Rec Room "Catalyst" Items
Avatar Item Quest System (3 Shipped Features)

Overview

Role: Lead Game (System/Narrative) Designer, Product Manager, Composer

Platform: VR/PC/Mobile/Console

‍Duration: 19 months

Team Size: 15

Summary: Shipped 3 avatar item features for Rec Room (social cross-platform UGC MMO) to enable item quests based on special items that triggered gameplay content, leading to $3.5 million in revenue, activations with the NFL, Mattel, and Republic Records, and a real-life ARG geocached quest

Deliverables

  • Game design documents, paper prototypes, ideation process, mockups and storyboards
  • Playtests, multiple design iterations based off results, and in-game build testing
  • All avatar item art pipeline product management and LiveOps execution
  • Background music compositions

Design Goals

  • Drive avatar item sales and revenue with in-game interactive experiences
  • Increase player engagement and retention over a longer period of time
  • Offer equivalently fun paid and non-paid gameplay experiences
  • Increase value (and player utility) of in-game avatar items
  • Drive the user-generated-content (UGC) flywheel and P2P economy
  • Create a more connected player experience across disparate UGC/first-party "rooms"

Feature Design

  1. Item Tagging System: backend tagging system/tool which enabled avatar items to communicate to room-specific UGC logic/art assets (i.e. hat triggering a portal to open)
  2. Saved Outfits Update: UI/UX and QoL updates to players’ avatar item collections which allowed players to more easily create functional sets of outfits for different quests
  3. Limited Time Items: Live Ops backend automation tool to setup limited time items in storefronts throughout the game which also notified players of when items were leaving

Narrative Design

These narrative item quests were based around multiple characters, world lore, and related avatar items I managed and designed (S. and Elseware) which encouraged players to actively discuss in online forums and social media. Through the clever use of subversive and secretive marketing (via Vtuber livestreams, social media Easter Eggs, and mysterious hints dropped in-game), players could discover the time and location of the next quest "drop" as well as where to obtain highly exclusive and coveted items (dubbed Catalyst items).

Gameplay

  1. Rec Room players could find a mysterious new avatar item in a secret glitchy storefront that popped up in a high traffic location in-game (main lobby or highlighted "room")
  2. When purchased and equipped, players that approached the same storefront would trigger a portal to appear to the left of the store, visible to all players in the vicinity
  3. Any player (both owners of the mysterious item as well as non-owners in the same room) could enter the portal led to a hidden room they could explore with their friends
  4. Each hidden room contained interactive gameplay content and worldbuilding lore, including but not limited to cipher puzzles and quests/challenges to complete
  5. These episodic quests would lead to more game content, prizes, and exclusive items, eventually culminating in a real-life ARG geocached puzzle quest across 3 locations in the US and a PvP combat game they could unlock

Results

Drove over $3.5 million in revenue from sales of these special quest items, enabled partnerships with the NFL, Mattel, and Republic Records, broke multiple engagement and retention KPI records, and laid the groundwork for game-wide progression events known as Invasion. It also led to multiple viral videos (such as the one at the top of the page) and fan art in-game (below) based on the quest lore.

Through the clever use of subversive and secretive marketing (via Vtuber livestreams, social media Easter Eggs, and mysterious hints dropped in-game), we built hype and traction which ultimately resulted in a massive spike in daily active users and ARPDAU with each quest event (seen below with the red arrows) in addition to record-breaking ad conversions (close to 70% click-through and purchase conversion) and retention over time (with over 80% of players that engaged with our first quest continuing to engage with all our subsequent campaigns for 19 months).

Daily revenue over the course of 19 months, with the red arrows indicating the quest campaign events and their respective revenue spikes

Some of the in-game UGC fan shirts created by players

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