GDC: Three Rings Announces User-Created Whirled

Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy developers Three Rings have unveiled their latest game, Whirled, a web-based virtual world where players can play and create not just their own avatars and accessories, but games themselves. Players, say Three Rings, are encouraged to create their own content "at every point," using a combination of Adobe's Flash and Whirled's creation and remixing tools, but the game's customization isn't merely cosmetic - it can earn its creators money. Once players upload their creations to the Whirled catalog, they can be both rated and sold to the public at large, which Three Rings will convert into U.S. dollars. The game itself, following Three Rings past efforts, will be free to play on a basic level. Currently Three Rings is uploading initial game content to the world - which is in private alpha and expected to launch later this year - like Chiyogami Dance Battle, a dance-off played with users' custom Whirled avatars, and Underwhirled Drift, a kart racer. The game will also see a number of other word, arcade and puzzle games. To help ease content creation, all of Three Rings' own contributions will be entirely open source, hoping to seed more user contributions and creativity, as it has done with Game Gardens, its repository for user content using the Three Rings toolkit. Said Three Rings CEO Daniel James, "Whirled is about having fun -- and making fun! We've made a tremendously easy place for people to hang out, play games and then create their own stuff, from avatars and furniture to complex multi-player games. Using Flash opens up Whirled creation to the vast number of skilled Flash artists and developers. We're excited to see what in the Whirled people make!"