Personal questions
Could you provide an overview of a typical workday for Muumiopappa at the Sulake office? What are the main tasks and responsibilities you currently focus on?
I am the Product Director of the Web3 branch of Habbo. This means that my main responsibilities include the long term vision and strategy for the project as well as leading the teams. We have a marketing and partnership team, art team, web dev team and Habbo X dev team. On top of that, I do pretty much all the designs for the features.
On my usual day I have several calls with different teams and management groups. We have Sulake management team as well as Habbo management team. I talk with these teams at least once a week. So overall, I spend several hours a day in calls with each team. On top of that, as we don’t have a dedicated (game) designer, rest of my day is spent working on the designs for web (trait editing, furni factory, etc.) and Habbo X features. The thing I like the most is coming up concept designs and figuring out the outlines for new features (such as clothing factory).
What is the feature that you are most excited about in the near future, and how do you anticipate it will benefit the project?
In the very near future, I’m very excited about furni factory. I like the concept of NFTs being factories and giving utility both in-game (such as Avatars and Rooms) but also by producing new NFTs. Next I will move to the Clothing Factory and its finer detail design (all ideas and feedback is welcome).
For Habbo X, we have started working on the core components needed to reward NFTs in-game and that will enable both Achievements, progression system and OG item minting. All of those will add a new layer of engagement to the game which I hope will benefit X and our ecosystem greatly as it gives the reason to visit X.
What is the best way for community members to contribute and help with the Habbo NFT project?
We use the feedback we get from the community (especially the council) often. So give (constructive) feedback! Even if we don’t communicate it or do what the community requests we still take the feedback into account. I believe that if we are able to make a game and an ecosystem that our community loves, the wider reach will follow and we will get more and more people into the community. We are really building this for you guys!
User-generated Content
Can you explain the future plans for user-generated content? Will the community have a say in selecting the content, or will Habbo be responsible for choosing the artists?
We definitely want to have more user generated content in the future. There are tons of extremely talented artists in our community and we have taken the first steps to start adding the great creations from them to Habbo and X. In some cases there will be voting to choose the best ones, in others we will pick the ones to add. But we will always have the final say on what we can add to the game. For example, there are some technical limitations that may prevent us from using some of the creations the community loves.
If user-generated content will be community voted, could you elaborate on the process? How will Habbo NFT ensure that everyone in Habbo has an opportunity to participate, and how will the selection process be fair and transparent?
Honestly, I haven’t thought about it that much yet. This is more of a Hajautus area. We may experiment with various approaches and see what is the best. I would love to find a way to get all Habbos excited and involved in the process for sure.
In many games, there are shop fronts or platforms where users can showcase their user-generated content, allowing artists to have their own page and upload their designs. Is there a possibility of implementing a similar feature for Habbo NFT, where users can have their own page to showcase and sell their creations such as furniture, clothing, and badges?
The biggest challenge with user generated content is that our art team will need to draw them and finalize them so they can be used in the game. The way Habbo works (at least this is the way it was explained to me) makes it difficult for the community to create in-game items that would render well in the game. Therefore there’s a limit on the number of items we can accept as UGC in Habbo. Ideally, at some point, we would have better tools that would make it easier for our art team to either do the final checks or to have no need for that at all but currently, looking at the things in our backlog, it is not a high priority. When we get there, it would be fantastic to have this possibility in the Habbo web.
Is the percentage paid to creators for their generated content currently set in stone, or is there a possibility of it changing in the future? While the quality of the content produced by creators has been highly praised, there are concerns about potential NFT credit dumping if there are no limits on the amount of credits earned.
It is not set in stone. If there is a reason to change the cut, we can change it.
Trait editing
In the future, are there any plans to provide additional incentives or perks for players who craft avatars? For instance, will crafted avatars receive exclusive benefits such as airdrops or badges, in order to further encourage players to engage in crafting activities?
No plans for bigger exclusive benefits at the moment but a badge has been something we have been discussing and might happen at some point.
What happens to the unique identifier number associated with a crafted avatar when it is "De-Traited"? Does the number get completely removed from the collection, or is there a different process in place?
It gets completely removed. So there will be caps in the collection numbers.
Some think the fact that a trippy avatar can only be trait edited once is a disadvantage because the moment you edit it, it could be forever devalued in the ETH price. Are there any plans to introduce additional benefits for trippy avatars in the future, such as incorporating rarer boxes into the clothing factory or providing other means of enhancing their value?
For clothing factory especially: yes. Like I mentioned in the blog post about Clothing Factory, we are still considering different options but regardless of the approach we take, my goal is to give exclusive items for Ultra Trippys and Trippys in their factories. This is similar to design rarity in Furni Factory or the exclusive traits in the trait editing.
Having said that, I personally think that Trippy and Ultra Trippy Avatars do already have great benefits: they get an extra room in X and they basically get an extra Avatar as their Avatar is not burned. And some very exclusive traits in the trait editing itself.
Habbo X
Recently, we made a tweet asking our audience the following question “If you could add a feature to Habbo X what would it be?” And the most popular answer was to add in game trading, is this something that we can expect to come along side the furni minting feature?
Short answer: no. Long answer: What has proven to be difficult is adding wallet integration to the client. There are Unity wallets / wallets we could use but adding Metamask for example is a no-go. I wouldn’t be willing to input my seed phrase to any game so I don’t want any of our players to do that either. Therefore, any feature that would require you to sign a message is a no-go as an in-game feature. We are looking for different solutions but there are no low hanging fruits for that. We have trading feature as part of the package we are asking for partners to produce as we look for a partner to implement the marketplace.
However, the marketplace is a difficult thing to get done as we want it to be, we might implement trading on our website. Not the best solution but there would be something at least.
A bit more stuff about the marketplace: There’s already the IMX Marketplace that was improved considerably when they introduced stacking the items. We can use that for some time but that is not the marketplace we want to have in the long run. It simply isn’t inviting for Web2 players. Way too many obstacles to get started collecting if we have to rely on IMX Marketplace.
How I see the marketplace is that it makes it super easy for players to be part of the Web3 experience. You shouldn’t have to care about crypto, wallets, bridging ETH, etc. Instead you just login and buy (preferably inside the client but that seems to be really difficult as there’s no good wallet solution that works inside Unity). Currently, if you want to buy a $1 item, you need to buy crypto and there’s a minimum of $4 extra cost (using MoonPay on IMX Marketplace). So you need to top up $20+ in one transaction for even it to make any sense. Therefore, buying just one cheap item as the “gateway drug” is currently impossible (on IMX marketplace).
In short, we need to have a great UX solution with fiat payments and probably a “marketplace currency” that you can buy and sell and use. For example, think about a marketplace that works in USDC only – ideally you can top up or sell your balance easily and use USDC to purchase items. With minimal extra fees. The prices are intuitive (0.1 USDC vs. 0.00001 ETH).
Instead of USDC, another option could be to just use NFTC as the only marketplace currency and have all the transactions to be done with that – which would in theory make it possible for new players to earn that currency just by selling your items and being able to participate in X. However, the problem with NFTC is that it is not liquid and it is more difficult to get and use. And on top of that, we would like to have NFT renting and item to item trading as features in the marketplace as well. But overall, it would be beneficial to have a single currency you can easily get and use. And if we take this even further, what is the underlying architecture of the marketplace? Would we have liquidity pools? Would we have a vault wallet to which we move items? We have been talking with 10+ potential partners in the recent year and we haven’t been able to find a good partner yet. We might need to create a marketplace ourselves but that would take away most of our resources for 6 or so months and that is not ideal either.
Is there a possibility of introducing a wider range of colors and basic clothing options on Habbo X to enhance customization? Currently, the NFT clothing appears limited without a sufficient variety of colors and basic clothing items.
We see the NFT clothing more “as-is” collectible items than regular clothing there is in Habbo. We will release different color options but in most cases the clothes will not be colorable. If a clothing item is colorable, it will be a premium rarer item.
We will add more clothes as unlockable non-NFT clothes for Habbo X when we introduce a new level and progression system. Those items will be colorable with the colors you unlock in the progression path.
Are there any plans to revise the login process for Habbo X? Currently, users log in with their wallet, which can pose challenges for those who use multiple wallets with their furniture and avatars distributed across them. Some users appreciate the login system used in Habbo.com, where you simply create a account and add as much wallets as you want. This method is also considered safer in terms of preserving account details like registration date and achievement score, even if a wallet is lost.
This is something that we have talked about. In my view, it would be ideal if you can use some social logins (Google, email, etc.) and link your wallets under that account. Single wallet approach was the simplest to implement for the Alpha 1 release and at some point we will revisit this. However, it is currently not a high priority.
Given the exploding market demand for usernames across various online platforms, including social media and gaming, the integration of Nametag and ENS in Habbo X has attracted great interest. In previous Q&A sessions, there was mention of Habbo's own username collection, although it has not been included in the roadmap thus far. Can you provide any updates or additional information regarding the development or potential implementation of Habbo's own username collection?
It is still in the plans but currently not a high priority. In our view, we need to make X more interesting with achievements and rewarding first before we add the user names. User names will hopefully attract more Web2 players but in order to stay in X, there needs to be more there.
Currently, on Habbo X, it is not possible to build rooms with your friends, as the group feature is primarily used as a community feature and its functionality for room-building is not well-known. Could you clarify whether there are any plans to allow users to build rooms with their friends on Habbo X and place furniture in each other's rooms?
This is another topic we have had several discussions about. Currently we haven’t yet figured out how to make this happen but this is definitely something we want to solve and bring to X (along with letting players place the NFT furnis to other player’s rooms in Habbo).
With the upcoming introduction of NFT credit pay gates on Habbo X, we have noticed some issues during the alpha phase, such as client freezing. In the event that a user pays to play a game but experiences crashes, either from Habbo crashing or being disconnected from the room, what would be the process for users to request a refund for the NFT credits they have paid to play?
You can open a ticket and the CX team will handle it.
Given that the Unity development process is time-consuming, many users are still encountering issues with the current Habbo X client. Is there any possibility of temporarily enabling the Classic client to be used on Habbo X? This would greatly assist users in building amazing rooms. While the Classic client may have reduced functionality, most users wouldn't mind as long as they can utilize it for room building purposes.
This is something we may consider but the challenge is that it is more difficult to add new features to the classic client than it is to the Unity client. One option is to have the classic client for some features, e.g., the blueprints/sandbox building and making it possible to import your creations to Unity. However, this is not coming any time soon.
Considering the impressive work done by community member Jonas on the wired, are there any plans for Habbo to become more open-source and actively invite developers to contribute in creating new features within the game?
No plans that I know of. However, we are happy to discuss hiring the skilled community members and have them be part of the Sulake family.
Are there any plans to enable the mobile Habbo app to connect with Habbo X in the future, or maybe a standalone app?
That has been our plan but for year 3 to 5. We need to have a proper desktop game first. In addition, I would like to consider what a mobile app would look like. I’m not convinced that it should be a carbon copy of the desktop app but a companion app instead. But like I said, this is a very low priority at the moment due to the focus of the desktop app.
Furni
Is there any plan to introduce a NFT Throne in the near future? This particular item is highly anticipated within the Habbo community and has generated a lot of excitement. Can you share any updates or insights regarding the potential release of a NFT Throne this year?
Short answer: maybe. Long answer: We need to figure out the way to release it. Like you said, it is a highly anticipated item and we shouldn’t just drop it to the shop. I cannot promise it will happen this year but let’s see what is the optimal time.
Could you please provide information on the frequency of introducing new items on the furni factories? Can we anticipate regular rotations of furniture items?
No, the furni factory items will not rotate. But we will add new Furni Factory crates to new rooms we will release in the future. That is, the Genesis rooms will have the genesis crates we just released. Furni Factory 2 crates will be released with the next room drop and are available for the new rooms (and the new rooms will not get the Genesis crates). An important thing to note is that you will be able to exchange your Genesis crates to the new furni factory crates if you so wish; FF2, FF3, etc. using the crafting functionality (FF2 common crate is crafted using a Genesis FF common crate, etc). So if you own a Genesis room you are able to get the future Furni Factory items as well. But this does not apply the other way.
In addition, even though the idea is to keep the same items in the factory forever, what can change / come in addition are the crafting recipes. So to keep it fresh we may introduce new recipes for the items you get from the factory.
We haven't received much information about furni minting recently, and since it is considered a significant feature, we are eager to know if there are any updates regarding its development. Can you share any news about furni minting and provide an estimated timeline for its release?
I touched this in the recent blog but I want to reiterate that this is definitely a high priority and I hope that it will be release it this year. However, it is a complex project having to touch several different aspects of two projects: UI for Habbo, Habbo backend, NFT backend (minting) and the blockchain.
Current design is that there will be 10 – 20 furnies picked each month that are mintable from the inventory. You will need to have a minting token / pay for minting in NFTC (you can receive a mint token for free in some cases or purchase it for NFTC or fiat; price TBD). There will be a new UI in the Unity client (most likely not in classic) that shows the items available for minting that month. You burn the mint token and choose which item is minted. The item is minted to the wallet from which you burned the token. The item is removed from the in-game inventory and is added to the “NFT” inventory. Some items will be only usable in that hotel + X, some items will be usable in all hotels. We want to avoid “crashing the economy” so we need to limit the use of some minted items. UI should indicate if the item is usable in all hotels or in just one. We have not done technical analysis yet so this design may still change considerably.
The team is currently working on the under the hood feature that allows us to mint items from the game. This is an important feature for both minting the OG items but also to X as that allows us to reward players NFTs from the game (think of achievements and other rewards). During the summer, the art team will start to design the UI for minting. Let’s hope there are no setbacks with, e.g., burning the mint tokens or other parts of the feature and that we are able to release it this year.
Features
In the beginning of the project, users were able to place their furniture in their friends (groups) rooms. However, this feature was temporarily disabled due to duplication issues. Many users have expressed their desire to be able to build rooms with NFT furniture alongside their friends again. Can you provide any information on whether using groups will be enabled again in the future?
This was removed as some users were exploiting this to multiply the NFT items. We have had discussions about this and have been thinking about how to prevent the exploits.
Are there any new Web3 features the Habbo NFT team plans to implement in the near future that you can share with us?
I hope the recent blog post answered this question. But to reiterate, our short term plan is that the team will working Achievements (Habbo X), OG item minting (Habbo + Habbo X) and Habbo collections and collectibles (Web). When are these coming out? Hopefully Q3 but some might take to Q4.
What implementations do you have planned to make the web3 experience more user friendly for newcomers? Onboarding legacy Habbo players have been hard because people are hesitant for making wallets and connect them.
We have been looking at several wallet solutions like Magic.Link or IMX Passport. Most likely we will use Magic.Link but we haven’t made the final call as we are in discussions with a couple of others as well. Problem with Magic.Link is that it is extremely expensive.
Questions and comments from the Community Council
I showed the long term vision blog post to our community council and I wanted to touch their main points here as well.
Rebranding
NFT Outfits, Outfit Factory and Trait Editing
There were some comments from the council that what is the difference between NFT Outfits and trait editing? In short, trait editing aims to reduce the size of the Genesis Avatar collection and give users the ability to create Avatars they love. Including the exclusive faces which, in my opinion, is the core of the Avatar. Outfits on the other hand are more collectible items and will not include the Avatar’s face. Instead it is user generated content that aims to give players options to change the looks of the more basic Avatars. In addition, my goal is to make outfits a core part of the new user experience in X and have them be the first thing the user purchases and use to edit the looks of their basic default avatar. So in my view, not only do these two features can live together but they complement each other and having a Crafted Avatar should give more options for NFT Outfit creation. And as this is still in the early stages of design, this feature may be dropped or completely changed. Why I mentioned it is that in my view this could be a fun and engaging feature that produces user generated content.
NFT Credits, ERC-20 Token and Habbo X economy
Having NFTC as the only currency in X will not work unless we can also give that as rewards for new players. And that is super risky to do. There needs to be a core loop where you can earn stuff in X, and with NFTC only we cannot really do that. One option is to have NFTC + crafting materials like I outlined in the blog. NFTC would regardless be the premium currency and some stuff (features, rooms, items) should only be available for NFTC while some would be available for both NFTC and the in-game currency. There’s a reason why games have hard and soft currency (diamonds vs. coins) and in our case, NFTC would be the hard currency. We are also thinking whether to cap the NFTC supply or keep it unlimited.
From a game design perspective, if you cannot earn the game’s currency, you cannot progress in the game and you are left out completely. And people will not play the game in that case. There simply needs to be a way to earn NFTC if that is the only currency.
Thank you everyone for the questions! Finland will be pretty much out of office July and I will get back to it in August. Hopefully we are able to have an AMA session either in the Discord or Twitter sometime in August.
Thank you!
Thank you Muumio for answering all of the communities questions we have received. We are very hyped to see what's in store for us in Alpha 2! You know where to find us if you need any help regarding Habbo and Habbo NFT!
Thank you everyone! You are doing a great job ❣️
