Whirled (Beta)

By: Derek Yu

On: April 11th, 2008

Whirled Brawler

Hmmm, this is most definitely intriguing. Ian McConville, who’s probably best known for his work on the webcomic Mac Hall, joined Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates) in 2006 as an artist. What he has been working on there was anyone’s guess until about a week ago, when he revealed Whirled to the world (via his new webcomic with Matt Boyd, called Three Panel Soul).

At first glance, Whirled appears to be your average game portal/social network, but it’s a bit more than that. Ian describes it on TPS as “a Flash-Based Object Oriented Multi-User Dungeon.” Three Rings calls it “a web-based social world fueled at every turn by player created content.”

Aside from playing games alone or with other players, you can create your own Flash games and hook them up to Whirled via a free multiplayer library supplied by Three Rings. Ian himself designed a simple brawler (see image) with it that’s pretty awesome.

In the games you can earn points which can be used to buy things, including assets (avatars, pets, etc.) created by other players. You can also create a personalized “room” from the ground up and then connect it to other players’ rooms. These rooms can be embedded into any website, where anyone, account or not, can access it (guests show up as little ghost avatars).

It’s obviously early in the beta, but I’m excited by the idea… it seems like the next logical step for social networks, game portals, and MMOG’s could be right here.

(Source: Transfer, via Sensible Erection [NSFW])

Posted in Community, Developers, MMOG | Tags: IanMcConville, ThreeRings

Karl Kennedy

Love the look of those characters =)
http://www.g4g.it FireSword

Nice find.. but it requires me to download and install adobe flash player??? wtf i already have it..

Looks like Ragnarok battle offline, very stylish, is it possible to play guest too?
BenH

Seems like a lot of these Flash-based social networking sites are popping up where you can ‘make’ your own games.
Zefyr

It requires the very latest version of the flash player, so you just need to upgrade.
asuffield

“Next logical step”? This is a MOO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOO). They’re almost 20 years old. The only thing different about this one is that it’s done in flash, rather than the classic [MOO programming language.

These are the things from which modern MMOGs (and Second Life in particular) are derived, not the other way around. They work well enough. They aren’t that popular, because most people are too stupid and lame to create any worthwhile content.
Trotim

Hah, I completed his game about half a week ago! This news is OLD.
Cave Story

Sooo…
The “next logical step” is trying to con the user into creating content for your social network?
Cave Story Ripoff

So the â€œnext logical stepâ€ is trying to fool the player into making stuff for your social network?
PoisonedV

More sites where other people make their games for them. I assume they will have a Korea style “The more you buy, the better you get” cash shop.
Melly

Not so sure about the social network and I don’t really feel compelled to join it.

I’ll talk a bit about that brawler up there instead.

I felt it was small, simple, but simplistic, like old-school arcade brawlers. It lagged in my comp (especially since it doesn’t give me the option to change quality) so I probably didn’t get the full experience. Still, pretty much all I did in it ws get the bow and do the D D A combo over and over again with a few dashes to create distance.

Fun for a few minutes. Also, it’s probably not a good idea to make the enemies so cute you feel bad about killing them.
OMG

Uhh WTF they have n++ there! But is not the game you are thinking… Hm, no, this sucks.
Zeno

I hate social networks and user-created content.
Jick

User created content is the fuuuuuuuuture
RedPants

“I hate … user-created content.”

Isn’t this site about Independent Gaming?
Pip

It’s about monocles. The gaming is a (somewhat undesirable) result of that.
Stwelin

PLS CAN I HAVE SUM UR GOLD PLS?
Derek

Yeah, I would argue that “the next logical step” for social networks and game portals would more or less be a visual MOO that you could embed in your blog/MySpace/Facebook… with some kind of incentive/achievement system behind it.

Whether this one in particular will work, I’m not really sure… but I’ve never actually seen anything like this (maybe in Korea?).

We shall see.
haowan

I think this displays real foresight in the Three Rings team. Just because the idea isn’t new, doesn’t mean that they haven’t suddenly done it totally correctly and will have a completely immense social gaming network of users on their hands in 6 months’ time.
Paul Eres

I think it’s a good idea; it seems like a toned down, 2D, Second Life variant, but one which you can embed on your blog or whatever instead of it being restricted to a downloadable program. So it may take off. Sounds very ambitious technically though, I hope they have the manpower and expertise to handle it.
http://www.sophiehoulden.com GirlFlash

so newgrounds meets gaia online then? it would have been easier if you just said that =p
Scott

The brawler is boring because you got the bow everytime and did the same combo everytime?

I’m so confused
Joseph

The brawler was frustrating, I found I would get stuck quite often unable to move or attack, and moving him with the mouse stank. I felt like it wasn’t a very polished game in terms of gameplay, but the graphics were pretty.
Dusty Spur

I wish the brawler would have arrow key controls for movement.
squidlarkin

It’s nothing at all like a MUD. It’s a flash game portal that adds an outside-the-games incentive system for doing well, but unfortunately the incentive is just to acquire more stuff for your silly cartoon chatroom. Cute idea if you’re into that, but I think McConville’s talents are being wasted here.
branewalker

squidlarkin, I think that is the extent of the developer’s vision for this, but it may spark some imaginations elsewhere.

I had high hopes for the brawler when I saw the polish of the graphical presentation, and the ability for online co-op. But, the portal has problems:

I started playing as a guest, then decided to sign up so I could see how the game played in co-op. I clicked the sign-up link, and it did this really awesome thing: it scooted my game over, and let me fill out the form while it ran in the background. Awesome in theory, except that the background noise while filling out the form was that of my character getting beaten to a bloody pulp by enemies. Seems they need a pause function that can be invoked by server-side code. That was just the first annoyance, and the easiest to fix.

It could have potential, it does look pretty, but suffice it to say, it doesn’t show me much in a flash portal that I haven’t already seen elsewhere.
bateleur

Something nobody’s mentioned yet is that Whirled has two currencies. One of the two is tied to real world money. If you make a game for Whirled that people pay for in this way, you get some of that money.

So whilst this may technically be a MOO it represents a potentially interesting development for games designers who can now write multiplayers games to plug into an existing community and make money from them.

If that works, it will also be a great thing for players since lots of good multiplayer games will get written and you’ll be able to play them all very cheaply and find opponents easily.

Whether all this actually happens remains to be seen, but I’m pretty excited about the potential.