As a member from the start in 2001 I’ve been taking the whole trip from the start; from when our office was a small room for one (and hardly that) situated in the back room of a flower shop and all of us worked as volunteers, to when the small seed had grown into the biggest online football manager game in the world and we could all make a living from developing Hattrick. So I think it’s fair to say I’ve experienced it all. But moving the whole office some 650 km south to a completely new town was something new, I can tell you that.
And as always when a big change like this happens you worry a lot how things will turn out, then in the end it turns out to work out a lot better than what you ever could’ve imagined. This change was no different. During the summer I worried a lot, then the new team started to grow piece by piece and now it’s already a tight and hungry team. And I don’t worry anymore, quite the contrary. I feel more energized for the future.
Ok, now over to the presentation:
The Hattrick team of 2011 is a nice mixture of old experienced HTs and enthusiastic new ones. Some of the new ones have been found in the Hattrick community, others have joined from the outside. What combines us all is a big gaming and/or community interest, and most of us are also of about the same age (the glorious thirties, aka the age of changing diapers) and thus sharing the similar off-Hattrick experiences.
The Hattrick team is a pretty flat organization, but just as any organization of our size it wouldn’t work without a management in place. Ours is no different.
Group managementJacob is the CEO of Hattrick Ltd, the company that offers this game to you. Business development, business contracts and some more business stuff - Jacob is simply taking care of business.
Development managementJohan is our Creative Director. Johan is overall responsible for product design. Takes part in other teams as well, see below.
Chris is the CEO of Spelkultur (the new Malmö company, translated from Swedish Spelkultur means Game culture), and our development manager. As the title suggests he leads the dev team and apart from that he also contributes with a fair share of code himself.
Daniel is Spelkultur’s CTO and our system architect. He’s got full control over the Hattrick system and its core functionality.
Game DesignI would like to say that there’s a piece of game designers in most of us in the Hattrick team, and intentionally so – that’s the way we want it to be. We want the whole team to contribute, rather than letting it be a one man mission. What we do have is the Game Council, which is a forum for discussing the long term vision of the game, and what game improvements are most valuable right now.
I (
Tjecken) am the chairman of the council and I lead the work with the (future) game design. I’m also a community junkie (see below).
Klas is a veteran developer by now. Klas has a great and genuine feeling for what Hattrick is about, something that also has shined through in his development work.
Johan and
Daniel are also part of the Game Council.
Development teamThe development team is collectively responsible for the entire site, so no dev is explicitly responsible for any specific area which kind of was the case in the old days.
Mammo joined the team in August, as one of the first in the “new” team. He had the perfect background for Hattrick, having worked for one of the biggest community sites in Sweden before joining us.
Ulf also joined the team in August. Immediately to become the HT who owns the most board games by far (over a hundred at least), which is an achievement considering the number of board game geeks in the team.
Michael just joined the team before Christmas and got a long background as a software developer and a technical consultant, and has a special fondness for using Web technology in new creative ways.
Oxidus is certainly no newbie, this English chap has been playing Hattrick since 2003. He’s been part of the team for 4 years now and does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to interface design.
Erik is our art designer and also a web developer. He also joined the team during the autumn and loves model helicopters.
Bodin is our latest catch, it’s the Swedish user formerly known as bodinaren. Marcus has a big passion for CHPP and national teams, a passion that might be allowed to grow even more now?
Jens is our new system and database admin, and he will also take care of our dear servers. A true gentleman, he will never leave a lady alone on the dance floor.
Gusy (up until recently known as Mod-Gusyta) joined last month, and she will leave Venezuela for Sweden as soon as the immigrant office get their act together.
Klas,
Daniel and
Chris are also part of the development team.
Community and marketing teamThe community/marketing team handles communication and information, and also plans and executes community as well as marketing activities.
Anne joined the team a year ago. Community manager and without doubt the most visible team member on the forums.
Aartspam is responsible for our game officials (GMs, Mods. LAs, CHPP admins and editors).
Durelas is our man in Latin America. He’s developing the Latin American markets from Mexico down to Patagonia.
Johan and
myself are also part of the community and marketing team, and
Jacob is quite naturally also part of the marketing business.
Open positionI mentioned in the beginning that there is still an open position in the team, and that is a web developer with lots of experience in web design and usability work, preferably with games and/or communities. If this sounds like you and you are willing to move to Malmö, check out
work for us for further info.
These are the people developing this game for you. If you’re wondering what we’re currently working on and what’s up in game; that’s the topic of my next editorial, to be published next week. See you then.