Escaping into a virtual world was just what I needed after filing an insurance claim in a San Francisco parking lot. I began the process by walking through quite possibly the most badass office setup I’ve ever seen. Three Rings calls their establishment “Nautilus” and actually has a submarine hatch built into one of the corners of the spacious office, right next to the bookcase with a hidden door behind it. After perching on a carved wooden chair – the plainest thing in the whole room as far as I could see – I leaned over Designer & CEO Daniel James' shoulder to watch him boot up Whirled.

The best way to describe all that Whirled is – and it’s a lot of things – is virtual environment/online community/games portal. Players (Three Rings hates calling them “users”) log onto Whirled and start their virtual life with a little tofu avatar. They can evolve their avatar into just about anything they want (emperor penguin, giant whale, nearly-naked man) by playing games and earning coins to buy themselves stuff and upgrades.

Aside from avatars, players also have their own room to decorate and remake into a reflection of their inner-self. Or not – they could just make it into a pixilated strip joint/opium den, if they so choose. The point is freedom of expression and Whirled gives players the power to do that by encouraging them to create their own stuff and upload it for other players to use.

Most of that stuff is player-made games. Three Rings has always adored online multiplayer games – sort of like the Korean go-kart gaming fad – and multiplayer flash mages make up the core of Whirled’s experience. Some of the games Three Rings makes themselves, but they’re hoping the vast majority of Whirled’s games will be player-made masterpieces that encourage gamers to be creative and business savvy.

For example, James showed me talked about Corpse Craft – a primitive RPG made up of dungeons created by users. The graphics are old school; it’s kind of nice you have the option to change your avatar’s appearance to fit in because I think a giant emperor penguin would kind of stick out in a semi-goth setting.

ETA: My bad. He was walking about Corpse Craft while showing me Wyvern and I got confused.

“Penny Arcade described it as ‘fucking banging,’” James bragged.

And it was, but for more reasons than the setting and the decent gameplay. Corpse Craft is set up such that it’s free to play – but to get the most out of the experience players have to spend real-life money to buy Whirled gold bars. The gold bars go for 10 cents apiece and can be used to purchase content for the game; in this case, monsters for the dungeons.

Player-creators can choose not to require gold bars of their audience – the alternative currency in Whirled is “coins” which are earned entirely through in-game actions. But the incentive for gamers to be enterprising is high: the more gold bars a player-creator can get his audience to buy, the more opportunity he has to cash out gold bars into real money. You know, to use in real life.

So, if you made the most awesome game ever that so happened to require the purchase of gold bars here and there, you could make some money from Whirled. Not mention a name for yourself as a game developer.

“We’re hoping that developers will take advantage of Whirled as well,” said James.

There certainly is plenty of opportunity. Whirled launched its beta in March of 2008 and has grown to a base of nearly 20000 players since then.

The beta tag stays only because Three Rings isn’t quite done fiddling with the world here and there. Among the changes the developer is hoping to make is more group/guild management functionality. Currently, Whirled has friends lists and chat just like Facebook – but since the emphasis is more on gaming together than on just hanging out together, a guild system would be nice.

Whirled is something I feel that I can’t quite be put into words. It’s more than just a virtual space like Home and more than a networking system like Xbox Live. Go check it out for yourself if you want the full idea. Like with Puzzle Pirates, there's a lot of stuff going on under the shiny, entertaining hood.

Me, I’ve got some more insurance stuff to deal with.

User generated content is something of a hot issue, with even universities like Stanford getting in on the game of how to make it easier and more intuitive for people to make their own stuff for games. At the recent Social Gaming Summit, a couple of industry types got together to talk about user generated content in virtual worlds, and why the model works for their games (such as Habbo Hotel or Puzzle Pirates):

"The more tools that you provide can lead to richer behavior, but often it's the simpler things that people enjoy most," began Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings. "As designing games constraints can lead you to designing better games, constrained environments can lead to more fun."

"The simplest games are the ones everybody can join in and play," expanded Ted Rheingold, founder of Dogster and Catster.

The panel also went on to discuss why we should think of 'virtual spaces' instead of 'virtual worlds' when looking at game design — design from the avatar up, not the 'world' down. Clearly this would not work for everything, but with casual MMOGs getting ever more popular, probably not a bad idea to go forward from for some developers.

Why User-Generated Content Matters For Games

1. World of Warcraft, released 2004 - 8.5 million subscribers.

2. Habbo Hotel, released 2000 - 7.5 million active users.

3. RuneScape, released 2001 - 5 million active users.

4. Club Penguin, released 2006 - 4 million active users.

5. Webkinz, released 2005 - 3.8 million active users.

6. Gaia Online, released 2003 - 2 million active users.

7. Guild Wars, released 2005 - 2 million active users.

8. Puzzle Pirates, released 2003 - 1.5 million active users.

9. Lineage I/II, released 1998 - 1 million subscribers.

10. Second Life, released 2003 - 500,000 active users.

Both Habbo Hotel and Webkinz are for kids. When I say kids, I mean the kind that enjoy eating Ling Ling potstickers from Costco while watching Kim Possible and Gilmore Girls (yes, we're all sad it's been cancelled). I'm all for kids playing video games, but I do think it's weird that they pay to be exposed to everyone in the world. Maybe my maternal instincts are starting to kick in, but it's probably more likely that I've been watching too much "To Catch a Predator". Kim Phu

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