'Corpse Craft' is an award-winning game that is built-in to Three Rings' 'Whirled' platform. 'Whirled' allows developers to create Flash-based casual MMOs and share them with anyone, and potentially make money off of them.
(Credit: Three Rings)For years, one of the biggest success stories in the casual game space has been San Francisco-based Three Rings and its hit, Puzzle Pirates, which has earned more than $14 million.
Now, the company has officially launched its Whirled platform, a system designed around user-created Flash-based massively multiplayer games that gives developers a way to make money with their creations.
Whirled has been in a closed beta for months, and it is still technically in beta, explained Three Rings CEO Daniel James. But the platform is now open to the general public and its money-making structure is available to any developer who wants to take advantage of the Whirled APIs and large and growing base of players.
Like other casual MMO systems--Metaplace, from Areae, may be the closest competitor--Whirled is entirely browser-based. And while most users will likely just play games, the availability of the APIs and the ability to re-work existing Three Rings casual games, makes it possible for developers to get a quick start on putting their creations in front of other Whirled players.
Like Puzzle Pirates before it, Whirled has a built-in economy in which players can earn coins by putting in time playing the games, or buy "bars" with credit cards. Either currency can be used to buy in-game goods. Now, Whirled users will also be able to exchange their coins or bars for "bling," which can be cashed out for US dollars. This is what will allow developers to make money with their creations.
Games created using the platform can be embedded in any blog or Web site, and any money earned is split between the developer and Three Rings and any referring affiliate.
STANFORD, Calif.--If one thing is clear about the immediate future of virtual worlds, it's that every toy company is going be setting something up.
That was the prediction of Raph Koster, the co-founder of Areae, which has created a virtual world platform called Metaplace, at a meeting of the Metaverse Roadmap here Friday. Koster got up to speak to a group of the leaders of the virtual world community and announced he was going to be the day's cynic.
"We (were asked) to talk about what's exciting," Koster said. "But I'm pretty sure the answer is that there will be 10 more kids' worlds...How much of the investment dollars is actually going to be going to making more versions of Barbie Online?"
The point, Koster continued, is that people who are expecting any immediate implementations of augmented reality technology or any of the other futuristic elements that came out of the Metaverse Roadmap project aren't likely to see the light of day anytime soon.
"The interesting question is, how much are commercial pressures versus idealistic pressures going to effect virtual worlds in the next couple years?" Koster asked rhetorically.
And the answer, in large part, is that the bulk of investment dollars are going toward entertainment properties these days, Koster argued.
And what that means, for at least the immediate future, Koster added, is that the most development energy will be going to creating virtual worlds aimed at kids--in large part because those worlds attract big audiences, and revenue.
It's not that the technology isn't ready, for some of the best-case technological scenarios, Koster added. He said that, in fact, some of the predictions for various "lifelogging" technologies, or things that can record just about anything that goes on around someone, are ready today.
But because the entertainment companies are more interested in creating large, captive audiences, we're much more likely to see an almost never-ending stream of walled-garden virtual worlds centered around entertainment than the "dream of the metaverse" in the near future.
Of course, Koster--who does seem to be a big fan of the futuristic predictions of the Metaverse Roadmap community--couched his comments under the rubric of informed cynicism. He implied that the best vision of the technological future of the metaverse and virtual worlds is actually coming from science fiction these days.
So, he said, if you want to see the best vision of where things are going, at least on a technological level, read the novels of Vernor Vinge and Charlie Stross.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been researching the fact that a lot of venture capital has been flowing into companies building virtual worlds or the technologies behind them.
On just a quick survey of things I'd seen recently, I found several examples of significant investments by either VCs or angels: CBS and Gladwyne Partners putting $7 million into The Electric Sheep Company; Charles River Ventures putting $2 million into Areae and $5.5 million in Conduit; Gladwyne's investment into Anshe Chung Studios; Sterling Stamos Capital Management's $4 million into Multiverse; and others.
Well, just as I was about to get serious about this story, I got a press release today from Virtual Worlds Management, the folks putting on the Virtual Worlds conference in San Jose, Calif., next week, touting the fact that its research shows that, in total, there has been $1 billion invested in virtual worlds in the last year.
Wow, I thought. I knew there was something serious going on here, but $1 billion?
In the end, though, I'm not surprised. Virtual worlds are everywhere these days. From those getting huge amounts of media attention, like Second Life and World of Warcraft, to those aimed at children and teens, like Club Penguin, Gaia Online, to those that are just quietly building huge user bases like Habbo Hotel.
All told, virtual worlds are becoming big business. And that's funny to me because when I first started writing about them and thinking about them four years ago, most people didn't really even know what they are. Now, they're on everyone's lips, and there's new ones popping up every day.
Still, a billion dollars is a whole lot of money. And, hopefully, all that investment is going to buy some really good, strong, lasting virtual worlds.
One of the reasons the genre still feels like a niche is that there is no single virtual world that everyone is using, like there is with social networks like MySpace or Facebook. World of Warcraft is huge, with more than 9 million paying subscribers, but that pales with what MySpace has.
On the other hand, before WoW launched in the fall of 2004, the virtual worlds and online games community thought it would be amazing if any American massively multiplayer online game--a much more game-oriented than social virtual world--could surpass a million paying subscribers. Now, no one talks about that anymore. And I think that if anyone had said back then that a billion dollars would be invested in the space in a single year, they would have been quietly directed to a room with padded walls and a very good lock.
But here we are.
Next week, the Virtual Worlds conference kicks off, and it's shaping up to be a very interesting show. And it better be, what with all that money in the room.
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