My Analysis of the Economy in Habbo

[Celacia]

To preface this post, I'm active in many MMOs and online games and I've taken college level economics courses. I'll keep this short and sweet.

Habbo is a 'game' in which there are few game elements. At its core it's a chat service for young children and younger teens. Because of this, there are two sides to Habbo. There are the people who play to chat and the people who play the economy.

Sulake stays afloat because of the kids who play to chat.

The market is heavily inflated and it was made worse by the merge.

Some people don't know the value of rare items. And that value, frankly, is insane.

A gold bar is roughly $10, 1 GB=50c.

Think about that. I know people who have THOUSANDS of gold bars.

3000 GBs * $10 a pop = $30,000...and OBVIOUSLY this value doesn't maintain itself. It's 10 years of VIP.

The people who have these large sums of money either played since the beginning, scammed, or phished accounts.

And, to further substantiate the downfall of this 'game', GAMBLING is a main element of Habbo.

A game that is marketed to children is threaded in GAMBLING. This teaches bad life skills. Kids can end up spending a lot of money and lose it all. They wonder why they're not as rich as the casino owners who have thousands of gbs and lose REAL money.

In closing, the value of items, when tied to the REAL currency factor simply doesn't add up. There's a heavy imbalance and sooner or later this game will either see a major shift (through the release of all super rares) or I strongly believe Sulake will go under...

[JerseySafety]

I like this - it's all true, fabulous post!

[Zeptis]

i agree with all but one part. sulake is milkin' habbo they are rich because of those people with 3000 GBS since the mpney to get those GBS has to come from somewhere, They are rich!!!

[Inseriousity.]

"A game that is threaded to children is threaded in GAMBLING" is wrong in my opinion. It's called capitalism. There are some poor people, some rich people and the poor people want to be the top, they want to be rich. It's a business so it needs those poor people to want to do better and hopefully get rich by spending their rl money on their product.

[AgnesIO]

To be fair, the fact you did economics at college doesn't really show in this thread.

There has been many crashes in the value of rares, yet Habbo is still going. It is all one economy. The only way a hotel could really go under is if you could do cross hotel trading with other countries - as you then have different economies. However, as you can only trade between your one economy the chance of it all screwing up is lowered.

Also, yet again I shall point out, last year was the best financial year Habbo has ever had. Now if you are seriously telling me that is the sign that it could go down under...

Sulake do not encourage the gambling, but if you couldn't gamble TEN the economy would be ridiculous. Everyone would eventually be worth similar amounts, meaning there would be no rich and poor, and as we can see in real life this simply does not work. Apart from trading and playing games, there are no real opportunities to win virtual items, so the chance of someone being relatively rich compared to others is reduced. Then you need to think, if no one is particularly rich, the prizes in games are likely to fall - meaning even less people will have the chance of becoming rich.

But then look at trading. Sure you can argue that trading would enable people to make profits etc, but now there is the 'marketplace' how many good rare shops do you see? I used to be able to walk in to a rare shop, save a few c on bulk petals, go in to the next shop and sell them. Now, this isn't possible. There is one place to trade, making it sort of unfair. Imagine if there was only Sainsbury's and no competitors. The price of food would surely go up. But with Marketplace there are thousands of people all fighting to get their furniture noticed, so have to lower the price of their rare - just to sell it. This means they inevitably often have to sell at a loss, being the ONLY realistic way of making anything is by gambling.

Or buying of the black market, scamming or hacking. However, Habbo does not encourage gambling, and believe me if it didn't send out the wrong message, Habbo would have an 'official casino' where you would probably be charged tax just to gamble - but would have no risk of being scammed.

[Mathew]

Interesting post, as is Inseriousity.'s.

I have nothing more to add. I used to be quite a big trader but I really haven't done it at all since the merge and the introduction of the Marketplace. The Marketplace just spoilt the whole fun of trading for me. I wish they'd just release all the Super Rares, mess up the so-called "economy" so Habbo is back to it's primary function, and that is to speak to other people from around the room on a chat room. Oh, and it would be hilarious to see all the egotistical morons in casinos crying over their pixels.

[Moh]

Can get gold bars "illegally" for about £1.50

[AgnesIO]

Interesting post, as is Inseriousity.'s.

I have nothing more to add. I used to be quite a big trader but I really haven't done it at all since the merge and the introduction of the Marketplace. The Marketplace just spoilt the whole fun of trading for me. I wish they'd just release all the Super Rares, mess up the so-called "economy" so Habbo is back to it's primary function, and that is to speak to other people from around the room on a chat room. Oh, and it would be hilarious to see all the egotistical morons in casinos crying over their pixels.

To be honest, I couldn't see the harm in it anyway - lets be honest, almost all the casino owners don't get their furniture legitimately - so they couldn't really moan, and they certainly wouldn't be a loss to Sulake, if they left.

I genuinely don't think the merge has anything to do with people not trading as much. The sole problem that ruined Habbo's trading market was the Marketplace. This has stopped people being able to make a profit, and also to be honest doesn't make trading as fun. I remember some of the enjoyment in room designing has been trying to actually find the items. The marketplace has taken this away, and does take away the extra touch of room designing. Also, as stated above, you cannot make a profit of of Habbo's new marketplace - obviously it is possible, but it is harder, less enjoyable and the profits made are more about luck that the value has gone down, than finding the right buyer/seller.

---------- Post added 21-05-2011 at 11:26 AM ----------

Can get gold bars "illegally" for about £1.50

£1.50? Y'all being mugged :L

£1.20/£1.10 is the going price I believe (from the right black market people). Thrones tend to go for £8.50-£12

P.S. Apologies if talking about this is against the rules, I am not posting any links, not sure if you can discuss the prices?

[Zak]

Can get gold bars "illegally" for about £1.50

Yep

So 3000 x 1.5 = 4500. Which is feasible, still a huge amount though.

Plus you missed out, hacking and scamming as one of the main ones. I know a guy who scammed 80t odd. At the end of his reign, he sold up. Had over 700t. Search: Hachette to read his story, to find out how some people get rich. Others are much clever and get rich by other means.

I remember one member who's actually a member on here, keylogging either Vodor or Nisus back in 05/06 I can't remember. Or that's what I remember hearing in the room 'we got him'. etc. They deserved it anyway - using accelerators to rig.

[Eoin247]

As i said multiple times all the problems with the market currently is due to the large influx of new furniture. Sulake are doing this on purpose i believe.

They don't like people "recycling their furni" by selling and trading in others as this stops people from buying it more expensively from the catalogue and therefore buying more credits (also the reason they put commision on the exchange). By putting so much furni into habbo, it makes it near extremely hard to find the particular furni you want in furni shops. Therefore people are far more likely to buy it in the catalogue. Notice also that the catalogue is at least twice as big as it was not very long ago.

Don't be fooled guys, everything sulake does is done to gain more money. They are a for profit company, so you can't expect anything else really.