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Cops are searching real homes for clues in the theft of virtual items from Habbo Hotel, the teen-oriented social game that's been on the vanguard of virtual crime before. This time Finnish authorities are tracking some 400 cases of theft. More »
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User generated content is something of a hot issue, with even universities like Stanford getting in on the game of how to make it easier and more intuitive for people to make their own stuff for games. At the recent Social Gaming Summit, a couple of industry types got together to talk about user generated content in virtual worlds, and why the model works for their games (such as Habbo Hotel or Puzzle Pirates): More »
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Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, checked out the average revenue per user for some casual, free to play MMOGs (Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, Runescape, and Second Life), establishing that other that SL - which pulls in a little over $9 a month in ARPU, thanks mostly to virtual land upkeep - these sorts of casual MMOGs pull in around $1.25 ARPU per month. Which, until one considers the user bases of games like Club Penguin, seems like a damn hard way to make some money: More »
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Once upon a time, Disney had this virtual world called (creatively enough) Virtual Magic Kingdom: More »
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A short and sweet and mildly thought provoking piece over at Terra Nova asks the question: "Why not qualify the taking away of virtual objects as theft?" The author speaks in reference to Dutch law specifically, but a few cases have cropped up in recent months (Shanda getting sued after forgetting to return some virtual items; the case that this post was based on, where virtual theft in Habbo Hotel led to a real life arrest) that raise the question of what do you do with virtual items when they're stolen? Slap a pair of real life cuffs on the thief's wrists? Ignore it, since the items never left the virtual space they inhabited? More »
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Normally, sentences that start with "Dutch teen" are cause for excitement—or at the very least, a Fleshbot post—but this one is nothing short of depressing. According the BBC, six teenagers are suspected of stealing some 4,000 euros (about $5800 US) worth of virtual furniture in a phishing scam directed at Habbo Hotel users. One has been arrested, a 17-year old, after police contacted the service's owners. More »
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Confession: I have never frequented Habbo Hotel. Should I feel ashamed? (Note: Given an over-inflated sense of esteem, anything that I or any other members of the Kotaku staff have failed to experienced is immediately considered worthless and below us when encountered, so the question is rhetorical...if you could even give it that much credit). But a lot of people have tried it out, teens and "teens," producing a total 80 million avatars since the site launched in 2000. Quick division tells us that roughly 10 million avatars have been created per year, or just shy of a million per month. We'd keep spouting off numbers, but you've already stopped reading, continuing your search of import DS titles featuring pantsu and jubblies. More »
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Gamasutra has a long (long) interview up with Raph Koster (lead designer of Ultima Online and founder of Areae). It's long. But Koster touches on a ton of stuff - the shift in game design, the ultra-casual market like Habbo Hotel vs. WoW, this idea of 'game grammar', why patents are a necessary evil, and is 'single-player gaming dead'? - and it's an interesting read. Even some interesting ideas on the us vs. them mentality present in the industry (or is it?): More »
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There's a number of wildly popular 'games' (online worlds?) that fly under the radar in terms of press (unless, like Club Penguin, they get purchased for a lot of money), and Habbo Hotel is one of those - some of this is a demographic issue, and some of it is that games like this don't fit into our idea of what a 'game' is or should be. Gamasutra has an interesting interview with Habbo's lead designer, Sulka Haro. It's an enlightening look at those virtual worlds that fall into the part virtual networking site, part 'game' (depending on your definition), both in terms of design and actual implementation. And how we should be defining 'games' in the first place: More »
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In news outside of the console industry, the top ten most popular MMO games have been listed. Not surprisingly, World of Warcraft is sitting pretty at number one, but the rest of the list is a bit of a head scratcher. Habbo Hotel, that Finnish playable MySpace to the youth, comes in second, which begs the question,"How old do you have to be to own a credit card these days?!": More »
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Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime will be presenting a keynote at this year's Austin Game Developers Conference. More »
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