Future for Retros - What's to come?

[LouisJW]

This is something I know has probably been mentioned and discussed multiple times, But I want to know what the rest of you think and expect.

Obviously with Flash soon to be discontinued and Habbo itself moving to HTML5 ( Some retros will to ) things of course will change. But what do you expect or want for the future of retros?

The community has decreased so much and smaller retros struggle to maintain a steady user-base, I want to know what could change that to rejuvenate the smaller communities what do you think a retro with a dedicated and professional team could implement or change to make their retro the "go- to" or "place to be".

Before anybody mentions about Flash; I know that yes, there are things like Flash browsers being mentioned and I'm not saying that Flash won't be an option at all because obviously there are ways around everything.

I made this post simply due to curiosity and I want to know different people's views and opinions, not for arguments or negativity.

Thanks

 

[Maatt]

In the short term, not a lot. I think people will adopt workarounds to continue using flash. Eventually, there will be a move to HTML5 lead by a few of the big players I imagine.

I think in the long term we're going to continue to see the progressive decline of the last 8-9 years or so. The concept of Habbo and retros is very much obsolete in today's world and players are leaving as they grow up, build livelihoods and get jobs.

This will lead to slow and gradual attrition of the user base until there are just a handful of hotels still operating. I think Habbo itself will close eventually too so this will stem any new user throughput from there.

In the longer term, you might see 1-2 hobbyist hotels operating as a small community until eventually the whole thing just dies and no one wants to play it anymore.

 

[LouisJW]

In the short term, not a lot. I think people will adopt workarounds to continue using flash. Eventually, there will be a move to HTML5 lead by a few of the big players I imagine.

I think in the long term we're going to continue to see the progressive decline of the last 8-9 years or so. The concept of Habbo and retros is very much obsolete in today's world and players are leaving as they grow up, build livelihoods and get jobs.

This will lead to slow and gradual attrition of the user base until there are just a handful of hotels still operating. I think Habbo itself will close eventually too so this will stem any new user throughput from there.

In the longer term, you might see 1-2 hobbyist hotels operating as a small community until eventually the whole thing just dies and no one wants to play it anymore.

Yeah, what you have said is interesting & also pretty correct. There is no longer any competition, just copy-offs and a lot of hatred in the community, I've noticed apart from select few that people don't encourage others work as much as they used to ( as i said, apart from a select few ). The vibes used to be a lot better - I guess the saying "everything comes to an end" is true in relation to this unless someone can pull of something crazy, I respect all big developers who've made and continue to make retro-development possible to this day.

 

[Hypothesis]

Retros and Habbo will always have a special place in people's hearts, however, people will move on. The reason for Flash deprecation is because other web players such as WebGL and HTML5 have been maturing over the past years. These days you won't see websites using Flash, they've switched over to WebGL or HTML5, that's a sign that Flash has reached its end of life. When you look at the retro community, you look back to years and years of friendship, people you've known since you guys were just going into middle school, some even longer, but the reality is, you aren't those same middle school kids, you're grown men or grown women going to or are attending college, or maybe you're already taking the next part of your life as adulthood and working a career. The moral of it is, everyone has grown up, retros die because it's not as exciting as it used to be, everyone has grown up, moved on, some people have kids, some people are married, it's crazy like my friend I knew since 2015 when we were literally like 14-15 has a kid now and he's married, it's actually crazy, another friend I have she has a kid and she's married, and I knew her since she was around 17, she's now 24. It is genuinely crazy to hear that friends you've known for so long are living that adult life with kids and marriage.

Retros will always be retros, there will likely always be retros, the contributors will always make sure that happens, but retros will not be the same after 2020, that's just the moral of it, and maybe the new generation of developers will be generous enough like so many great developers have in the past and release a working HTML5 client to continue retros via HTML5 clients.

 

[LouisJW]

A

Retros and Habbo will always have a special place in people's hearts, however, people will move on. The reason for Flash deprecation is because other web players such as WebGL and HTML5 have been maturing over the past years. These days you won't see websites using Flash, they've switched over to WebGL or HTML5, that's a sign that Flash has reached its end of life. When you look at the retro community, you look back to years and years of friendship, people you've known since you guys were just going into middle school, some even longer, but the reality is, you aren't those same middle school kids, you're grown men or grown women going to or are attending college, or maybe you're already taking the next part of your life as adulthood and working a career. The moral of it is, everyone has grown up, retros die because it's not as exciting as it used to be, everyone has grown up, moved on, some people have kids, some people are married, it's crazy like my friend I knew since 2015 when we were literally like 14-15 has a kid now and he's married, it's actually crazy, another friend I have she has a kid and she's married, and I knew her since she was around 17, she's now 24. It is genuinely crazy to hear that friends you've known for so long are living that adult life with kids and marriage.

Retros will always be retros, there will likely always be retros, the contributors will always make sure that happens, but retros will not be the same after 2020, that's just the moral of it, and maybe the new generation of developers will be generous enough like so many great developers have in the past and release a working HTML5 client to continue retros via HTML5 clients.

Again, I completely understand and agree. Especially with the growing up and moving on into adulthood part. I have made NUMEROUS friends from way back when I first got into Retros I think I was around 12-13 I still have 3 close friends that I speak to daily which I met on retros, it's just weird to see a community that had/has ( with the right people and skill-set ) a lot of potential come to a very quick descend.

I still would like to know though what could possibly rejuvenate even a partial part of the community, a lot of developer(s) have left the scene and the ones who are still some what around are as you say busy living their lives and doing their everyday tasks. I think it'd actually be fun to re-create them memories somewhere. I'll say again I think nowadays the smaller retros rather than encouraging each other like people used to do are to within competition with each other, I can understand that though considering the shortage of users in the community it's kind of more like a competition free-for-all now to see who can keep the most and achieve more which is NO fun.

 

[Maatt]

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It's a bit like this, really. I'd say Habbo and Retros have surpassed maturity and are now on the cusp of Decline so to speak. Unity and HTML5 is an extension strategy being employed by Habbo and Retro Hotels to mitigate technical obsolescence. However, it doesn't deal with the fact that Habbo as a game is, on the whole, obsolete and likely to go into further decline.

Sulake knows this, which is why the budget for Habbo has been rationalised (think automated moderation systems and the fact that the new desktop version is essentially a scaled-up iPad app rather than something more bespoke). Sulake have also spread this risk by launching new products, i.e. Hotel Hideaway.

 

[Parsov]

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It's a bit like this, really. I'd say Habbo and Retros have surpassed maturity and are now on the cusp of Decline so to speak. Unity and HTML5 is an extension strategy being employed by Habbo and Retro Hotels to mitigate technical obsolescence. However, it doesn't deal with the fact that Habbo as a game is, on the whole, obsolete and likely to go into further decline.

Sulake knows this, which is why the budget for Habbo has been rationalised (think automated moderation systems and the fact that the new desktop version is essentially a scaled-up iPad app rather than something more bespoke). Sulake have also spread this risk by launching new products, i.e. Hotel Hideaway.

Habbo has definitely had a decline with it's users over the few years. Not enough for it to be a risk yet though. (Otherwise most likely they wouldn't have moved on with making a new client for the game).
Majority of the people playing now are in their 20's rather than being 14 - 13 (like before). Meaning Sulake has a higher chance in making money from these type of users.
In fact they do they still are pretty active when it comes to releasing furniture which you can buy with basically real life money. If no one would be buying them no one would be making them.
Although Habbo does have less users playing most of them back then weren't likely to invest.

So I just think they are doing pretty normal even after a rough ride they've had. Also the reason they decided to probably go with Unity is because it's easier to find Developers that already know it. Save time and money.

Also the main questions I've had was why the hell would a company like Sulake (not so big) open so many offices around the world.
At some point they had an office in Spain which was I think where the Moderators were located but after the office closed the Moderators moved on and Artificial Moderation came to place.
I would definitely agree with some people that say Sulake Staff are less interactive with users as they were before.

As for retros they are all boring because no one is doing anything that interests users. Most of them close and open so quickly anyway.
I think Users don't trust retros anymore except for the big ones.

But then making something out of the box will just be pointless because you might as well go make your own game rather than investing so much time into a private server (game copy).

 

[LouisJW]

As for retros they are all boring because no one is doing anything that interests users. Most of them close and open so quickly anyway.
I think Users don't trust retros anymore except for the big ones.

I agree somewhat but do you not think with a retro where the development was an ongoing thing being done by only absolutely experienced developers who were motivated to change A LOT to ensure difference from other copies and rip offs could do well?. I mean like if they spent months developing, implemented things that no one else has and securing them so it cannot be stolen giving users the "Woah, look at this I haven't seen anything like this" experience surely that'd do well if they worked hard on user-base and kept pushing updates to keep users excited?

 

[Blasteh]

I feel if Habbo did some better advertising, they may grow their community. When was the last time you consistently saw Habbo advertisements? Retros are direct competition with Habbo itself. Nobody wants to spend money on something they can get for free. Sure, the latest clothing, furniture, etc are on Habbo's official hotels but, there are a few retros that update almost daily. I don't care what anyone says, the uniqueness of a retro does not get you players, it's the community that surrounds it.

As for what lies in the future... who knows. I feel the retro that develops the HTML5 client successfully first, is going to be one of the top ones. Obviously, referencing what I said above, they'd need a community and active developers to back up their project. I'd love to see Habboon stay on top, to be honest. Why? Boon developers have not given up in how long?

 

[Parsov]

I agree somewhat but do you not think with a retro where the development was an ongoing thing being done by only absolutely experienced developers who were motivated to change A LOT to ensure difference from other copies and rip offs could do well?. I mean like if they spent months developing, implemented things that no one else has and securing them so it cannot be stolen giving users the "Woah, look at this I haven't seen anything like this" experience surely that'd do well if they worked hard on user-base and kept pushing updates to keep users excited?

Well that's what I'm saying if they really have enough time to dedicate to do something like that instead of working on a rip off work on something which is your own. As you mentioned if it was experienced and dedicated developers then it's only understandable for them to make something which will be original and completely theirs instead of basing around a Game they did not make.

Still I think nowadays people don't look at features on retros anyway it's more based on community management and things like marketing. And of course stability is most important in the case of a good retro which rarely has some downtime.

 

[olliedean]

Personally, I don't think Habbo will close anytime soon.
The user count is dying, but I feel that both habbo and habbo retros will come up with new things and attract the attention of people again soon enough.

 

[Blasteh]

Personally, I don't think Habbo will close anytime soon.
The user count is dying, but I feel that both habbo and habbo retros will come up with new things and attract the attention of people again soon enough.

I am shocked Sulake didn't take the lock-down in a lot of countries as an opportunity to gain players.

 

[yoyok]

Habbo is going to advertise on Television and social media (Youtube) after the big update from unity is done! They will gain alot players, people like to talk and chat so Habbo is never going to die.

 

[LouisJW]

I guess for now, we just wait and see what the future holds. Thanks for all replies, a lot of good points have been made.

 

[Parsov]

Habbo is going to advertise on Television and social media (Youtube) after the big update from unity is done! They will gain alot players, people like to talk and chat so Habbo is never going to die.

I agree but I can't say about them gaining a lot of players. I think Sulake is some what happy with it's user count and it's income. It's good enough to have them still work hard and not lose hope for the game.
If it was as bad as what people say then they probably wouldn't have bothered spending this much money and dedication trying to find Unity developers for their new client.

They are still pretty active with adding new assets into the game so I don't really think Habbo is in danger zone right now.

 

[Riz]

Unity is very hard to re-create it doesn't work with an emulator like Flash does. I'm very curious to see what's going to happen.

 

[Zorreguieta]

For anyone thinking Habbo is going to die - nope. Habbo finally found a way to get rid of these annoying retro's (thanks flash ). Go spend your time on something else instead of stealing files and trying to recreate something people put a lot of effort in. Retroscene dead, habbo back. Go cry about it.

 

[Benden]

For anyone thinking Habbo is going to die - nope. Habbo finally found a way to get rid of these annoying retro's (thanks flash ). Go spend your time on something else instead of stealing files and trying to recreate something people put a lot of effort in. Retroscene dead, habbo back. Go cry about it.

A lot of larger retros are ready to make the switch off of flash. I dont know why you think flash ending is a retro killer. All that does it remove the hotels from people that cant code but the large hotels will be fine

 

[Blasteh]

For anyone thinking Habbo is going to die - nope. Habbo finally found a way to get rid of these annoying retro's (thanks flash ). Go spend your time on something else instead of stealing files and trying to recreate something people put a lot of effort in. Retroscene dead, habbo back. Go cry about it.

That was a dumb statement.

 

[CosmoPeak]

A lot of larger retros are ready to make the switch off of flash. I dont know why you think flash ending is a retro killer. All that does it remove the hotels from people that cant code but the large hotels will be fine

I haven't heard much about this, what are the larger retros plans?