The Builders' Year

2014 · CREATIVE FREEDOM After introducing Builders Club at the end of 2013, Habbo spent much of 2014 expanding the possibilities for people who loved building rooms. What had started as a way of borrowing furniture was becoming a much more powerful creative system — giving players access to huge amounts of furniture without having to own every individual piece. In January 2014, Building Blocks were introduced, giving builders simple geometric pieces that could be combined to create walls, structures and custom shapes. Later in the year, Builders Club gained even more furniture categories and eventually the Floor Plan Editor, allowing members to alter the shape and layout of their rooms in ways that had previously been impossible. This was a significant change for Habbo's room-building culture. For years, players had learned to work within the fixed shapes of their rooms, using furniture creatively to hide corners and create illusions. Now builders could actually change the architecture of the room itself. 2014 also saw the continuation of Habbo Stories, a feature introduced the previous year that allowed players to share photographs, create selfies and participate in room promotions. Stories became closely connected with furniture campaigns, producing special furniture ranges throughout the year — including Shakespeare, Boarding School, Vintage Music, Football, Habbo Palooza, Wild Wild West and Habbo University. Some of these ranges are particularly interesting today because they show how Habbo furniture was becoming more than simple decoration. The Shakespeare collection, for example, included items such as the Wondrous Weeping Willow, Rosemantic Bench and Garden Rose Swing, while the Boarding School campaign combined gothic furniture with new pieces such as the Sands of Time Hourglass and Boarder's Residence Window. The summer brought back Habbo Palooza, Habbo's virtual music festival. Unlike the first edition in 2013, the 2014 event was organised by the Builders at Work team, demonstrating how much more emphasis Habbo was placing on player-created and community-built experiences. Another important change arrived in July, when Diamonds were introduced as a new currency. Diamonds could be earned alongside Credits when purchasing them with real money and were used for things including Habbo Club, rare furniture and other premium features. This added another layer to Habbo's increasingly complex economy. And while the year was full of new systems, classic furniture remained important. Habbo continued bringing back older collections alongside new campaigns, giving players opportunities to rediscover furniture from earlier eras. This mixture of old classics and new experimental designs was becoming a defining part of the modern Habbo catalogue. By the end of 2014, Habbo had become a very different creative platform from the hotel that existed a decade earlier. Players weren't simply given rooms and furniture anymore — they were being given tools to design the rooms themselves. The introduction of Building Blocks and the Floor Plan Editor was particularly significant because it changed one of the fundamental rules of Habbo: The room no longer had to dictate what you could build.