Rec Room Developer Analysis

Putting the Rec in Recreational

So, after about a month of exploration into Rec Room’s systems (playing the game, scouring the wikis, building my own rooms, etc.) I’ve think it’s time for me to finally write up what I’ve been thinking. My tl;dr is this: This platform is great for pre-generated content, but actual development/creation is pretty wonky, even if you’re comfortable with node based coding. Basic interactions/emulation is pretty simple to set up, but everything more complex than that, from animations to environments to sfx to just the act of coding itself is better left to more professional systems. I know, not entirely surprising, but Rec Room has a great looking UI and UX experience up front, so I was looking forward to that experience transferring over more to the actual development experience. But I don’t want this to come off as entirely negative, so let’s go into the pros of using Rec Room.

Pros:

• Very nice UI/UX experience. Just clicking on the buttons themselves was a satisfying and inviting experience.
• A huge amount of research materials (like the how to create series and their creative programs page, not to mention all the other user generated youtube tutorials and the wiki).
• Creating your own rooms is a simple step and gets you into creation very quickly.
• You can also very easily set up your room to have multiple contributors, so if you and your friends want to create something together, that’s totally possible.
• There are a lot of good free assets (called “inventions” in game) that can really boost your creations aesthetically .

Cons:

• Creating takes place within the world, as opposed to providing a separate interface. So you are either creating in VR (not comfortable) or you are emulating the actions of your character on desktop (not optimal).
• The Circuits System is useful, but it doesn’t allow for enough customization to create unique experiences (ie no control to the physics simulation for specific objects).
• The Edit features available for each object also suffer from this lack of granularity, and having to edit using the maker pen does not help.
• Paradoxically, making large changes to a room can be a great hassle, as there’s no simple “select all” or “select group” functionality.

Best Use Case Scenarios:

So, why use Rec Room? Well:

1. If you’re a young developer who doesn’t have access to more professional tools for whatever reason (ie Unity, Blender, etc) then Rec Room can be a very fun and inviting experience. It could very easily spark a further passion for greater development goals. Or,
2. If you’re a seasoned developer, but have an idea that could use a Minimum Viable Product, then Rec Room can help you easily stress test that idea with multiplayer functionality.

And that about wraps it up. Rec Room kinda does what VRChat doesn’t when it comes to development, but also doesn’t do anything VRChat does. It’s funny, if a system could take the UX and design of Rec Room, but give it the functionality of VRChat/Unity, then that’d be perfect from a VR Development point of view. Hopefully if VR becomes a more accessible form of entertainment there will be the incentive to create such a program, but for now I’ll be sticking with Unity.