Frequently asked questions
From Whirled
Contents |
Games and Coins
How can I get Coins?
You earn Coins by playing games and doing other fun things like sending mail or inviting new people to join Whirled. Mostly, by playing games.
Do some games give out more Coins than others?
We intend that a well-written game should give out a standard rate of Coins according to a bell-curve distribution, most likely based on player performance. Games that don't do this, e.g. a game that says 'Maximum Coins for Everyone!' will tend to give out less Coins.
What about Bars?
Bars are not yet implemented. They will be like Doubloons in Puzzle Pirates or Gold Coins in Bang! Howdy.
Goods and Money
As the creator of an item, what is my share of the sale price?
This is to be determined, but it should be at least approximately 30% of the sale price. We intend to share money back with people who refer players, such as potential distribution partners, and we also need to make a bean ourselves to cover costs. There will be an explicit sales split that will be transparent and fair to all.
How will a successful creator in Whirled cash out in-game currency?
We have not yet decided on the exact model. Our current plan is to allow successful creators to accumulate a third currency which they can liquidate via a manual system (we send you a Paypal when you ask).
Do I have to pay for 'land'?
You will probably have to pay something for new rooms, but we do not consider 'virtual estate' to be an important part of the business model.
How much will things cost in the shop?
The item creator decides how much an item costs in Coins or Bars. We may introduce more automated pricing tools over time.
Can you return items?
We plan to implement a system that will allow you to return items that you don't want. The return price will be some percentage of the original purchase price, depending on how long you have kept the item for.
Can you trade items, or gift them?
You can gift items via Mail. We are also considering a way to resell items, but this is only really relevant for rare or limited edition items whose price has risen since purchase. How this works is still under debate.
Whirled Business
Is there a genre?
No. Part of the point of Whirled is that it's no particular genre or theme. We want to support a crazy mix-up of themes and genres, whilst giving individuals and groups the tools to make strongly-themed areas.
What is the target audience?
We hope that Whirled will appeal to a very wide demographic. We suspect that young people will create a lot of stuff, but we're designing the system to allow people to focus on what they are interested in and form and find 'micro-communities', for example 'Whirleds' with different themes. You do have to be over 13 to play Whirled and the entire experience should be considered PG.
What are your plans for distribution, marketing, etc.?
We are hoping that Whirled will be inherently 'viral'. We are hoping to create distribution partnerships in due course.
Content and problems thereof
How do you handle mature content?
We plan to develop features that will allow older players to enjoy mature content without compromising the PG rating of the overall Whirled experience, but these features are presently not in place. Until they are, Whirled should be considered an entirely PG-rated experience. Players should not wear Mature avatars in any publicly-accessible space (i.e. any room that is not locked from all visitors), nor upload mature content to public rooms, or to the Shop.
We have implemented a complaint system to allow you to complain about a player that exposes you to content that you deem objectionable. We will be banning players who cause complaints by displaying Mature or offensive content.
We will implement a 'Mature content badge' that allows you to view mature content in the Shop and rooms. Presently you can flag Shop items as Mature, but we have not yet implemented any effect from this setting.
What about copyright violation
We will respond to any DMCA requests to remove content from Whirled.
What about badly written or malicious content?
Avatars and other content that attempt crash browsers and/or do other bad things are likely to be a problem. We are taking whatever steps we can to reduce these issues. We do not believe that there are major security issues, in that the security model we are using means that nobody should be able to do bad things to your computer, web browser data, or Whirled data with malicious content. There are bad things that they could do, however, such as causing your browser to hang temporarily. We will do what we can both to prevent this in software and to empower players to overcome such idiots.
