Valorant Gifting Feature Integration
Timeline
June 2024 - June 2024; 4 Weeks
My Role
I was responsible for utilizing all collected data to create and seamlessly integrate into the video game, Valorant, to allow players to send in-game content to other players.
Overview
Valorant is a free to play first person tactical hero shooter created by Riot Games where it pits five players against five others in a competitive setting, The American game developer is based in Los Angeles and well-known for other titles like League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics.
Problem
While Valorant is similar to Valve’s “Counter-Strike”, it lacks a huge feature that the latter has. It is the ability for users to purchase weapon skins and gift them to their friends. The lack of this feature is exasperated by the fact that Valorant does not have the ability for players to buy any skin they want.
Objective
Design a feature that respects Riot Games’ decisions and allows users to purchase in-game content and send them to their friends.
Researching Users
Research Goals
-Discover the desirability for a feature that allows players to buy in-game content and send them to other players on their friends list.
-Investigate Valorant competitors and the skin buying/trading services they offer.
-Understand the process of weapon skin/trading between players.
-Investigate pain points that players would face when using the feature.
Current State of the Product
To get an idea of the pain points that players have with the current system that the game has, I evaluated the current product and other similar ones to it. In total, I evaluated 5 products and came up with these findings:
-Compared to its competitors, Valorant lacks a gifting system that would allow players to gift.
-Riot Games has another video game called, League of League, which does have its own gifting system.
-Both of the competitors in the FPS (first person shooter) space, Counter-Strike2 and Rainbow Six Siege, and even Valve’s competitor to League of Legends, Dota 2, have their own systems in place that allow their respective players to trade/buy/sell in-game content.
User Interviews
In order to gather more data about potential user’s motivations, pain points, and needs, I interviewed 14 participants who live in California. These participants have experience with Valorant and other multiplayer games. After collecting the data, these were the highlights that I came up with:
After the research process and discovering opportunities for a feature , I noticed that the following 2 pain points consistently came up during the interviews:
Do You Have It?
Players have to constantly log into the game to view what four weapon skins are in their store. But due to the current system being under random chance, there is no guarantee that players will have the chance to purchase what they want. But sometimes their friends or loved ones would have the specific skin they would want.
“A whole group of friends got a skin while another had to wait a while before they got theirs”. -A
…And It’s Gone!
Players have frustrations with the current system where in-game content is only available for a limited amount of time. And with the game being live-service, there is always content being added.
“The more skins Riot releases, the more diluted the pool becomes. Which means less chances to get a skin you want”. -K
Getting to Know the Players
In order to understand on how to implement a feature into a live service game like Valorant, I began the process by growing my understanding of the users themselves.
It is also important to note that a gifting system has been considered by Riot Games when Valorant was first released in 2020. But it was never released. So in order to create a gifting feature, I had to develop it in a way that would respect the decision of Riot Games.
Creating Personas
By utilizing the insights, and interviews, I was able to develop 2 personas. The first persona I created describes a user named, “Kevin” and the second persona describes a user named “Amy”. I utilized both personas as inspiration for developing the experience a user would have.
Scenario #1: Kevin’s scenario is based off his storyboard where he finds a weapon skin his friend has been wanting for a while and gifts it to them.
Scenario #2: Amy’s scenario is based of her storyboard where she receives a text from a friend to log onto the game and finds out they gifted her a weapon skin that she has wanted.
Point of View (POV) and How Might We (HMW) Statements
After developing the personas, I created 2 sets of POV and HMW statements to address the concerns and pain points that I noticed during the interview process:
-POV Statement #1: I’d like to explore ways to give players the opportunity to purchase and gift skins to friends and/or loved ones with respect to Riot Games’ current system.
-HMW Statement #1: How might we design a feature that allows for in0game weapon skin content to be purchased and gifted to other players on a user’s friend list?
-POV Statement #2: I’d like to explore ways to give players the opportunity to view and potentially purchase any weapon skin bundle with respect to Riot Games’ current system.
-HMW Statement #2: How might we design a system that allows for players to view all past in-game weapon skin bundles and potentially purchase or gift them?.
After consideration, I decided to focus on all of the statements in order to avoid creating an incomplete feature so that all in-game content has the possibility to be purchased and gifted.
Feature Set
As I was nearing the actual development process of adding the feature, I hypothesized that the feature set would not be as extensive. As a result, I decided to focus on these most of the must-have features given the project timeframe:
-Search and Filter (Friends List): The feature where a user’s friend’s list would pop up on their screen and allow them to either scroll or type their friend’s in-game name.
-Notifications: As seen in other video games that has the gifting system, users would receive an in-game notification that alerts them that they have received a gift and give them the option to accept or deny it.
-Gifting Center Button: A button that users could click to begin the gifting process after selecting a bundle or specific weapon skin.
If given the opportunity, I would like to revisit this project to see the possibility of a refund feature in the scenario where someone would deny a gift.
Design and Prototype
After conducting the research in the empathy phase of development, I began to develop the flows and wireframes to develop the user journey. The way Riot Games designed their gifting system in their other title would end up guiding me on how to implement such a feature into the game.
User and Task Flows
Based on research findings, I identified user task flows for how a user would the gifting feature. For each of the flows, users would begin from the log in page and navigate to the store page where they would access the feature.
The task flows are: Gifting a weapon bundle or single weapon skin & opening a gift.
Top Task Flow: Gifting a weapon bundle/single skin; Bottom Task Flow: Opening a gift
Lo-Fi Wireframes
The next step in the process was to create Low-Fi wireframes. There was not much that I needed to do in terms of big design changes. Instead, I developed the screens knowing that I needed to seamlessly integrate the gifting feature into the game without disturbing the experience Riot created and what the players are used to.
The first custom screens I developed when working out the process that users would go through when gifting in-game weapon skin content.
The initial version of this screen showed a pop up that would take up the middle part of the screen.
Hi-Fi Iterations
After creating the Hi-Fi wireframes, I tested 5 participants once again utilizing Maze to gather the data in moderated, remote sessions. And similar to the first test, all participants completed the tasks. Which confirmed the seamless integratation into the game.
“The gifting feature was pretty easy to do. The receiving was automatic, so pop-up of opening gift from friend was nice.” -R
Receiving Gift Notification
During testing, users recommended a way to allow users to either accept or reject gifts sent to them. Users wanted the ability to avoid spam and to have the chance to reject gifts from those they want to avoid. And after going through the flow and considering their input, I created the “Reject” button to give them that option.
Before
After
The version post user testing of the notification that users would get when receiving a gift.
Selecting Gift Recipient
“Intuitive, looks like it matches the aesthetic of the game.” -J
During testing, users recommended that a “Confirmation” button be implemented to allow users to have a chance to make sure that they picked the right friend to gift the in game content to. After going through the flow and considering their input, I agreed that users needed a way to confirm their selection and developed a “Confirm” button.
Before
The initial version of the selection process that users would do when picking a user to give a gift to.
After
The version post user testing of the selection process that users would do when picking a user to give a gift to.
Final Product Prototype
Valorant Gifting Final Prototype
Valorant Receiving Final Prototype
Reflection
This project allowed me to gain experience on how to add a feature to an already existing product to something in the video game industry.
During the development of this project, I had to keep in mind that Riot Games has their own reasons for not releasing an official marketplace or gifting system, as seen in League of Legends. So in order to compromise with the users, I had to work within certain parameters.
In terms of my next steps, if given the opportunity, I would like to explore the following:
-Expanding the feature to other in-game content like charms and game characters.
-Expanding the feature to explore the scenario of a user rejecting a gift and the user who sent the gift going through a refund process.
-If Valorant ever releases officially releases their gifting system, developing a system where any and all skins ever released can be viewed, selected, and gifted.