VALORANT Console
Beta Launch
Game time is better with people you know! When launching VALORANT on consoles, we created an experience leveraging user relationships, leading to record growth in engagement and revenue.
Company
Riot Games | VALORANT
Senior UX Designer
Problem Statement
What Gets Players Hyped To Play Together? Shared Experience And Community!
To create hype around their launch on Playstation and XBOX, VALORANT wanted to drive engagement through trusted relationships.
What methods would help a historically PC game like VALORANT, maximize outcome when expanding to a new console player-base.
There were some core goals:
Drive users previously unable to play the game, to a new experience alongside players they know.
Increase an already strong VALORANT community.
Engaging with friends = Happy Players.
This leads to play growth via engagement and retention.
The more they are happy playing, the more they spend hard earned money!
The Process
What were the choices made before landing on the final outcome?
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.
I focused on flows that allowed us to reuse functionalities in multiple instances. This reduced the scope of unique logic and one-off situations our engineers needed to build.
Hurdles / Pivots
Why didn't it work?
Unfortunately upon exploration, this would greatly increase the project scope.
We didn't have the infrastructure to control the process within account management.
As broken down in the Account Management case study, this page lacked a structure allowing features to operate independently, with all the API calls bundled together. So even adding this feature would be complicated, and required larger changes to avoid adding more complications.
So while it was a concept we wanted to include, the capabilities were punted to a future project.
Designed Experience
Aligned MVP Solution
Sharing The Invite Code
To make MVP launch dates, the simplest version allowing users to share access codes with friends was landed on. The result was a responsive flow, which provided users access through our system registration, and the ability to share an access code through their chosen method. Had we forced this experience through the console flow, it would limit user options. This solution allowed users to chose their own share path - be that email, discord, or text (as seen below!).
Redeeming A Shared Code
Redeeming a code shared by your friend, needed to be as simple as registration. The flow was the same, except the landing page had a unique code tied reflecting the registered user it came from. The friend just needed to log in, choose their platform, and you're ready to play!
Final Outcomes
What was the result?
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.
+12%
Users
+15%
Time In Game
+19%
