Collective experiences are experiences that are highly social, and in terms of virtual worlds, I tend to define them as ones that result in information spreading across platforms, to draw people into a virtual world from flat surfaces. What I love about these experiences is that they are highly collaborative, and have improvisational tendencies. It’s not so much about the structure of the experience, but about the ebb and flow of information in the audience, and the resulting outcome.
A few examples include:
- Alternate reality games likeI Love Bees (Halo marketing campaign), social networks disguised as games like Animal Crossing, Eschaton, which uses timed events, video, email, and conversation to unlock answers in the world
- Timed environmental events in games like Destiny, Neopets, and Pokemon Go
- In VR, Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (which end up more like larping)
- Multi-world scavenger hunts, like the ones I’ve designed in Facebook Horizon that have a central puzzle hub, and information to collect in other worlds
Intent to enter into a virtual world starts on flat surfaces. A phone, a messaging platform, a social media platform, a website.
How do we get people to dip their toes into the virtual world from these surfaces? We can increase information sharing and acquire new users to join in by implementing some of the following tactics:
Create a rabbit hole. This is a piece of information that entices the player to explore and work with other people to find and spread information. For instance, imagine seeing an image for a new hat every Wednesday on social media with a virtual location (like a specific locale in a virtual world) tagged. It takes you to a hat shop within a virtual world, where an NPC is available only on Wednesday and Thursday at 1PM PST. In this case, you’re inviting people to become involved in a timed event that could lead to other information and narrative within the world.
1. The Possibility of AR on the Urban Space
Incorporate collaborative storytelling. The most basic rendition of this is creating or experiencing content in a public way. For instance, live streams out of your virtual world onto social media allow for improvisational creation and consumption. The audience is given the agency to become the puppet master of the streamer, so the story can adapt to the audience.
Additionally, creating experiences that challenge people to coordinate their own creative content like “create a band with your friends and challenge others to make a song and share it out via video”, helps create virality around experiences, and encourages audiences to craft their own narrative.
Create a referral system. LoL and Farmville have seen immense growth by rewarding players for referring their friends to the platform, and players who have friends on the platform tend to stay longer than ones without friends. This could look like creating areas of an ecosystem that are only available to people who travel in groups, like creating a timed event that needs 10 people to fight a boss.
Utilize real world time and events. Events are extremely sharable, since many are temporary and finite experiences, and it’s highly likely the same event won’t occur twice. This could be community-run fashion shows, comedy clubs, TV shows, or even massively multiplayer thumb-wresting!
You can influence people to share images that act as leaderboards, orcurate a collection of in-world photography (like the header). Timed events will spark conversation, collaboration, and competition.
Collective experiences are great for engagement in virtual worlds, since they drive concurrency and spark conversations from people’s experiences. Plus, creating timed events with changing variables offer many different opportunities to create virality through information sharing.
Some examples:
- In Animal Crossing, the camel visits every night with her rugs and wallpapers. This recurring event has created many interactions where I talk with friends about when this event happens, where in the world she visits, and what cute stuff my friends have received from that encounter. I’ve even shared photos with them each time I’ve purchased something new or interesting. My friends and I return to Animal Crossing to visit that camel most nights.
- I’ve hosted scavenger hunts in Horizon like a multi-world hat scavenger hunt that increased daily active players (DAP) by an exorbitant amount in one week.
- I’ve hosted game shows that were streamed to social media, encouraging players who couldn’t make it to engage with the people in VR.
It’s no surprise that events:
- Increase daily active players (DAP)
- Keep your virtual world on top of their minds for the next scheduled event
- Create advocates for your platform when they had a good experience, which aids in acquisition of new users
With that said, events are a big lift for developers to create. But as I’ve pointed out in one of the examples above, it doesn’t need to be a concert or big endeavor. It can be as small as some new information at a limited time on a cadence.
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I’m excited to see what designers and developers will create to engage people in their virtual worlds, especially as people are eager to socialize from home during a pandemic.
What types of experiences do you think would encourage sharing content from virtual worlds? Let’s start weaving realities together.
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Source: https://arvrjourney.com/collective-experiences-in-virtual-worlds-to-acquire-and-engage-users-20e96607d1b3?source=rss—-d01820283d6d—4
