Amazing User-Created VRChat Adventure Game World Gets 200,000+ Visits / Favorites... But Only 29 People Paying to Play. Here's Why.

Bullet Time Agent, as we covered here, is a VRChat-based, free-to-play adventure game (trailer above) created over several years as a one person labor of love by longtime community creator "Lakuza". Near pro quality in polish, ambition, and gameplay, Lakuza even hired voice actors for Bullet Time Agent, which takes up to ten hours to complete; VRChat the company helped him stage and promote it.

Launched last month, it's earned some... interesting user stats since then:

• Here's how many times VRChat players have visited it: 168,445+
• Here's how many times VRChat players have favorited it: 31,914+
• Here's how many tips VRChat players have given him through several tip jars located throughout the game world: Twenty-nine.

Yes, only 29:

"A world that took 3 years+ to make and so far it has had 29 tip jar donations (roughly $291, which I believe Tilia takes a portion of too when cashed out)," as Lakuza explains on X/Twitter. "So this is 29 people supporting out of somewhere between 32,000 to 100,000 people."

This is a painful case study on what kind of worlds monetize on VRChat, and which decidedly do not:

 

"Historically in VRChat, adventure worlds don't get much financial support," as Lakuza puts it. (At least, adventure worlds with a solo gameplay focus.)

"I've seen many big world creators making adventure worlds get a fraction of the support that other world genres get and I think its just how VRChat has grown, audience-wise: hangout worlds, club worlds and social deduction games are what the community looks for the most and it makes sense.

"VRChat is a social platform at the end of the day. Big adventure worlds tend to get around 200-300k visits over a few years typically from what I've noticed, whereas social deduction games can get millions of visits in a few months."

Compare Bullet Time Agent, for example, with Jar's highly social VRChat games. That developer's Patreon is backed by nearly 3000 subscribers, earning her an income that would easily put her in a top earning bracket (on top of whatever they make through the in-game tip jar). 

However, I actually think VRChat the company could better support game developers; for starters, some kind of Steam-like discovery/payment system within the app, which trains players to think about gaming as a standalone experience, and nudge them to start paying developers for it.

Fionna, a fellow VRChat developer who's worked with Lakuza on previous projects, has specific valuable suggestions: 

No one feature is going to "fix" the economy. You need:

• Normalized & visible economy use
• Actual value provided
• Information about that value (ratings/reviews)
• A retentive user journey that takes payment into account (start them free, teach them about $, encourage to spend)
• A product management vision that has an actual goal, strategy, and tactics and a design process to support it.

That all sounds right. I'll reach out to VRChat to see how far those are, on the roadmap.

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Comments

[Martin K.]

No one should be surprised that solo adventure games are difficult to monetize in a free-to-play social VR game. One reason is how cheap some of the classic AAA single-player adventure games are on Steam. Another reason is that the difference between single-player games and multiplayer games is more profound in virtual reality than in flat-screen games due to the experience of co-presence. (One of the key differences is probably virtual eye contact.)

Yes, you can always improve the monetization of single-player games; but I believe that even the best single-player games will be more difficult to monetize than the best multiplayer games on a social VR platform.

IMHO, the best solution on such platforms is to offer multiplayer modes, e.g. a cooperative PvE mode for 2, 3 or 4 players in addition to the single-player mode. And, yes, that is usually very difficult if you don't have it in mind when you start designing a game. And it is a lot of work if the platform does not support it well.

In fact, the last point might be one of the most important technical features of such platforms: making it as easy as possible to support the development of multiplayer games. And, yes, that's possible as proven by the original programming language of Rec Room ("legacy circuits" or "CV1"), and, yes, it will cost performance (because everything is synced all the time automatically between all players in the same world), but it's well worth that price.

[HalfTheOfficeMustGo]

There is an absolute glut of these type of games everywhere. No shade on the creator making this experience in VRChat, but VRChat is firstly a social game and not a game adventure platform.

I've always said this: Why would I want to come to a virtual world platform to play a crappy sub-standard game (or popular game copy) when I can just go play the regular game? Why play a Minecraft-clone copy with less functionality, more lag on a Linden-based world when the original is a better experience?

Secondly, time is better spent anyways as a Unity or Unreal game developer to create a game for sale that might serve the audience that is most interested. It's not a surprise that games are not monetized or get many tips in worlds where people play Dressup and rather chat.

Everyone is obsessed with making games as if that will attract users, and us hard-core gamers but it won't. Virtual worlds are for making what does not exist, creating an experience people WANT to first hang out in, and WANT to explore. The THIRST must be created. If people come to your world, consume it in 30 seconds, and never come back - then it is a failure of the creator's part (or the platform's inability) to provide an experience for them.

I can't tell you how many worlds and virtual games I've explored over the years. Most of them are boring, and amount to a crappy copy of an original, or have about as much interaction as a museum or art gallery.

Meanwhile, oddly enough a group of friends having fun just being together will stand in a badly designed box level with spartan rooms, abstractly modeled furniture - all made by a beginning 3d modeler (or even not!) and be quite happy.

There's enough shooter games and 'make your own shooter games' 'virtual worlds' out there - but still no increase of enhancing people's base experience WITH THEIR FRIENDS.