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Rec Room (video game)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rec Room
Developer(s)Rec Room Inc.
Publisher(s)Rec Room Inc.
Director(s)Cameron Brown
EngineUnity
Platform(s)
Genre(s)Game creation system, massively multiplayer online
Mode(s)campaign, multiplayer

Rec Room is a 2016 virtual reality massively multiplayer online game with an integrated game creation system. It is currently available on Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PS VR, Meta Quest 2, Oculus Quest, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, Oculus Rift, Pico 4, iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch.

Gameplay

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Rec Room centers around users voluntarily accessing various in-game experiences (referred to as "rooms") created by Rec Room Inc. (referred to as "Rec Room Originals"), as well as custom rooms created by players. These rooms can be accessed using in-game menus, teleports found in other rooms, as well as through invitations sent by other users.

Virtual Reality

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Rec Room can optionally be played on a virtual reality headset, specifically using SteamVR, virtual reality headsets on Meta Quest, Pico 4, and PlayStation VR (PSVR2 not supported). In virtual reality mode, the game uses full 3D motion via the motion capture system of a virtual reality headset and two handheld motion controllers, which are required to pick up and handle objects in the game world, including balls, weapons, construction tools, and other objects. Players can explore the space around them within the confines of their physical floor space while roaming further by using the controller buttons to teleport a short distance, with minimal to no virtual reality sickness. A “walking” mode enables players to move continuously rather than teleporting, although this poses a higher risk of motion sickness.[1]

Social Interaction

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Throughout rooms, players can encounter and interact with other players in real time through voice and text chat, being represented by their avatar. Players can choose to friend, invite, mute, block, or report other players, as well as "cheer" them for various reasons (equivalent to a "like" on most social media platforms), or form a party with other players to travel between rooms together. As players engage with Rec Room, they gradually earn experience, and eventually obtain an additional level on their account, with an indicator displayed by their username showing how many levels they've earned so far, and by extension, an indication of the age of their account.

User Generated Content

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When creating rooms, players can use the in-game "Maker Pen", a tool resembling a hot glue gun, that can be used to draw shapes in 3D. Players can also code in Circuits V1 and Circuits V2, Rec Room's visual programming language. Rec Room announced a partnership with Unity for Rec Room Studio, which allows certain users to use Unity to create more advanced rooms.

Circuits V1

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When Rec Room was first released, there was no clear creation system. All games were made by the developer team and released as Rec Room Originals. Their first attempt at a creation system was the sandbox machine, a machine which was pressable in order to spawn objects such as props and a rudimentary "maker pen" system to build.

When the actual "Maker Pen" was introduced into the game, a system of coding was also introduced. This system was developed mainly from 2018 to 2021, and worked with a system of wires. In the code, events ran constantly. An integer value was assigned to each event which could be changed by wiring, and when an event occurred, an integer would send to the next chip.

As a chip would detect a change in integer value at the input, it would be able to send output to the next chip. Players were assigned player IDs, which served as the primary form of integer input in order to keep track of players. Circuits V1 are not updated anymore (see Circuits V2)

Circuits V2

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In 2021, Rec Room introduced a more complex version of the circuit system, dubbed Circuits V2. Circuits V2 used a very different style of circuits than Circuits V1. Aesthetically, the plain black chips of Circuits V1 were replaced by gray rectangular chips with ports on either side. Each port represented a different kind of input or output.

The most common port colors in the creation system included an orange triangular port, representing an event or input event. A blue rectangular port represented a floating-point and a green port an integer value. A purple rectangular port would represent a string, or text input.

When an event would be triggered, the input ports which have code connected to that event would have their data updated, either locally or globally. The code would then be accessible as an output connectable to another input.

Amongst the most major differences between the two types of circuits is actual functionality. Circuits V1 was a more simple coding system, while Circuits V2 had more capabilities and capacities. Circuits V2 is currently being worked upon and has no known plans to be deprecated.

Rec Room Studio

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Amongst Rec Room's most major creation systems is Rec Room Studio. Rec Room Studio was a partnership between Rec Room and game engine Unity in order to bring professional-level tools into Rec Room creation. Rec Room Circuits V2 circuits have been created to accommodate Rec Room Studio.

Rec Room Studio's access has been gradually rolled out since 2023, with it at first only being accessible to handpicked creators before gradually being rolled out to everybody who meets the following criteria as of April 2025:

  • Level 20 or Above
  • No Negative Moderation Actions in the Past 90 Days

Rec Room Studio works so that an in-game "room" could be opened up as a scene within unity. It would then be editable with unity tools, with prefabs and other components being importable. The game could then be uploaded to Rec Room and published provided it passes AI moderation.

Items and Currency

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Rec Room's in-game currency, Tokens, can be earned throughout gameplay, purchased using real money, or earned by subscribing to Rec Room Plus (stylized as Rec Room+), which grants several benefits, including the ability to make custom shirts, sell user-generated content (also known as inventions) for tokens. Tokens that are earned in this way can be exchanged for real money. [2][3]

Development

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Seattle-based development studio Rec Room Inc. (formerly Against Gravity Corp) was co-founded in April 2016 by Nicholas Fajt, Cameron Brown , Dan Kroymann, Bilal Orhan, Josh Wehrly, SallyBellyJessica, and John Bevis.[4] Prior to the company's founding, CEO Fajt worked as a program manager on the HoloLens team at Microsoft. Kroymann worked on the same team after working on the Xbox team. CCO Brown worked as the creative director of HoloLens.

In 2016 and early 2017, the company raised $5 million in funding for the development of Rec Room and its community. According to Fajt, the company will keep the game free to download.[5]

In June 2019, Rec Room Inc. announced that the company raised an additional $24 million over two rounds of funding.[6] In December 2020, Rec Room Inc. announced an additional $20 million in funding.[7]

In March 2021, Rec Room Inc. announced another funding round of $100 million with a valuation of $1.25 billion leading to its unicorn status.[8][9] In December 2021, Rec Room Inc. announced that they raised $145 million during another funding round, bringing the studio's value up to $3.5 billion.

Music

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Most of the music heard in Rec Room Originals were composed by creative director Cameron Brown,[10] whose in-game username is "gribbly".[11]

Reception

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Dan Ackerman, writing for CNET, described Rec Room as VR's "killer app".[12] In January 2017, Ars Technica reported that trolling and harassment were major issues for Rec Room.[13] In June 2017, MIT Technology Review contributor Rachel Metz described it as a great example of VR's potential for social interaction while criticizing its underdeveloped anti-abuse features.[14] Filmmaker Joyce Wong described Rec Room as her choice of "most interesting piece of art in 2017".[15]

References

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  1. ^ Groen, E.; Bos, J. (2008). "Simulator sickness depends on frequency of the simulator motion mismatch: An observation". Presence. 17 (6): 584–593. doi:10.1162/pres.17.6.584. S2CID 43585717.
  2. ^ "RecRoomPlus". Rec Room. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  3. ^ "Rec Room+". rec.net. Retrieved 2023-12-12.
  4. ^ "Company Against Gravity". VBProfiles. Spoke intelligence. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
  5. ^ Hayden, Scott (February 2, 2017). "'Rec Room' Studio Raises $5M "to continue to build the future of Social VR"". RoadToVR. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
  6. ^ Matney, Lucas (June 12, 2019). "Against Gravity is building a VR World that won't stop growing". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
  7. ^ Matney, Lucas (December 17, 2020). "Social gaming platform Rec Room scores $20 million Series C". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  8. ^ Matney, Lucas (March 24, 2021). "Rec Room raises at $1.25B valuation from Sequoia and Index as VCs push to find another Roblox". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  9. ^ Lyons, Kim (March 25, 2021). "Rec Room rides uptick in users during the pandemic to become a VR unicorn". TechCrunch.com. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
  10. ^ "Music". Rec Room. Retrieved 2022-09-30.
  11. ^ "RecCon keynote with Gribbly". rec.net. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
  12. ^ Ackerman, Dan (August 12, 2016). "VR finally has its killer app, and it's called Rec Room". CNET. Retrieved December 28, 2017.
  13. ^ Newitz, Annalee (January 24, 2017). "Welcome to the world of trolling in virtual reality". Ars Technica. Retrieved December 28, 2017.
  14. ^ Metz, Rachel (June 14, 2017). "Virtual Reality's Missing Element: Other People". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
  15. ^ Wong, Joyce (December 27, 2017). "The art of VR: In 2017, filmmaker Joyce Wong found compelling new ways to socialize online". CBC Arts. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
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