Habbo Hotel is arguably the largest virtual world in existence, with well over 100 million registered avatars (as of June 2008) and ongoing growth. There’s an Australian Habbo portal and in the past fortnight Habbo developer Sulake announced the launch of their in-world currency, the ‘pixel’. Habbo already has a credit system where real-world money can be exchanged for a range of virtual items. The ‘pixel’ addition is more of an achievement-driven option – logging in regularly, paying to join the Habbo Club and staying online longer all give the user ‘pixels’, which can be used to ‘rent’ special effects for virtual rooms or avatars:
New effects include hover-boards that let Habbos glide around the virtual world, a ‘frozen’ avatar that turns a Habbo into a moving block of ice, or bubble machines that blow bubbles into virtual rooms. The pixel economy will be constantly developed based on user feedback.
I took the opportunity to quiz Sulake’s Regional Director Asia Pacific, Jeff Brookes, on the currency announcement and Habbo Australia’s popularity to date:
Lowell: Can you summarise the Australian demographics for Habbo to date? Of the 3.6 million habbohotel coins characters, how many unique users are there?
Jeff Brookes: Habbo Australia receives 25,690,252 page impressions per month and, as you know, has 3.6 million registered Habbo-characters. It has 278,509 habbohotel coins unique browsers per month and users spend on average 1.00.02 hours per user session on Habbo, which is over twice as much as any other teen website, according to November 2008 figures from Hitwise.
Lowell: What are your primary objectives with the new currency? Are there any plans to allow users to cash out their credits for real world currencies?
Jeff Brookes: The primary objective with the new Pixels currency is to reward Habbo users for their loyalty. We feel that it is important to reward our devoted users, encourage them to spend more time within the Habbo world and provide them with innovative ways for them to enjoy their experiences within Habbo. Pixels are earned by habbo credits users in various ways, such as: signing into Habbo once a day, earning more pixels the longer users stay online in Habbo, completing certain achievements, working as a Guide, and giving respect to other users. With Pixels, users can rent certain items for a specific amount of time, have cool effects for their Habbo character, and have discounts on a wide variety of ‘furni’ or virtual furniture that can be purchased with credits.
