Diamond in the Rough

What is it about Hattrick that sets it so far apart from other free web-browser games? How can one game stand out among so many competing games? After all, with so many choices, one would tend to think there must be an extreme similarity between the available games and that almost all of them must be structured in nearly the same way. And someone coming to this conclusion would be correct, expect in the case of Hattrick.

There are quite a few qualities about Hattrick that make it a superior game when compared to its competitors. The ones I'd like to point out and compare are longevity, flexibility, and activity. While every game can lay claim to these qualities in some way, only Hattrick combines the best of all three into one game.

Let's begin with longevity, as it is perhaps the easiest quality for a game to provide, yet very few actually do so. Most games give you no content that will remain with you throughout your experience. Often the game only proceeds up to a point where it ends so that everything can be reset and the game can be repeated, with everyone having a clean slate. There is very little permanence in your gaming experience and true long-term goals simply don't apply. The vast majority of games are structured in such a way that they simply must be restarted at some point, usually in order to allow new players to participate, and ultimately true longevity of the gaming experience is sacrificed.

Amongst the choices for a game seeker, a great deal of variety exists in the varying levels of flexibility that a game allows for a player. By flexibility I mean the level and nature of the player's required input and interaction with the game. For the most part, flexibility is largely determined by the rate at which the game advances.

Quite a few games are very inflexible, requiring constant input from the user. Games that advance every hour usually fall into this category. They have the benefit of allowing a player to interact and "play" often, which certainly adds to the enjoyment, but fail in that no one can actually participate 24 hours a day. Unless you have nothing else to you are going to miss out on a good portion of what you could be doing in the game. The majority of inflexible games also do not require a player to do much every hour but neither do they usually provide many possible activities to be carried out. A player finds himself waiting for the hour to pass so the next tick begins and then finds it only takes a few seconds to complete any desirable or possible actions. So you wait another hour.

Some games fall on the other side of the spectrum and allow a great deal of flexibility. For most games, this is done by extending the amount of time that must pass in order for the game to advance. This does wonders for the player who can't dedicate enough time to play the inflexible "hourly tick" game but has it's own drawback as well. While these games don't ask much of you often, they usually can't offer much due to the slow advancement of the game. You get one opportunity to do something everyday, determining and carrying out your actions usually takes no more than a few minutes, and then it's time to wait for tomorrow. Not a terribly fulfilling experience to say the least.

Going hand in hand with a game's flexibility is its level of activity. Level of activity varies quite a bit from game to game. Some are very active and usually very inflexible also, as events proceed quickly and require the player to keep up. Others are extremely inactive where either nothing of real consequence happens for the player or the game advances slowly. Often a game also only provides one or two types of activity as opposed to things happening on several different levels for the player. Web-browser games usually focus on one type of playing or activity and for the most past, they are relatively inactive and often their activity is rather one-dimensional, making a player's experience rather basic. Activity is an important quality of any game, as it leads to a player having more to do and enjoy and diversity of activity attracts different types of players and allows each player to be active in the game in different ways.

Longevity, flexibility, and activity are arguably the most important characteristics for a web-browser game. Most players want their investment into a game to continue with them, they would like the game to be flexible and allow them to live a real life while playing, and the higher and more diverse the activity in a game the better for each unique player. Hattrick succeeds in providing these three qualities while so many other games fail. It provides a gaming experience that will stay with you, work within your real life, and gives you something to do or enjoy any time you sit down with Hattrick in mind.

edit 20.02.2007: story written by Zoggy.