Some time ago I started working on a Hattrick history project and even though I’ve played Hattrick almost from the start I couldn’t help to get fascinated. Fascinated of the game and how long it’s existed – almost like forever in a genre like this. But I was also fascinated of myself, how silly it even may sound. Because when I started thinking about my past 10 years it became very obvious that a lot of water have passed by under the bridges and very few things still exist in my life since I started playing Hattrick.
When I started playing Hattrick I was in my early twenties, single and working at my first full time job. Since then I’ve experienced one long relationship, a bunch of other partners, being single (again) a couple of times, a few employments, moved in and out of some apartments and getting married. Now all these things are not very strange, nor fascinating. It’s after all pretty normal for someone in my age. No, the fascinating thing is that I’ve logged in to Hattrick more or less every day the last 10 years. Everything in my life has changed since then, but Hattrick is still alive and kicking. When other interests have just vanished after some time, Hattrick hasn’t. Other may of course call this fact nothing but nerdy, but I choose to call it fascinating.
What makes this fact even more fascinating is that I hardly spend any time at all with my old friends from my early twenties nowadays. I’ve met most of my real life friends today thanks to…yep, Hattrick. When I got married some months ago a lot of people I’ve met through Hattrick were invited, but only one of my friends from 10 years back - and he also plays Hattrick. I guess if my wife hadn’t had any friends it would’ve been a real Hattrick party, with a wedding dress to spice it up a little.
I guess this says a lot about me as a person, but it does in fact say more about Hattrick. I signed up to show everybody what a good manager I was, but I soon found out that Hattrick was so much more than just a game. And when I visited my first community meeting at the legendary Hattrick meeting place Soldaten Svejk, a Czech pub/restaurant in Stockholm, I also found out that the other managers weren’t fat (or thin) geeks with thick glasses and boring personalities drinking Jolt Cola. They were pretty much like me, pretty normal and just having an intense relationship with Hattrick.
What’s maybe the most fascinating is that my story is hardly unique, I know a lot of you have experienced the same things.
On the question “what happens next?” when the “new” Hattrick was released in October 2000 it was said that Hattrick will get millions of users, a government of our own which takes place in the UN’s general assembly and Björn would get the Nobel peace prize for erasing all football violence in the world. Of course that didn’t happen, but at least we’ve come a very long way when so much good happens in the community, like the users arranging Supporter lotteries every Christmas for those who have a hard time affording Supporter themselves or the recent arranging of the Peace cup between Israeli and Muslim teams for example.
All these things didn’t make it to the history books though. Well, at least not yet. But our new history book contains a lot of Hattrick nostalgia, season for season. I’ve digged deep into our archives and it’s been an astonishing ride back in time. It’s of course impossible to fit everything into a History document. This time I focused on the important game updates and changes, and tried to keep it rather short. There are however many stories left untold, for example about the “Barba plague”, Clone wars and the Does - as well as the community events I mentioned earlier. I do hope however to get back to you on that.
The 10th anniversary is soon here, so it’s high time to take a ride into the
history. I think you’ll find some stuff you didn’t know before, but I also think you’ll get back a lot of memories and golden moments. I know I did.
(For the record I found one other thing which I’ve also done regularly: I’ve listened to Smashing Pumpkins all these years. But that’s it. I Promise.)