Thought I'd post my guide here so people can reference it easier.
If you have a spare couple of hours to set up Rec Room for your arcade, this makes it MUCH easier for customers to use. Most of the time I don't even explain how to use the wristwatch menu at all.
Here's a link to the video showing my results (though I've improved it slightly since this video was made, e.g. there is a way to turn off the sandbox machine in the lounge but I've since forgotten sorry): https://youtu.be/I4nVLjr16Rc
Anyway onto the setup process:
Start by going to your watch and pressing the Create button and choosing a private room. Personally, I'd recommend the Lounge (in the Sandbox section), as it provides a number of things for your customers to interact with while awaiting the rest of their party. Then, go to This Room and click the Save button, giving the room a name such as ^YourArcadeNameLounge (or whatever you'd like).
Then do the same for paintball, laser tag, Quest rooms (update: looks like custom quest rooms is no longer a supported feature, but you could link to the public ones), or any others.
Place doors to these rooms from your lounge so that the group can easily navigate from one area to another.
For Activities, go to Play -> select an activity and click the "i" button -> click Go To Private. Then save the room and remember the name, to assign it to a door in your Lounge using the Maker Pen (let me know if you think this guide needs more info on using the Maker Pen to assign doors).
You'll need to invite each station's account as a co-owner (otherwise they can't get into the private doors), and accept the invite on each of your stations.
Also set the Lounge room you made as a favourite for each station so players can get back to it more easily.
Also I recommend changing the wristwatch to only appear if a player taps on it with their other hand (this is found in the watch menu settings). This helps avoid accidental clicks and you don't even have to explain the watch at all if you like, I sometimes just reboot the game if a kid can't manipulate the watch menus well enough.
Once you have the room set up, if you are using SteamVR, you can set a launch option so that all of your machines go directly to this gathering space. Right click on Rec Room, choose Properties, then go to the General tab, click Set Launch Options, and put:
+roomname:YourArcadeNameLounge (or whatever name you chose), and I recommend also using +Profile:YourStation'sRecRoomProfileName (change that to the name of your Rec Room account) and +Mode: vr
That way when you launch Rec Room it automatically loads in VR mode (not "screen mode"), selects a profile, and loads into the custom lounge where your customers can see each other straight away. And now you're done!
Update: Here's the method to getting straight into a game of lasertag or paintball from the Springboard launcher (or more rooms if you can be bothered setting them up!) I hope you like this because it seems simple written down but I spent a LOT of time scratching my head over this! Be careful with these steps since everything is case sensitive and spaces are important.
Ok here's an example for setting up paintball:
1.First do everything in the setup guide above and make sure it's working.
The next step is to create a shortcut to Steam.exe and rename it to Recroom_Paintball
Go into the shortcut's properties and in the target field, after the text already there add: -applaunch 471710 +Profile:YourStation'sRecRoomProfileName +Mode: vr +roomname:YourPaintballroomname
Then move the shortcut into the RecRoom folder install folder in steamapps/common/RecRoom
Repeat steps 1-3 for any additional rooms you may want customers to launch directly into. I have three, Paintball, Laser tag, and my original Lounge with the doors setup.
Go into the operator panel for Springboard, then content>'my library' and click 'add content manually'. Click 'create a custom content entry' and choose 'Steam Site License' in the popup window then 'add content' to close it. Now you can upload the images attached below so that your customers can easily see the game to launch, give it a title (e.g. Rec Room - Paintball) and everything else. Under 'launch method' select 'path' and enter the full file path, if you put it the Rec Room install folder it will likely be C:\Program files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RecRoom\Recroom_Paintball.lnk and then click 'create entry' when you're done to save your custom game entry.
Redo step 5 for any additional room may want and link them to the shortcut name you created. I'd recommend changing the thumbnail image so that customers can identify the different rooms at a glance. I made a couple below if you want them. Also I made my regular Rec Room game entry to point to a shortcut which launches into my custom lounge, but this step probably isn't necessary if you left the launch commands in the game's Steam properties.
Enjoy!
