Sell the Pilgrimage, Count the Return
One-off worlds are easy to sell. They're also easy to forget.
A client pays for a world. It opens, gets a busy weekend, then hardly anyone visits. Selling a season helps a bit (more dates, more visits), but a season ends too, and everyone moves on to the next thing.
Nobody gets attached to a deliverable. (I've tried.)
So these days I pitch a pilgrimage.
What's a Pilgrimage?
A place people make the effort to reach because it means something to them. They plan the trip, bring friends, and come back the next year.
The best example I've got is Venice. Mike "Manglebird" Salmon and I have built the official VRChat Worlds Gallery for Venice Immersive three years running: 2024, 2025 and 2026. New world every year, same festival, and people keep turning up.
As of 6 October 2026, the 2024 world has 52,047 visits, 2025 has 52,397, and 2026 has 40,593 and is still climbing.
Is that mostly the festival's pull? Of course. People come because Venice Immersive is worth the trip. My job is to give them a good place to arrive.
Three Questions Before the Spec
Every pitch now opens with these:
- Why would someone go out of their way to get here?
- What do they take home?
- Why would they come back next year?
If we can answer those, the build and the season mostly sort themselves out. Specs and dates come after.
So Did They Come Back?
This is harder to know than it should be.
Launch-day numbers look better than they are. Friends pop in, a festival crowd swings by, someone shares a clip. A first visit means the invite worked. Whether the world worked shows up later, when people come back.
VRChat doesn't show creators how many visitors came back. So I use the closest public number: favourites. Favouriting a world saves it to your list for next time.
Here's how a few of my worlds compare (6 October 2026):
| World | Visits | Favourites | Per 100 visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Venice Immersive, 2024–2026 combined | 145,037 | 10,093 | 7.0 |
| Strangeways | 85,512 | 9,963 | 11.7 |
| MormoVerse: Under the Pillow | 118,715 | 11,807 | 9.9 |
| Venice Immersive 2026 | 40,593 | 3,229 | 8.0 |
| Venice Immersive 2025 | 52,397 | 3,622 | 6.9 |
| The Meadow (2021) | 28,608 | 1,820 | 6.4 |
| Venice Immersive 2024 | 52,047 | 3,242 | 6.2 |
The festival galleries sit between 6 and 8. Most visitors pass through them on the way to the competition worlds, so that's about what I'd expect. The story worlds sit between 10 and 12. People hang on to them. And The Meadow, a little outdoor world I made in April 2021 with no festival behind it, holds its own at 6.4.
NB: Favourites aren't returns. Some people favourite a world and never come back, and some come back without favouriting it. It's a rough proxy, but it's the one VRChat gives us. Where a platform shows nothing at all, ask the people who came twice.
What's Next?
From now on, every project wrap-up gets favourites (or real return visits, where a platform shows them) next to the visit count. And every proposal opens with the reason someone would make the trip.
If you're pitching a world of your own, try the three questions. Then check your favourites this week.
The numbers for all my worlds are on the VRChat page. Related: Venice Immersive field notes, Venice Immersive (2026).
Virtually yours, Deac