Announcements are an extremely helpful tool that allows many creators, such as myself, to promote their rooms, events, inventions, clubs, etc. But one thing that’s bugged many creators, has been the lack of an option to make an announcement for custom shirts or other UGC items. Now that Rec Room is shifting a lot of focus and effort into the UGC space as of recently, I feel as though it’s more difficult than it ever has been to promote custom shirts. Especially as a new creator. They simply just aren’t as profitable as these big waves of UGC items that are literally 85%+ of the main store pages. (please correct me if I’m wrong)
The new UGC items are not bad at all, I genuinely love this direction. We’re able to customize our avatars like never before and I’m all for it. However, I think that the program has put a bit of a dent into the custom shirt “market” I guess you would say with how large it is now. I strongly believe that adding the option to allow creators to make announcements directly linked to UGC items, would make the entire UGC space as a whole (both Avatar Studio and Custom Shirts) significantly more inviting and rewarding for players.
Obviously, this would be something that takes time and resources from other projects that are being worked on. But with Rec Room’s new focus towards expanding UGC, I think that letting players make announcements directly linked to a UGC item (like we already can for cheering photos, rooms, and events) would only be a net gain for Rec Room as well as all UGC creators. We can already see that announcements can significantly increase room traffic, event RSVPs, photo cheers on rec.net, etc. It’d help new creators be able to promote their custom shirts directly to subscribers or clubs, instead of only being able to announce a promotional image of their item; hoping that people choose to go out of their way to search for it.
