RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE SUPERSTAR

SEASON PASS CASE STUDY

Role: Lead UX Designer

Skills Used: Management, User Research, Market Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Implementation, AB Testing, Live Ops

RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar is an award winning mobile game developed in 2020. The game features the contestants and stars of Hit Show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The game primarily features a Challenge gameplay, where player’s can battle against the AI in fashion challenges, and an Idle component where players can upgrade their workstations in order to earn more “Werk”. Live Ops in the game is still ongoing.

Challenge

Players lacked a long-term, month-to-month goal that would motivate sustained engagement.

Player behavior during Live Ops showed strong daily engagement with challenge gameplay, yet the reward system failed to deliver personalized or exclusive incentives. This gap presented an opportunity to introduce long-term goals and distinctive rewards that better aligned with player investment.

Business Goals

Increase Player Retention

Identifying ways to keep our players engaged over time.

Discover New Revenue Streams

Discovering effective and player-friendly ways to increase in-game spending.

Market Research

After identifying that players lacked a compelling long-term goal, I conducted market research into how other mobile games addressed this gap.

A recurring solution across top-performing titles was the implementation of a Season Pass system, a feature designed to reward consistent engagement over time.

Examples of some Season Passes in other Mobile Games.

Our research revealed that leading titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile and Fortnite commonly include cosmetic items in their Season Passes, which aligns with the types of rewards we offer. These games also emphasize exclusivity by featuring time-limited rewards that cannot be earned elsewhere, creating urgency and encouraging early engagement.

Mobile titles like Candy Crush, Clash Royale, and Archero use Season Passes to reinforce gameplay by offering utility-based rewards. These items serve to enhance player progression and incentivize continued play.

Each of these games offered a range of player rewards, with the most valuable content available exclusively through a monthly paid option.

Solution

From a player perspective, Season Passes offer a clear progression path and exclusive rewards, incentivizing daily play and deeper investment. From a business standpoint, they provide predictable monthly revenue, as players are motivated to purchase access to ensure they don’t miss out on time-limited content.

This insight highlighted a dual opportunity:

  • Enhance player retention by introducing meaningful, time-bound goals.

  • Drive monetization through a recurring revenue model tied to player engagement.

With clear player demand and a strong business case in hand, I presented the idea of a Season Pass feature to my Product Manager to begin building internal support. Our goal was to create a system that felt fresh each month while remaining sustainable from a product standpoint.

Designing the Season Pass

After identifying the lack of long-term goals and personalized rewards in our game, I led my team to begin preparing a design for a Season Pass feature. To ensure the proposal was both player-centric and aligned with business goals, I grounded my design process with four key questions:

  1. How could we design a Season Pass that is both engaging and valuable to our players? 

  2. How could we make each Season Pass unique and enticing to players?

  3. How could we use this feature to support our current game economy?

  4. Does it make financial sense to implement this feature, including ongoing Live Ops support?

Working with the designers, we looked into how we could add the Season Flow into the core loop of the game.

I mapped the user journey to identify decision points and pain points. We built out initial wireframes that focused on:

  • Fast, intuitive reward collection

  • Visible progression path

  • Easy access from the home screen

Low Fidelity Design Pass

One of my key priorities when designing the Season Pass was to ensure that players could quickly and easily collect their rewards. Since reward collection was the primary reason players interacted with the feature, I focused on minimizing friction and streamlining the experience.

To achieve this, I repurposed the existing goal collection system from the idle portion of the game and integrated it into the Season Pass. This system was already familiar to our players and had proven successful in driving engagement.

Goal Collection System in Idle Portion. This is it in the non collectable state.

Goal Collection System in Idle Portion. This is it in the collectable state.

We hypothesized that allowing players to collect Season Pass rewards directly from the home screen would enhance their experience by saving them a tap and reducing navigation effort.

Presentation Pass

At this point I proposed a toolkit that can leverage existing assets to continue creating new season passes. We identified an opportunity to repurpose existing Queen assets from monthly idle events as thematic anchors for each Season Pass. This allowed us to:

  • Minimized production overhead

  • Created strong visual identities for each pass

  • Increased the value of underused content

It also had the potential to help us solve one of the questions we had, “How could we make each Season Pass unique and enticing to players?”

With approvals needed from our external stakeholders, we prioritized speed and clarity in our presentation. To ensure the designs were easy to understand and visually aligned with the game’s aesthetic, we quickly skinned the wireframes and packaged them into a polished walkthrough. This allowed us to communicate the core functionality and user flow while also showcasing how the feature would look and feel in context.

A/B Testing

One of the key constraints placed on us by external stakeholders was that the Season Pass had to function strictly as a premium feature. Only players who purchased it would be able to access its content. While this approach aligned with monetization goals, we flagged this as a UX risk as it raised concerns about its impact on player engagement.

Locking the entire feature behind a transaction meant that many players would never enter the Season Pass screen. They would miss the opportunity to see what rewards were available, which could reduce interest and limit conversion. During our research, we found that most successful Season Pass systems included both a free track and a paid track. This dual-track model allowed all players to engage with the feature, collect rewards, and build momentum toward a purchase.

From a UX perspective, this structure creates a natural incentive. Free players return regularly to claim their rewards, and as they progress, they begin to see the value of the paid track. When they reach a point where they have earned rewards that are locked behind the premium tier, it often motivates them to upgrade.

To validate this theory, we ran an A/B test using Playtest Cloud. We tested a version with only a paid track against one with both free and paid tiers. The goal was to measure engagement, conversion, and overall player sentiment.

Test A

This variant we tested did not provide the player free rewards.

Test B

This variant we tested did provide the player free rewards.

Our A/B test confirmed that players who were able to collect free rewards visited the Season Pass screen more often. These players were also more likely to purchase the Season Pass, reinforcing the value of offering a free track. However, a deeper look at the data revealed a new challenge. While players who navigated to the Season Pass screen were converting well, a significant portion of the player base was not visiting the screen at all.

This led us to reevaluate how rewards were being surfaced. At the time, players could collect Season Pass prizes directly from the home screen, similar to how they interacted with the idle gameplay. While this made collection convenient, it also removed the incentive to explore the Season Pass interface. Players were missing the opportunity to preview upcoming rewards, which limited their motivation to purchase.

We realized that mimicking the idle gameplay’s simplicity had unintentionally reduced engagement with the Season Pass feature. Without a clear interaction to view future prizes, players had little reason to explore beyond the initial reward.

Iteration

With this insight, we began iterating on the design. Our goal was to encourage players to enter the Season Pass screen regularly, not just to collect rewards but to preview what was coming next. By shifting the reward collection flow and emphasizing progression, we aimed to create a stronger sense of anticipation and increase the likelihood of conversion.

We redesigned the Season Pass access point on the home screen by replacing the banner-style panel with a prominent, interactive button. The original design created uncertainty around where to tap, so we introduced a clearer call-to-action that improved navigation and player confidence. Instead of a separate collectible button, we embedded a progress tracker directly into the new button, allowing players to see their current status at a glance.

To enhance visual appeal and reinforce seasonal identity, we updated the button artwork to feature the current Queen. This is where our reusable asset strategy proved valuable, we were able to skin the button using each Queen’s unique configuration, saving production time while delivering a cohesive and enticing entry point.

First Design

During internal playtesting, we observed that testers found the reward items difficult to view and interact with due to their sizing and visual treatment. In response, we increased the size of each reward to better showcase the artwork and improve clarity. We also refined the button styling, adding visual emphasis to the paid track to reinforce its exclusivity and appeal.

To further elevate the experience, we introduced a top banner featuring the current Queen alongside the final chase reward, typically a themed outfit. We also expanded the banner to include a leaderboard button and the player’s current ranking. This addition was driven by player excitement around competitive elements, and it helped reinforce progression and social engagement within the Season Pass.

Updated Design

Final Stretch

Once I reached a final design that satisfied both creative and technical requirements, I led the design and development of a flexible toolset that allowed our team to build new passes quickly. Designers could customize everything from the featured Queen and her assets to the backgrounds, buttons, and UI elements. Each pass felt fresh and unique while staying true to the game’s aesthetic.

Takeaways

The Season Pass quickly became a top-performing feature, breaking monthly revenue records and driving daily engagement. Tracking on the in app purchase of the feature shows that it has earned $4-5 million. I believe we have completed the task of the original Business Goals we set off to complete, both by bringing in additional revenue as well as adding an additional loop in the game to keep players interested. Many players purchased on day one to maximize rewards, making it a consistent engine for monetization and a cornerstone of our Live Ops strategy. From a player’s perspective, around 40% of the players who purchase the Season Pass complete the season, and 85% of the players who purchase reach the halfway point of the Season Pass.

To extend its success, we launched the Legacy Pass, a shorter, half-month variant that revived popular past rewards. It appealed to both new players seeking missed content and veterans completing collections, while its limited-time format drove urgency and early participation without cannibalizing Season Pass revenue.

Key Takeaways

  • Empathy and economics can align to create sustainable UX strategies

  • Familiar UX patterns accelerate adoption

  • Data-driven design can challenge monetization assumptions and unlock new value