Rec Room turned six earlier this year, and calling it a success would be an understatement. The game recently saw a 640 per cent year-on-year increase in mobile player numbers, and at present there are more rooms on the platform than there are apps on the app store.

The company recently announced its newest original experience, the Western inspired Showdown.

We spoke to Rec Room assistant creative director & co-founder Josh Wehrly to discuss its success, Showdown - and the platform's future.

Q: We reported that you enjoyed a 640% year-over-year increase in player numbers on mobile devices (same link). What's behind such a huge uptake?

A: Well we have certainly scaled up our user acquisition efforts over the past year and have built out a world-class growth team. During that time we’ve learned a lot about what it means to be a thoughtfully cross-platform game. Players want optionality. They want to be able to check in on friends and jump into experiences wherever they are, which was why being at parity on mobile was such an important step for us and continues to be a priority.

Given that creators can build and play content in Rec Room from mobile devices - as well as PC, VR and console - without sacrificing the quality of the gaming experience or the content itself, that has to be a unique proposition. How did you ensure that the tools receive parity across all platforms?

On the team we talk about Rec Room as not just being cross-platform but “radically cross-platform”, that’s our shorthand for “it’s not good enough for Rec Room to technically run on a phone or a console, it needs to feel to a player like Rec Room was originally designed for whatever platform they’re on”.

Hitting that radically cross platform quality bar is tough - it takes a lot of time, a lot of testing, but mostly a lot of iteration! And if it’s not perfect the day we ship it… we work hard until it is.

Rec Room started out in virtual reality - and is largely still considered VR-first, despite since expanding to other platforms. What have been the opportunities and challenges of the transition from VR to mobile?

Internally we think about Rec Room as being a “cross platform app” rather than VR-first. This perspective is important because there are a lot of challenges in designing, building, and shipping a complex app on as many platforms as we do. When every team at Rec Room thinks cross-platform-first rather than VR-first we come up with solutions to problems that will work on all platforms earlier in development rather than later - which leads to better outcomes for players and less costly development.

One of the biggest challenges has been input, how do you translate the experience of playing Rec Room in a VR headset to playing on a phone touchscreen without losing the magic of Rec Room in the process?

All of the challenges have been absolutely worth it though because with every new platform we ship on we break down barriers for players. When we added support for Android phones I was all of a sudden able to play Rec Room with my sister who lives on the other side of the country and who doesn’t own a gaming console or a VR headset. Now we get to hang out and build memories in Rec Room all the time despite living thousands of miles apart.

Was the move to mobile an organic process or driven by strategy? How did the slow adoption of VR and continued growth of mobile games inform this decision?

Both. Our creators ask for bigger audiences, our players want new ways for their friends and family to play with them.
At the same time we want to grow the community, we want to grow our business, expanding the Rec Room audience is important to that.
It’s important to note that the growth of VR over the past year has been astounding. We are very committed to continued growth on all of our current platforms; including VR.

Tell us about the new content and new tools being introduced with Showdown.

Showdown is the latest experience in our Rec Room Originals program, a collection of games and rooms we’ve built internally to give the community rad new stuff to play with and at the same time push the capabilities of creation forward.
Showdown is our take on the Wild West theme, players travel to the ghost town of Sarsaparilla Springs to duke it out in 3v3 cork-gun battles.

Powering Showdown are new creative tools like the Gun Handle, Projectile Launcher, Equip Chips - tools built on the Rec Room Circuits system that are designed to let creators build guns that feel really good to use on every platform and pvp games that are a ton of fun to play.

What are the monetisation options for indie devs in Rec Room?

One important distinction between Rec Room and other platforms like it is that you don’t need to be a “developer” to start creating or even begin monetizing in Rec Room. If you check out our website we have an entire section about how to become a “partnered creator” which really means having the ability to convert your tokens from in-game earnings into real dollars. We’re thinking hard about how we thoughtfully scale that program.

We’re also constantly putting out new content on our youtube about how to get started creating things in Rec Room. We also run classes on this in game for free! For folks interested in getting started I’d implore them to check those out!

Now that online social interactions have evolved beyond simple text messages into interactive spaces, concern has understandably grown regarding online safety - especially for minors. How is Rec Room ensuring safe spaces for all ages to socialise?

In regards to moderation; both proactive and reactive, we believe its work that is never ‘done’ and also never ‘good enough.’ We have and will continue to invest significant time and resources into managing and improving moderation in game. Our work over the past year with voice moderation has really moved our moderation process into what most would consider ‘state of the art.’ We stress about what it means to moderate a rapidly growing community like Rec Room which is why we have been so thoughtful about how we scale these systems effectively. Are we perfect? Certainly not. But I think we do a pretty darn good job at it and will continue to improve.

It's been hard to escape the word 'metaverse' in the past 12 months. Where does Rec Room fit into this brave new world?

We’ve definitely heard it a lot over the past year and we understand why folks would label us as one. But we don’t use the word metaverse to talk about Rec Room, instead we think of it as a real community within a virtual universe. We’re not chasing trends, we’re doing what we’ve always done: fostering, empowering, and delighting our community of players and creators.

What is the most surprising way a user/creator has used your tools? What kind of content did you never imagine seeing until it happened?

Probably one of the coolest things about Rec Room in general is that creators are constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. We often see them do things we didn’t even realize would be possible which inspires us to create even better tools for them to blow our minds with. A great example was this enormous animated dragon that one of our top creators built. At the time our animation tools were hard to use and pretty limited, they were intended more for building simple moving platforms like you might find in a platforming game - not animating complex character. So when I was exploring this room and stumbled upon a giant flying fire-breathing beast I was shocked. So impressive!

Edited by Lewis Rees