silver, gold, and super - each of which had different levels of powers. Hobbas recieved many of the same commands as moderators use, as well as access to a limited section of Housekeeping. Hobbas applied for their voluntary position through the Hotel websites, and had to meet selection criteria (including a minimum age of 18 years) in order to file a valid application. The application process also involved telephone interviews, as well as a written contract between the individuals and Sulake Corporation.

Due to security concerns, the Hobba system was phased out worldwide on December 31, 2005. All Hobbas and ex-Hobbas were given a special Habbo Memorial badge to acknowledge their service to the hotel.

Language

There is a filter in place to block certain objectionable words and phrases. It has become to be known as the Bobba Filter on the most prominent hotels, due to its replacement of all offensive text with the simple word "bobba" (various hotels, mainly those not in English, use a different word than "bobba".) Replacement comes anywhere from benign words like "poop" and "ass" to highly offensive words, phrases and even websites. The level of censorship varies from hotel to hotel, with the UK Habbo Hotel having, in many user's minds, the most ludicrous amount of censorship possible.

In recent times, Habbos have become increasingly irritated by the filter, which has been known to filter out normal portions of speech, such as "My thoughts exactly!" or "looking to trade a red rug", due to the words "sex" and "drug" appearing in the respective phrases (see bolded portions.) Emoticons are not safe from the filter either, nor are some normal words like "successful" and "fuchsia". The recent explosion of censorship has led to Habbos avoiding the filter by adding punctuation between letters and resorting to more leet options such as alt codes (using alt+number pad to create letters with accents on them), which has, in turn, caused more and more words to be filtered.

The amount of filtering also varies from medium to medium. For example, apostrophes on stickies (similar to Post-it Notes) are immediately changed into question marks, as they are popular for avoiding the filter. "//" is censored from appearing in room names, descriptions and Habbo missions for being used to advertise websites, but is not censored from ordinary speech. Similarly, the word "light" is censored in Habbo missions, as many Habbos used a mission similar to "light it up", a reference to marijuana. Again, all of this is dependent on the Hotel one is currently using. Names such as James are also banned from missions and many usernames are unacceptabled to hotel management because they used to belong to a very famous/well known habbo or it is a name being saved for future staff members.

Habbo Hotels

Current Hotels

There are currently 17 Habbo Hotels in operation:

Future Hotels

These hotels' domains have been purchased by Sulake. Opening dates are unknown. All of these domains currently redirect to the US Habbo Hotel.

• Habbo Hotel Belgium
• Habbo Hotel China (Expected in 2006)
• Habbo Hotel Czech Republic
• Habbo Hotel Greece
• Habbo Hotel Latvia
• Habbo Hotel Liechtenstein
• Habbo Hotel Lithuania
• Habbo Hotel Mexico
• Habbo Hotel Poland
• Habbo Hotel Romania
• Habbo Hotel Russia

Fansites

Some Habbo Hotels maintain an official fansite list. This is a list of the best sites dedicated to Habbo Hotel as voted by the members of that hotel's community.

Habbo Hotel Australia

• Habbo Hotel Australia - Fansite List
• HabboParadise
• Habbo-Hood
• Habboish
• Habbo Holes
• Tropical Habbo
• HabLux
• HabHolic
• OrangeBobble
• HabboDown
• HabboHut
• Hobtech

Habbo Hotel Canada

• Habbo Hotel CA - Fansite List
• duckieworld
• Habboholics
• Canadian
• Habglitter?
• Habbo Bikes
• Habrix
• Habbo Info Canada
• Habbo Twist
• Airwaves FM

Habbo Hotel Finland

• Habbo Hotel Finland - Fansite List
• Kala-stamo
• Nerokala
• Pixeli

Habbo Hotel Norway

• Habbo Hotel Norway - Fansite List
• HabboSite
• HabboPalace
• HabboHeaven

Habbo Hotel Sweden

• Habbo Hotel Sweden - Fansite List
• Habbaloo
• Habbos
• Snilleblixten

Habbo Hotel Singapore

• Habbo Hotel Singapore - Fansite List
• HabboSoup
• HabboLitez
• HabboWatch
• HabboForum
• HabboUnderworld
• Habz.net

Habbo Hotel UK

• Habbo Hotel UK - Fansite List
• Habbo Mania
• Bobbanet
• Habbo Paper
• Habbo Info
• Habbling
• v-Habbo
• Habbo Demand
• RobSladey
• Habbo Lane
• YourHabbo
• HabboCafe
• HabboDown
• Hab-World
• Habburgers
• Habbo-Addicts
• HabboHut
• HabboFM
• HabboForum
• Hobtech

Habbo Hotel USA

• Habbo Hotel USA - Fansite List
• HabboForum
• Habbo Discussion
• HabboDown
• Habtips
• Blue Bobble
• HabboHut
• Habbox US
• BOBBA My Room
• HabboTalk
• Rare Trade Values
• Habbaz