Rec Room in 2018
2018 was a great year for Rec Room and we owe it all to you, our incredible community! We saw an explosion of creativity after launching the ability for players to create and share their own rooms. Players have started growing huge followings (subscribers) for their new room launches, collaborating on more and more ambitious projects, and player rooms are starting to outperform our own activities on playtime! The top player created rooms have seen over 300,000 visits and there are thousands of new rooms being created by players every day.
The highlight of our year has been coming in each day and seeing screenshots and videos of your latest projects. Its inspiring to see how people are using Rec Room to learn how to game dev, design, program, organize a community, create a new talk show or podcast, create art galleries and inventions together, and all the other crazy things you’ve done. We want you all to know that when it comes to empowering players to create amazing experiences, we’re just getting started. 😄
Here are some benchmarks we hit in 2018:
400,000+ player created rooms
70 million room visits
40% of all player time is now spent in player created rooms
Player created rooms that have been visited 300,000+ times
Rec Room is installed on over 1 million VR headsets
Over 5 million photos taken
5.2 million friends made
Here are some of the major updates from 2018:
We pushed out a ton of updates this year and we want to thank everyone for all of the awesome feedback, bug reports, and testing that was crucial to helping us move this fast! ❤️
Rec.Net website launch - manage your Rec Room profile, see all of your in game photos, find friends, events, etc
Merch Booth added to the Rec Center
Circuits system added - create your own games and program features into your rooms
Flying locomotion added
The Isle of Lost Skulls - our pirate themed quest
Walking locomotion added
Maker Room added
Pizza, Potions, and Backpack added
Holotars and audio samplers - holgraphic recordings of your avatar and audio playback
New Dorm Room
Store section added to the watch where you can buy any item with tokens
Bio page, favorite friends, pointing gesture
Gizmos added - move and animate objects in your rooms
Rec Royale launch
The ‘New You’ update - lots of new facial features and customization options
Screen mode support
Roles system - assign players different roles and settings within your room
Revamped Share Camera - holgraphic UI, filters, quick snap gesture
In game messaging between players and between players and people on rec.net
Rec Royale Squads mode + photo celebration for the winning team
Group Chat messaging system
Room Moods - change the skybox, lighting, and overall mood of your room
Cyber Junk City Laser Tag map launch
New Rec Center
Gaming Tables (tabletop / DnD gaming) and paintbrushes added
Hair Dyes added
Bowling launch
Automated room backup system
Costume Dummy added - create your own avatar items / costumes
Emitters added - create your own particle and atmospheric effects
Maker Pen 2.0 / death of the Sandbox Machine (RIP)
Community Board added
Crescendo of the Blood Moon - our vampire themed quest
Checkpoints and Holsters added to more quests
Inventions added - save your Maker Pen creations and bring them to other rooms
Maker Pen features - undo/redo, merge/split, manipulate tool, align, new snapping, etc
Live tab added to show rooms with the most players in them
Thanks again to everyone in the community and we look forward to working with you to make Rec Room even better in 2019!
❤️ The Against Gravity Team