Get ready for a blast of nostalgia bois. We're taking a look back at one of the OG metaverses.
Habbo Hotel
Man, I read a few days ago randomly that Habbo was trying to make a comeback. I remember being a kid and hopping into random places in the game to chat with straangers. It was one of the original metaverses where you create an avatar and live in a virtual world. I remember spending a lot of time on it, alone in my room as a kid because online chat rooms were cool.
This was something different though. Something that we hadn't really seen before. You had AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and a handful of other online chat games. The whole premise is - chat with millions of strangers as avatars and collect shit. Now that shit you collect is becoming NFTs. Oh boy. Lol.
The first iteration of Habbo NFTs is NFT avatars. They can't be used in the game just yet but will eventually be fully integrated. The great thing about this NFT integration is that it uses Immutable X, which is the first NFT layer 2 solution ever built for Ethereum. Instant, free transactions, built on Ethereum. This is the same blockchain used for Gods Unchained and a number of other NFT projects.
So far there's NFT avatars and NFT furni, which I assume is furniture. There's also NFT credits you can buy that will be used in the future for purchasing more furni. Can't have an NFT integration without dropping some merch I guess, so there's that. Lol. The thing that makes me actually supportive of this is that kids will be playing games with NFTs.
Habbo is targeted at kids, just like Club Penguin was. When kids start interacting with the blockchain and NFTs at an early age, it will only accelerate adoption for the world.
NFT chat bubbles though?! I guess it means that you'll be able to but NFTs that make your chat bubbles look different. You can see that the roll out of NFTs is spread out over the course of the year. It's slow for a number of reasons, but I think the most important reason is to give players time to get comfortable with it. Rather than just dumping the entire NFT integration at once and shocking players.
The idea of having rooms in the hotels that only grant you access if you hold an NFT is cool. So you wanna hit up that virtual rave goin down in Habbo? You're gunna need an NFT access pass, bro. Don't try and fool the virtual bouncer.
Toward the end of the year, there will be NFT pets, NFT gallery rooms, and NFT effects. I don't really know what they mean by NFT effects, but I guess we will have to wait and see. Eventually players will have the ability to mint existing in-game items as NFTs. They are going to try to do this in a way that it won't affect the existing in-game economy, which is good. They recognize that players would be pissed if it affected their trading experience.
Last but not least, we will eventually see an "external metaverse". What this means is that either they will be building another on for some reason... Or they will collaborate with The Sandbox or Decentraland to build out a world for players. Maybe neither of those, but that seems to be the way that most projects go. Why try to re-invent the wheel when it's already there for you to use?
I wouldn't say that this comeback is necessarily exciting for me... But I do love a good nostalgia attack every now and then. I encourage you to check out the Habbo NFT website and connect your Immutable X wallet so you get free airdrops along the way. If you own a Habbo Avatar or Portrait, your wallet will begin automatically mining NFT credits so when this thing gets more fleshed out, you can start flexing your NFT furniture and shit.
Thanks for reading! Much love.
Links 'n Shit
| Play to Earn | Read emails, Earn Crypto | Get free crypto every day | Get a WAX wallet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gods Unchained | ListNerds | PipeFlare | WAX.io |
| Splinterlands | GoodDollar | ||
| Rising Star | FoldApp |
