7b: Sociable Media & "Technologies of the Self": Youth & Learning Online

Adventures in Habbo Hotel

Time for a bit of living in Second Life OR any other Virtual World (VW) of your choice. For you novices, this will mean downloading the program, creating an identity, creating a character and then spending some time (at least 30 minutes) wandering around, etc. Your job is to screen capture your character in the environment, post it to your website/blog/wiki and include a commentary on what you saw, felt, thought about, etc. and try to link it back to the readings. For those of you who have spent time in SL already, choose another VW or simply blog about what you use SL for, take a screen shot, tell me about what you do there, and try to link your experiences back to the readings.

I actually had a hard time picking a VW to spend some time in for this part of the assignment. These days my RA work finds me spending time either in Rift, or watching someone play it (often for the first time). I've come to know the starting area quite well, and if I ever decided to sit down and play the game myself, I'm sure I could whiz through the starting areas quite quickly. However, something about the game's affordances just really puts me off. Recently another RA and I played through to about level 10 together, mostly because we wanted to know what a rift was like (just in case any of our multi-session participants actually got that far), and also to do a bit more exploring in the game world. The more I play Rift, the more I dislike it. I find the graphics clunky and just overall ugly, but I also don't really care about anything that is going on in the game. The story just isn't compelling. My other easily accessible VWs are WoW and EVE, both of which I have spent so much time in (and writing about them) that it didn't seem fair to use them for this assignment. Which lead me to spending an afternoon in Habbo Hotel. Now do I have some stories to tell!

First things first, why did Habbo Hotel catch my attention? I must confess, I already knew about Habbo Hotel (at least vaguely) from the fact that it was a target of a 4chan raid ("Pool's Closed, further explanation here on Know Your Meme). But really, I didn't know much about Habbo Hotel at all. So, curious about what it was all about I ventured in and created an account.

Avatar Creation & Customization:

Upon first logging in to the game I am given the choice of a male or a female avatar. They are both ghosted out, really just an outline of what the generic male and female bodies look like. I flipped a coin and decided to make a male avatar.

I'm not sure if Habbo Hotel randomly generates an avatar or if this is the default male avatar... But given the Pool's Closed avatar was a black man in a business suit, I briefly wondered if the game could read my mind and knew what originally drew me in :P I found it interesting that avatar customization came after deciding between m/f. I guess I am used to the avatar creation systems of more RPG style games where you can look at all the options for customization before committing to a male or female avatar. Habbo Hotel does this the other way around -- choose between m/f first, THEN customize your avatar.

In the customization screens there are a large number (well, a large number compared to other games) skin of colour swatches. Obviously they are not completely inclusive of all possible skin tones, but given that I have been recently been watching a lot of new players struggle with the whitewashed character creation of Rift, I was excited to see more options beyond "pale white" to "white, but perhaps spent a bit too much time out in the sun". In the end I made a purple-skinned avatar, just because I could.

I started looking through the accessories and found some things that surprised me in the hat section. There weren't a lot of choices, but they seemed to take a scattershot approach to the options ranging from what I can only thing to describe as a "Rasta hat - along the lines of these" to a top hat, to various animal ears. The very last choice was a full face balaclava, which just seemed... weird? I had always imagined Habbo Hotel to being a kids-oriented space,so I'm not really sure why they would include a balaclava. In my travels throughout various rooms I didn't see anyone wearing it (but I did see a character wearing the Rasta hat, who was accused by other players as being a "white boy trying to be rasta". My first thought was that it was there for people wanting to RP a casino heist, but I highly doubt that is the balaclava's intended purpose...

In the end I made a purple skinned avatar with an awesome goatee. In terms of clothes, I found a shirt that seemed similar to a red shirt (from Star Trek of course) which seemed fitting because I am almost certain that this avatar will be used once, and then abandoned forever... Not wanting to spend too much time on the avatar I made my selections and ventured into the wild unknown world of Habbo Hotel.

"white boy, trying to be Rasta?"

Interacting with the world:

The first thing that the game wants you to do is to customize your living space. The first series of "quests" (I have a hard time calling them quests, it seems like "objectives" is a better fit, but the game asks you to complete a series of tasks and then you are rewarded with credits, which you can then turn around and use as currency to buy more items for your apartment). This reminds me very much of The Sims, so for a few minutes I happily arranged (and re-arranged) the default furniture that came with my apartment.

I noticed that a large package appeared on the floor, and upon clicking it I was directed to check my email. Ah ha! This is how they confirm that you supplied a working email address! Without it, I would not be able to claim my pet cat! I confirmed my email address and momentarily panicked trying to think of a name for my new virtual pet. I stuck with my default name ("Waffles") and soon enough Waffles was wandering around my apartment sitting on furniture that wasn't there, and demanding to be petted and played with. Waffles also was complaining of thirst, so I looked in the in-game store for a water bowl. From what I could tell, water bowls could only be paid for by real world currency, so it looks like Waffles is going to be thirsty for a long time. I see now that Habbo Hotel falls into the micro-transaction style of game (free to play, but anything beyond the basics cost RW cash). I suspect that much like Maple Story, people will be able to "know" I am a noob because I am only wearing free things, unlike the nicer looking store-bought items.

I quickly became bored with the customizing of my apartment (because really, how many ugly tables can you move around before getting tired of the process, amiright?) so I decided to venture out into the shared, public spaces of Habbo Hotel. My first public space was one of the "recommended" rooms, which is where I saw the racialized insults mentioned above. I wandered around the room, sat on things, and then began looking for a room with more players. Which brings me to my next stop, the "Sexy Singles Room".

Entering into the Sexy Singles Room, I realize that Habbo Hotel is NOT a game for children, like I had originally thought. This was quite a tame screenshot, compared to some of the other things that were happening while I was spending time in here.

Perhaps because I was playing a male avatar (that looks quite silly, IMO) no one really interacted with me, except one other male avatar who waived at me when I was laying down on the bed. Which brings me to my first question.... What the hell is up with the beds? You can see them on the left hand side of the screen shot. A room full of beds where avatars would lay down side by side, and then I'd notice that text bubbles would appear over their heads, indicating that they were chatting with each other (I think?). There was a female avatar laying in the bed the entire time I was there, and the man in the suit was beside her for a little while, then he got up and walked away. When he left the room I lay down on a bed that was empty, to see if anyone would try to interact with me, but after a few minutes it was apparent that I was on my own. Just before I got up the man in the suit appeared at the foot of my bed and waived at me, but no chat accompanied his wave (that I could notice).

The whole room seems to have been set up to encourage 1 on 1 interactions between avatars. There are a series of seats that are pushed up together that fit two avatars face to face, and then a series of loveseats where two can sit side by side. I'm sure if I had spent more time in the room the interactions would have taken on a bit more of an observable pattern and I'd have a better idea about what was going on... But another room with an interesting name caught my eye, so my adventure continued!

The next room I visited was the America's Army room. This was fascinating! I still can't tell if it was an officially sanctioned US Army activity, or if it was a group of people role-playing a recruitment office. What would happen is that new people would enter the room and wait in a line. Upon getting to the front of the line they would be asked to change their outfit to a grey t-shirt, black gym shorts, and black boots. They would then be directed to sit at one of the desks that ran across the middle of the room and were told to change their note to "Recruit". Occasionally I would see people wearing khaki pants and white dress shirts wander through, who I think MAYBE were "Officers", but I wasn't quite sure. I sat in the lobby for quite a while but my name was never called, so I never quite figured out what was going on.

While I was waiting to see if any of the recruitment clerks would engage with me, I noticed an interesting exchange between two players: one was a recruitment clerk, the other was seeming to be recruited. The recruit had changed into the required outfit, but balked at being told that they had to remove their necklace and the feather from their hair. They continued to question why they had to remove those items that helped identify their avatar from others, and the recruiter said that they didn't make the rules and they had five seconds to remove them, or they could leave. I still don't really know what I stumbled in to, perhaps I will go spend some more time there to try and figure it out.

Finally I went to a nightclub, which seemed to be quite full. I sat for a few minutes to try and get a sense of the conversation, but it seemed like a lot of people talking over each other, and not really talking TO each other.

Another overwhelming room... what is going on?

Theorizing Habbo Hotel:

After going into Habbo Hotel cold (well, despite knowing a bit about the website via reading about the 4chan raids) I decided to do some research about what exactly it was that I saw and experienced. It turns out that Habbo Hotel IS directed towards younger people -- While not the children I originally assumed, Habbo Hotel is meant to be a social networking site for teenagers.

Comparing Habbo Hotel to boyd's (2008) description of MySpace, I've had a difficult time trying to figure out the overlaps and differences between the two sites. Are they even after the same target demographic? boyd's characterization of MySpace leads me to believe that the site was built, THEN the teens arrived. Indie bands were the first to flock to the site (and now that MySpace is seemingly on the way out, musicians seem to be the only ones still actively involved in updating their profiles). Habbo Hotel was (probably?) geared towards a younger demographic from the start.

boyd's interviewing of teens on their use of MySpace, specifically the lurking or creeping on other people's profiles is a behaviour I find interesting. Much like Facebook (and probably Google+, if it ever gets off the ground), social networking sites allow for a voyeuristic look at your friends and friends of friends lives. Far too often the critique of excessive use of social networking sites seems to rely on MySpace/Facebook friends not being "real" friends. It is a way of "playing" at being popular, at least according to the bloggers and journalists who like to write stories about inviting 500 Facebook friends to a party and no one showing up.

I'm not sure if Habbo Hotel is really designed for that sort of creeping and lurking. Instead, the "Habbo Armies" and "FBI"/"CIA" seem to provide another form of interaction in group roleplay. After my stumbling across the America's Army room I did some more searching about Habbo Armies and it turns out that there is more than one. It is a "job" that you can take on in the game, and for some people, they take these armies very seriously. On one website I found a list of people who had been "dishonorably discharged" from the army and others who were "quitters", with their infractions/reasons for quitting made public for all to see (and attached to their avatar's name). For many, it was that they had stopped showing up in-game. For others, they no longer had the time to commit to the army, and needed to quit in favour of RW obligations.

Much like boyd, Weber & Mitchell (2008) look at the connective possibilities of social media, as well as the possibilities for construction of (perhaps multiple) identities. However, both of these studies are at least partly based on RW interviews. My time observing Habbo Hotel was based solely in the VW -- I honestly have no idea what anyone "truly" is in the RW. All I have to go on is their avatar's appearance, name, and how they choose to present themselves in the VW. I do think that there are likely more interesting things to be discovered about Habbo Hotel, especially since I am getting the impression it is about "playing" work (with all these references to in-game jobs), and in addition to socialization and interaction. Perhaps work on The Sims would be a bit more insightful for my wonderings about this VW...

I don't know if I will ever log back on to Habbo Hotel. I'm curious, but I'm not sure what to make of everything that was going on. Then again, Waffles is probably REALLY thirsty by now...