The HT-team of today

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Hattrick.png This is an official Hattrick Editorial
originally published 2009-03-30 11:00:00 by HT-Tjecken
 

 
If you stop for a moment and think about how much that’s happened in this game over the last couple of years, you’ll notice that it’s quite a lot. Quite a lot has also happened to the HT team (the team that develops Hattrick) during this time; there are in fact twice as many in the team today as there were just 2-3 years ago. As if that’s not enough, we’re actually looking for more people to join the team - who said it’s a global financial crisis out there!

It's over two years since the last time we gave you an update about what the different HTs do on daily basis. It’s high time for a new update now, there are many new HT-team members to introduce, and a few role changes as well.

The HT team was founded in 2001 and share the responsibility for the development of Hattrick. During the first years almost all HT team members were voluntary workers as the income from the game was very limited. Over the years we’ve continuously kept developing and improving Hattrick, and also made the site a lot more stable, reliable and faster. We’ve also grown a lot, from being a quite small group with mostly volunteers into being a group of more than 20 people who actually can live on developing the game we’re in love with. Or at least, having a very intense affair with. Let me introduce the members of the Hattrick team of March 2009:

HT-Johan

Johan is one of the HT team founders and our lead game designer. This means he’s the person we have to convince in order to turn our brilliant game ideas into reality. This role is natural for Johan, who is also involved in many other areas, such as business and community development. Johan is a true game addict and his computer has almost become a part of his body (they're like Siamese twins).

HT-Jacob

Jacob is the new CEO for Hattrick Ltd, the company that owns everything related to Hattrick and offers the game to you. Jacob has a background in the mobile phone industry and is actually also Johan’s older brother (some amount of nepotism never hurt they say, and from what we’ve seen from Jacob so far he definitely earned his place on his throne at our Gíbraltar office).

HT-Daniel

Daniel is our database expert. Daniel has full control over the match engine plus most other game engines (transfers etc) and the daily updates. Without doubt the most positive man in the team (most likely also in the whole world). He also has an obsession for all different kind of machine vehicles (tracked vehicles, digging machines – you name it).

HT-Thomas

Thomas is a web and database developer and our .NET guru. Thomas has played Hattrick since 2003 and was a CHPP developer (still is actually) before joining the HT team in August 2006. He’s also, together with Daniel, responsible for all our servers and all software. I guess one can say he doesn’t have any problem to find things to do.

HT-Sarah

Sarah has been one of our developers since November 2004 and is nowadays also the boss for most of us. She's the CEO of Extralives, the company that develops Hattrick for Hattrick Ltd and the company which employs most of us. She just got back from some months of ice drilling on the South Pole (just one of these things women do…)

HT-Hommik

Hommik used to devote his time developing our administration system, but since quite some time now he’s developing a little bit of everything. Hommik has been a HT team member since 2006. During off-hours you can almost always find him on Xbox live…

HT-Tjecken

I started playing in 1998, so I’ve played Hattrick for 1/3 of my life. I’ve been a moderator and a GM, and a member of the HT team since the start in 2001. My main focus is the community and I’m also in charge of the game information, making sure game news etc reaches your ears. Naturally I spend a lot of time on our forums, discussing and answering your questions.

HT-Josef

Josef used to be a very heavy online gamer and forum junkie. One day his father had enough of it and told him to get a job. We came to his rescue and since then he’s working for us as a forum junkie. Josef is our main forum developer and also spends a lot of time (mostly nights) on it. He claims he occasionally watch a movie too…

HT-Jyrg

Jyrg is an experienced web and database developer and joined the team last year. He grabbed the responsibility of the Hattrick shop, and also started to date our administration system (and from the looks of it they could very well become a couple in the future). Jyrg is the team’s own photographer, he’s “kind of” interested of photography.

HT-Magnus

Magnus is our interface and usability expert, and the main creator of our new design. In the near future, he will mostly focus on other Extralives projects (he will remain being a resource for Hattrick though, mostly for design issues), and will also devote more time on his rock star career.

HT-Stefan

Stefan is a developer who’s also focused on the interface and usability area. He helped Magnus creating our new design while finishing his university studies, and joined the team for real last summer. This is Stefan’s second Hattrick session, he played it for many years in the past. He’s also into stars, being both a Trekkie and a Starcraft addict.

HT-Mattias

Mattias is our business developer, he’s fantastic at the negotiation table and as a dealmaker for Hattrick. He’s also famous for not being able to stand or sit still while talking on the phone, and our most newlywed team member.

HT-Aartspam

Aartspam started playing Hattrick in 2003 and is a former LA, GM and senior GM. A little more than a year ago we convinced him to leave Holland for Sweden, learn some Swedish and take care of all our game officials. We haven't regretted it!

HT-Frid

Frid has played Hattrick since 2001 and joined the HT team in 2004. Frid is our system administrator. In other words, he’s making sure all system updates run as they should. He’s also an amateur opera singer, but unfortunately he will leave us during this Spring. Just the team though, he’ll continue to play Hattrick.

HT-Klas

Klas also joined the team after having played Hattrick for many years (since 2000) and he’s also a former GM. Klas is a web developer with a great sense of the Hattrick feeling. He’s perhaps the most football fanatic of us all; he regularly watches training and matches at his favorite team Örebro.

HT-Per

“Per the builder” works as a developer and is our code release general. Two times a week (at least) we release new code, such as bug fixes and new additions. Doing this we make a new “build” (hence the nick) of both new and existing code. As Per is a very thorough person he’s well suited to be our general. He also says he’s longing for the next muddy Roskilde festival.

HT-Oxidus

Oxidus is an Englishman living in Germany and our Flash genius. The marvelous match kit designer, for example, is his design. Oxidus is also a developer we found within Hattrick, he started playing in 2003 and joined the team in 2007.

HT-weird_ed

Weird_ed is yet another developer with long roots within Hattrick. This Norwegian developer started playing Hattrick in 2004, and with time he started to develop his CHPP statistical service Alltid. Right now he’s working with integrating Alltid with Hattrick, and after that he’ll continue to develop more statistical services for Hattrick.

HT-Durelas

Durelas also got a long history within Hattrick, he started playing in 2003 and became a game official for Chile in 2004. Since then he’s been a moderator, GM and also a senior GM. From now on he will be our man in Latin America, helping us out with developing the Latin American markets from Mexico down to Patagonia.

HT-Trapper, HT-Pelle, HT-Calle and HT-Hasse

Trapper, Pelle, Calle and Hasse mostly work with other Extralives projects, but every now and then we can of course use their expertise. Trapper also got a long Hattrick history and during last year he worked quite much for Hattrick.

Flameron

Flameron is not a really a member of the Hattrick team, but close enough. Ron is a very experienced Hattrick user from Israel and has for some two years now been working as our advisor, both on the statistical field as well as the game development field (especially economy monitoring and stabilization).

This is the HT team of today, but as I mentioned above we’re also looking for more developers to join the team and work from our office in Stockholm. Not only do we need to fill the empty gaps after Frid and Magnus (even if Magnus will still be around), we’re in need of even more crew members. We’re especially interested in developers familiar with the .NET environment, and if you got a background in Hattrick on top of that it’s of course a huge plus.

Apart from all of us above we also have Lars and Alejandra (two old Hattrick players of course) working at our customer service support, and we also get a lot of help from all our game officials (GM, LA, Mod, CHPP, Editors). We’re all looking forward to make Hattrick even better!