habbo-hotel posts

Second Life. Club Penguin. Habbo Hotel. For millions of users worldwide, these virtual worlds are their homes-away-from-home, and for many, the realms in which the majority of their time is spent. Yet for outsiders, these environments represent nothing more than a niche for hobbyists with nothing better to do, or a fad for people with too much time on their hands. It's likely that there is more misinformation regarding virtual spaces out there than there is actual fact. However, one of the phenomena that the pundits have been debating for years is the idea that eventually, everything and everyone will be connected 24/7 via some form of virtual world or another.

The questions are: when will this happen, and how? Why hasn't it happened already? What does this have to do with games?

It may not seem like big news to hardcore gamers who frag and gib with the greatest of ease, but don't dismiss the fact that 100 million avatars now exist in the virtual world of Habbo (formerly called Habbo Hotel).

What makes it big news is the fact that 9.5 million users visit the 2D, user generated content world of Habbo every month. In the last six months user registration has increased by roughly 20 million. Seventy percent of all of Habbo's users are between the ages of 13 and 16. This means that a huge portion of the globe's current generation of kids are growing up in virtual worlds.

Gaming as we know it hasn't been around for very long. Many of us didn't have these virtual worlds to experience when we were young, and what we have today has been created by a very small number of individuals who -- despite being called geeks -- were raised on video games. Gaming today is cool, hip and as mainstream as Hollywood. Imagine the enormous impact these legions of kids will have on the gaming industry as they get older? It's likely that many will get jobs in the industry, and the proliferation of gaming greatness we'll see in the not-too-distant-future will be nothing short of amazing. The Matrix and Star Trek's Holodeck may not be that far off after all.

According to a massive 27-page report released by Strategy Analytics (authored by Harvey Cohen and Barry Gilbert) one billion people will be logged into virtual worlds by 2017. That's strictly non-gaming virtual worlds, places like Second Life and Habbo Hotel, not MMOs or multiplayer frag fests.

The report ("Market Forecasts for Virtual World Experiences") predicts that 22 percent of all global broadband users will sign up for at least one virtual world over the next 10 years. If one billion real people do log in virtually they will bring with them eight billion real dollars in service opportunities. Someone somewhere is going to make a lot of money in the future.

Do we hear The Matrix calling?