I tried Habbo (https://www.moregameslike.com/habbo/) this week from Tuesday to Friday, about an hour each day. It is a mood journey from exciting-confusing-boring-happy to “on track”. Firstly, it is a social networking service and online community aimed at teenagers and young adults, but based on my limited experience, such as the language use “I need to have dinner now”, and conversation topic “I want to become a wizard”, I guess it is more like a big children’s playground. Secondly, the website has been operated by a Finnish corporation, which mainly provides language options and service to Europeans and English speakers, for example, I didn’t find the language setting for Asians. Like many other virtual world communities, you can customize the avatar and change it after a while, but I find it is special that under one account, in Habbo you can create as many as 50 avatars as you want. So, I think this setting function gives players more fun and agency of role-playing.

 

Basically, it is very friendly using, “Join for Free” is obvious on the website and catching your eyes. You can join it just by one-clicking, such as through your Facebook or Twitter account, which is a very simple way for new customers to try, which also can extend this community to your existing communities. It’s a browser-based game-play, so it takes some time to log in and set up, but there are some slogans, such as “Time is an illusion”, which seems fresh and interesting to me. Once the initial steps are taken, you can get into the game world, the first day, I have been given a hotel room. I chose one from three, the one is an ideal one that I would like to have in reality, so I felt so excited since I have an illusion that “Haboo understands me”. However, when I entered the second day, I need to build my own room, which needs currency and currency comes from tasks or buy it directly. I don’t like this “buy” function or its underlying logic that “money is everything, money can buy everything, or money makes things work”, especially this virtual world is designed for teens. So, I think it’s also an ethical problem embedded in the fieldwork.

 

When entered the party room or game room, it becomes confusing at first, and it is hard to find who is talking to who, also where and how to complete the tasks. But when you observed for a while, it becomes clearer, but also boring when you are familiar with their mechanics, because they are also easy tasks to do. However, if I were a primary school student, I think I will be curious and immersed in it for days. I have a research question about the avatars, because when I customized my own, it took me a long time to think which should I choose, the appearance looks my real one or the opposite? So, I wonder what’s the motive for people to choose their avatar/identity in the virtual world? What’s the relationship between players and avatars: the real self comes into virtual reality? A brand-new second life which is different from the real one? A symbol or representative one for the real multiple selves in exploring the new virtual world? I think the above guesses are all possible, but under what circumstances or motivations people will behave accordingly? Unfortunately, I didn’t have a meaningful conversation with any players or new friends in the Habbo, or Haboo may not a suited choice for this research question. Since I didn’t find good chance to talk with other players, I did an experiment with performances. When I entered a new room, I stood in the center place and started dancing, kept dancing (an action option), to observe others’ reactions. Three different results: on one discerned my dancing; someone warned me “stop dancing”; someone just kicked me off. It’s interesting to be kicked off in a virtual world, but how awkward and embarrassing in reality to be kicked off when I entered a new field and behaved inappropriately.