Hi everyone, @ViviOfficially’s friend is seeing whats called the on-boarding experience for Episode. In the mobile games industry its super common to change the initial experience new players see when they first download a game. This is used to introduce new people to an app. It also usually includes some sort of instruction on how to use the app - for example ours introduces new readers to the Favorites shelf and how to use it.
We have done extensive testing and found that giving new player access to everything in the app (featured stories, user stories, profiles, event shelves, mobile creator, etc.) all at once is very overwhelming and confusing. So much so that they tend to not stay with Episode for very long.
If we ease new players into the platform by having them read some chapters from featured stories first and then introduce them to all the other things on the platform more gradually, they tend to stay with Episode longer and become members of the community. @EliseC is correct that it used to be a couple of weeks, but we’ve changed it now to reading a certain number of chapters. Currently I believe it’s between 10 and 20, but its possible that could change in the future.
Many of you have commented about not liking the featured stories, or preferring user stories and thats okay! This experience is designed for people who have never heard of Episode before and mostly don’t know that user stories exist. I hope this helps clear things up!