Fun To Be With

In Rec Room, VR players have an advantage when it comes to being fun social playmates. Voice chat and body language make them inherently expressive, full immersion in the world allows them to navigate space naturally, and 6DoF hand controls let them manipulate objects naturally and intuitively.

“Fun to Be With” was an internal project aimed at improving the ability of non-VR players to become delightful playmates. By adding a suite of three features— Reactions, Beacons, and Place— these features gave console and mobile players the leg up they needed to be enjoyable members of Rec Room. The results were statistically measurable: 2% increase in time non-VR players spent in app, and 4% increase in their making friends in-game.

I handled system and interface design for each of the Fun To Be With features.

Reactions

While prior work improving Quick Chat allowed non-VR players to send useful pre-written messages, lots of instances just require quick, emotive reactions. Emojis are the perfect fit— tremendously legible, but also contextually flexible. A crying emoji can mean both tears and laughter; a heart might mean compassion, appreciation, or romance.

Sending a Reaction instantly was a priority— we even shaved frames off the menu pop-in animation to make the system as responsive as possible.

A follow-up added the ability for players to customize the emojis used in their Reactions for additional expressiveness.

Place

Place’s feel was designed to feel as natural as possible. Lots of objects in Rec Room have no point other than to be picked up and set back down— when approaching one of these “unopinionate objects”, Place mode automatically triggers. Objects can be rotated around two axis; if they get too out of order, the player can reset the object’s orientation along its nearest face.

Place became an important addition to Rec Room’s player verb set. As we explored new ways to expose early players to creative play, Place proved to be the perfect tool to use.

Beacons

Beacons emerged from our own team getting lost regularly on in-game excursions. Inspired by the ping system in Apex Legends, the Beacon system contextually changes depending on if it is dropped on level geometry, grazable objects, or dangerous enemies.

A later addition allowed a special kind of beacon, called a Party Beacon, to be dropped and interacted with by other players.