In cyberspace, no-one can hear you clapping...

...but they can hear the rattle of spare change.

I've recently been buying a few games on Steam (Dragon Age and the Orange Box) which made me realise how long it had been since I had purchased a pre-paid, big corporation type game. Before this, the last two 'bought' games I'd played were the subscription games World of Warcraft and Champions Online, which only lasted a few months each as they both bored me pretty quickly*. And those two games were almost a year apart - the fact that I am only just playing Portal now should show how far behind on the 'popular' games I am!

In the past five or six years at least, most of the games I've been playing are 'free to play' games such as Kingdom of Loathing, Puzzle Pirates, Dwarf Fortress, and of course Whirled. And those games have interested me a hell of a lot more than those purchased subscription games that demand their moolah upfront and in large amounts. So do I find the free-to-play format more enjoyable because it's free? I don't think so. For all of the free-to-play games I've mentioned, including games like Dwarf Fortress that only receive money through donations, I have paid a fair bit of money into their coffers, maybe not as much as I forked out for WOW, but close. I didn't need to - I just wanted to support their games because they are more inventive, creative and downright enjoyable than the more popular stuff out there.

I donated to Wikipedia too, as it's so incredible useful that I'd hate to see it disappear or be hobbled by poor finances - so maybe it's just the type of person I am. But I've come across plenty of people that seem to think that free-to-play games or free websites are obliged to provide everything for free, and gibber and whine the moment the site makes moves to encourage people to pay real cash to keep the site going. I've seen it particularly happen on Whirled, I'm seeing early tremblings on Facebook with "I don't want to pay for this incredibly useful site" protest groups popping up in the news feeds of otherwise sensible people, and I know many mature adults that would feel compelled to hand-waving freakoutery if Wikipedia started throwing in ad-popups or subscription services. And with the news that Whirled, while a fun and interesting place, isn't doing as well financially as the people paying it's way might hope, it makes me wonder at the attitude of many people to services on the internet that they enjoy and use almost every day. Why do we seem to find it so unbelievable that we might be asked to pay? Why don't we voluntarily cough up cash when site we find useful and fun start throwing out subtle hints and 'scratch our back and we'll scratch yours' paid features? Have we had it too good for too long? It doesn't occur to most of us to demand cinema seats, groceries, books or theme park entry for free - so why the grumblings when places that let you amply sample their wares without asking for a cent ask for a little payback?

And if we put the money into the places that we like best instead of the ones that demand it loudly and up front - will we end up with more useful, more creative and more interesting sites and games?

Pondering...
Trowzers (hypocritically posting on her free blog)



* WOW paralysed me with boredom whereas in Champions I just became a little lost in the endless list of quests. At least with Champions you have a little creative input into your character - WOW you have zilch and if it weren't for the people I met, I'd rather have gone and watched a good movie rather than kill-this, fetch-that, walk-here endless grind. What is more, I felt compelled to play the game to support my team, and the moment I feel 'compelled' to waste time on what's supposed to be entertainment that I'm not really enjoying, I know it's time to drop it. It took nearly three years for that to happen on Puzzle Pirates (which I still return to from time to time), and hasn't happened yet on Whirled after several years. Yet WOW - I really don't feel the need to take a second look at it. Not even to get a pair of doubleplus-good super-absorbant purple-class armor pants of super strength, or to kill the penultimate all-time-super-heavyweight-champion dragon-thing that mysteriously carries them. Instead I'd rather draw an awesome chair for my room, and see other people use and enjoy it when I post it in the shop. Or go patch up some pirate ships :)

Ok ok a real post. I've been making stuff!

I had a tremendous time over the holidays making things for Whirled, mainly furniture for the Kawaii theme including some trees that I'm quite happy with (one had 70 purchases in the first 24 hours so I guess I'm not the only one!).

I also made a backdrop that I'm very proud of, because despite my allergy to coding I sat down and played with Actionscript long enough to code some randomly generated clouds. They are very relaxing to watch, and the result is much smoother and less laggy than anything you could do with normal animation.

You can view the room here:

Launch the full version of Whirled


And if you want to play with Actionscript, you can see the code I used here (because I did have to ask for some help to get it working! but happily I got most of it done on my own).

Clicky clicky goodness!

There are some new games on Whirled that I'm really enjoying - Bang! Heroes has finally been released - a cowboy themed scroller with single player and multiplayer options. While there are still some bugs around, the gameplay is smooth and I really like the music and artwork. This is a cut down flash cross-over with the full game, Bang! Howdy, which has many more characters and features, so I'd say there are more features to come for this game.

My other favourite game was not created by Three Rings (the creators of Whirled), but instead by one of the many indie flash developers taking advantage of the Whirled platform to share their games. Emerald Activities new game, Create and Rate, certainly fits in with the Whirled spirit of creativity and player imagination. In it you use premade pieces, which you can colour, pattern and arrange, to make your own picture, which is then rated by your fellow players to see who has made the winning creation. Categories for the game include fashion, horses, dragons, and prehistoric.

I had so much fun with this, either by trying to weird out my fellow players, or completely throw the category and theme out the window (this is in the "Horse" mode game):


Or recreating movie scenes (this is in "Fashion" game mode):


And I think I'll stop there all I'll want to post all of the 20 or so scenes that I liked enough to use the game option that lets me save it to my hard drive. I'll try to embed it below - if you like puzzles and creating things, I recommend you give it a go!



Launch the full version of Whirled

About this Whirled thing...

I'm probably going to mention Whirled a lot so I guess I should explain what it is...
Whirled is essentially an online game which is based around rooms,chat, discussions and casual games. It's Flash based, which means it runs in your browser without installing software. I've been playing around with it since closed alpha (as I write, Whirled is in open beta) and I've found it a lot of fun, mainly because it's so easy for players to create their own stuff and add it to their rooms, or sell it to other players. And I like the games (which, being Flash games, are usually of the casual Bejewelled/tower defence type game which I enjoy, even though they can turn me into a mouseclick-zombie for hours on end)
So, here is hopefully the first of many Whirdly things I'll share in this blog. It's a room I made a few days ago as a place to put some new physics toys created by another player. Feel free to jump in and throw a few clock parts around :D


Launch the full version of Whirled