Valorant Console Beta Launch
Led the creation of onboarding and invitation player workflows for VALORANT's console launch event, from inception through delivery, creating a unique experience leveraging relationships for growth.
Whether players were enticed from game content creators they follow, or personal connections looking to experience something on a new platform, that participation signal from trusted sources drove engagement, leading to record growth and revenue.
+12%
Userbase Growth
+15%
Engagement Time
+19%
Revenue
Company + Project Intro
Project Overview
Background
Though already successful, VALORANT wanted to access a new user base, where those players are on their preferred platforms, leveraging community to engage users.
Challenge
Minimize friction for the initial user registration.
Leverage our existing tech to reduce the number of steps in the process, including console connection.
Streamline and secure the sharing of invitations to friends.
Provide new players a chance to learn about the game before playing
Provide experience hype for new and existing players
Project Overview
Striving for best in class player experiences, the "Perfect Experience" would be something that was simple, safe and reliable, scalable, and gave us the control levers to easily deliver this experience to a huge audience.
By reusing pages, scope was reduced by avoiding unique logic and one-off situations for our engineers needed to build.
Workflows
Registration + Acceptance Flows (including new account onboarding)
Confirmation Emails
Invitation Sharing
Console connections
User Base
Players new to Riot
Riot players new to VALORANT
Players with Playstation or XBox accounts already linked to their Riot profile
Players without Playstation or XBox accounts already linked to their Riot profile
Understanding User Expectations
Researching The Market
This was a first of it's kind tentpole, beta event for VALORANT, as well as Riot First impressions matter, and this needed to feel like an EVENT. With being player focused as a company mantra, we wanted to make this as easy as possible to kickstart engagement for new, or existing players.
We didn't have the time or need to reinvent the wheel, so we explored how to meet user expectations launching an alpha/beta experience. Alpha experience was relevant the 2XKO Alpha game launch was close behind on our roadmap. So we made sure to clock those experience as well, so we could design for scalability as needed, potentially killing two birds with one stone.
Show me how user expectations were met...
How this information delivered in final form
Building A Simple, Scalable Flow
Easy access, build for now while adjustable for later
In addition to the marketing page, emails and error pages were reusable allowing us to minimize unnecessary work should the system state/logic change.
Error pages provided helpful branded information to users, guiding them back to safety.
Show me simplification details...
Delivered Work
Pivots
Shifting requirements when complications arise
Best laid plans, amiright?!?! The build process is never perfect. Sometimes techincal complications prevent us from doing things we SHOULD do, and sometimes things are just out of our control.
Show me how pivots affected results...
Post Pivot Invitation Flow
Project Retro Learnings
The launch on console was a HUGE success. The hypothesis that users would play longer when they have a unique experience to share together, was validated. The game recorded huge growth in user base, time spent in game, and revenue - all directly tied to ease of use.
Potential Improvements
Earlier alignment with external partners to confirm technical capabilities, to avoid last minute pivot thrash.
Improved account capabilities to share invitations within one's account for better tracking, security and convenience.
