Interview mit Johan Gustafson!
Im Online-Magazin "computer games" ist ein Interview mit einem der maßgeblichen Entwickler von Hattrick abgedruckt:
In the last couple of months, more and more Romanians have been paying less attention to their jobs, girlfriends or to their school. What happened to them was Hattrick, an online football manager which can be played against thousand of other human players at
www.hattrick.org. Hattrick has already existed for five years and it continues to attract more and more people - the current number of players is 60.000 and growing. They are not only attracted by the football strategy, but also by the interactivity that an entire society of football fanatics provides.
One of the developers, Johan Gustafson, has agreed to give an interview to the RO-Hattrick team (a future member of the ComputerGames network). In this interview, Johan speaks about the evolution of Hattrick, its future and about the Romanian league. Enjoy !
Masi27185: 1. It is known that Hattrick was started by three people (Björn Holmér, Daniel Abrahamsson and Johan Gustafson) as a 'spare time project'. Could you give us some background on how you came together?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Björn started it all in 1997; he is the inventor and designer of the game. I started playing the game when it still was quite small, in 1998, and I fell in love with it completely. As I am a journalist for the computer press I wrote a story about Hattrick, and then a few months later I contacted Björn to see if he would be interested in starting a company around Hattrick and launching it internationally. He was, so we found Daniel, the database programmer, and together we developed HT 5 and translated it. This was done in September 2000.
Masi27185: 2. In 1997, Hattrick was named "HatTrick" and could be played only in Swedish. What were your expectancies at that time? Did you have a long-term plan? What about now? How do you imagine Hattrick in another 5 years?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Björn was quite astonished when Hattrick got its first 50-100 users and he never had any plans from the beginning to grow in this way. But pretty soon the game and community began to live a life of its own, and over time of course he (and we) have decided that it would be fun to grow bigger. We still do, but we are not interested at growing at any price, the game still has to be playable and the community enjoyable, otherwise there would be no point in growing. The best thing about these past two years is that we have managed to create so many good local communities around the world, with enthusiastic and knowledgeable users on all continents.
Masi27185: 3. What were your inspiration sources for the game? Who came up with the idea?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Björn, obviously, came up with the idea. This was a one-man project for almost three years. I know Björn had never played any computer-based manager games when he created Hattrick, and he still doesn't play games like that. He likes board games and he has played a lot of play-by-mail-games. His initial idea was to create a play-by-mail-game on the web (the web is very suitable for this), and he decided that football management would be a good theme for it.
Masi27185: 4. How do you see the evolution of Hattrick in the last 5 years? What were the critical points during this evolution?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Technically, the move to a new platform and ten times as many players in 2000. Economically, the first year before we had Supporter and the game were dependent on our deep private pockets only. There were quite a few critical points in these both respects in the year after Hattrick 5. One critical point that has been positive and helped us manage was the way a lot of people have volunteered too help out with game administration (the Gamemasters) and development (the Hattrick team).
Masi27185: 5. Could you say what you consider to be the strong point of Hattrick? What about its weak one?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): The strong point is its simplicity and longevity. We will never be a Championship manager Type of game. I love PC strategy games and I can lose many hours over them, but I always tire of them in a few months. Hattrick is never very demanding, which means you can lose interest for a while and still return.
Also, the community is very good and it gets better all the time. The weak points are flip-sides of the strong points: The game is pretty simple when you learn it, but not very accommodating for newbies. Also, the graphics are very, very simple and at times I could wish that we had the time and energy to invest in a smoother user interface. Another flip-side is the passion of the users, it is always a struggle to launch new features as there will always be thousands of people who things to be as they have always been - real conservatives, that is.
Masi27185: 6. You've mentioned possibilities for the game to expand on digital TV, CD-ROMs and traditional publishing. Could you share with the readers some more details on those plans?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): The web and mobile services are the realistic "channels" for the time being, but as we grow I definitely see possibilities for Hattrick content in other media, for example a Hattrick Magazine, that would be fun, wouldn't it..
?
Masi27185: 7. Is paying for Hattrick ever to cease being optional [as it is with Supporter] and become mandatory, like a monthly or yearly fee?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Nope. I don't see that as a possibility, and less now than ever before. Of course, I can't foresee the future in five years, but there are certainly no plans for it and no support for the idea of mandatory fees within the Hattrick teams today.
Masi27185: 8. Björn is usually the person who conceives the new functions of the game; still, has anyone since 1997 suggested a really good improvement? What was it? And from these persons who were active and helpful, did anyone become an employee for Hattrick?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): We get LOADS of ideas for improvements and many of them are good, also many of them have already been discussed by "the inner circle". There have always been many, many more ideas than time to implement them and maybe the most important aspect of design is not the ideas themselves but to know when to implement them and how to balance them against other functions. In that, Björn is invaluable.
Masi27185: 9. Can you give us a sneak preview of the changes that are to happen in the close future? Perhaps an auto-bid system or anything we cannot imagine yet?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): We have a principle of not talking too much about future plans, as the risk of being late or creating exaggerated expectations are always greater than the "goodwill" of telling people what's in the works. So, on that point, I'll only say that we are working on improvements for next season.
Masi27185: 10. How is Hattrick going to handle the economic aspects of the games, as inflation is in a surge? How were such events handled in the past?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): We have appointed an economy council of experienced users (many of them real life economists), and they have also developed a range of tools for closer inspection of the economy. Inflation is a fact, but still it's better than deflation, which we experienced for many seasons after Hattrick 5.
Masi27185: 11. How does the global economy assimilate the huge sums of 'dirty' money [200 million US$ per week, I estimate], which are legitimized through correct transactions? Isn't there a huge discrepancy between this huge flow of cash and the usual income, such as match proceedings, normal sale of players etc. ? Has the Hattrick Economic Council considered this problem?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): I'm not the right person to ask, since I'm not in the council...
You should forward it to them, but of course, that money is a factor in their discussions.
Masi27185: 12. Do you think that with the passing of time players with a lot of experience could start understanding the algorithms that run Hattrick and its functions?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): I guess experienced users already do, or think they do, and still there is room for surprises. As the game deals with human users, there will always be room for new thinking and new strategies.
Masi27185: 13. Were you surprised of the popularity that Hattrick has in Romania, knowing that the percentage of the population using the Internet is far inferior compared to those in the western countries?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): Yes and no. When we started Hattrick 5, the gut feeling told us that we would get unexpected interest from many countries, as the "rich" countries like the UK and USA are already flooded with content, but countries in Eastern Europe or South America may not be. Now Argentina and Romania are among the biggest leagues, which we like a lot.
Masi27185: 14. Do you find the Romanian league different from the others in any way, be it negative or positive?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): The size of it is positive, of course, but it has also been a lot of work since it has quite a reputation for cheating. It took us too long to find a Romanian GM and I think things got a little out of hand for a while...
Masi27185: 15. In the end, do you to send a message to Hattrick players in Romania?
Johan Gustafson (HT-Johan): First of all, I wish you luck in the exciting WC game against Denmark! Then I hope you all are enjoying the game and the Romanian community, as well, of course! Romania is without any doubt one of the great leagues in this game, so I would like to thank you all for the big interest!