Latest news with #Wplace
Axios
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Viral fandom map Wplace takes Utah by storm
Welcome to Salt Lake City, where Hilbert charges through Glendale, Raymond the Cat watches over Liberty Park, and a potential sapphic romance blooms in Emigration Canyon between Stardew Valley's Haley and Melina from Elden Ring. State of play: Utah's gamers and other fandoms are frantically staking out territory on Wplace, a viral new community drawing site where users can make their mark on a world map, one pixel at a time. As of Wednesday, Salt Lake had acquired the nation's ninth-most pixels since Wplace launched, per the site's regional rankings. How it works: You can paint anywhere on Earth — and SLC, like most places, is heavily colonized by video game characters. Film and TV deep cuts are joining the mix, along with memes, local landmarks and sports mascots. The big picture: The site has become a virtual graffiti wall, with users constantly modifying or replacing existing art. The intrigue: Artists start with a bank of pixels, which replenishes one every 30 seconds. That means time is of the essence. Fandoms often rendezvous to overwhelm a place with their chosen images — or complete one so impressive that other fans will guard it from vandals. Case in point: West Valley City has been consumed by a sprawling, now-viral scene from the game Deltarune. Plop a zombified piglin on top of it, and expect to be swiftly erased by Dreemurr defenders. Zoom in: Other elaborate images have appeared at the Salt Lake City Temple, the Delta Center and the Ninth & Ninth Whale. Zoom out: Fans of the adult furry visual novel " Echo" have decorated the eponymous Summit County hamlet, while Elmo, in Emery County, is home to the "Sesame Street" character. What they're saying: " Looking at the Wplace map is so weird because it reminds me that cool people that I share interests with actually exist near me??" one user posted on X. "Like ... theres Ultrakill and Deltarune fans in Utah." Friction point: Some users have drawn battle lines over identity and ideology.
The Verge
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
This collaborative doodling website is like Google Maps plus MS Paint
A new website that lets you paint over a world map with other users in real-time has taken the digital illustration community by storm. Wplace is a collaborative pixel art platform that serves as a spiritual successor to Reddit's r/Place April Fools' Day experiments, placing time restrictions on drawing tools that motivate users to team up to complete large or complex paintings. While r/Place provided its users with a blank white pixel grid, Wplace is layered over an interactive canvas of a world map made up of four trillion pixels, according to the website's launch trailer, making it feel like a mashup between Microsoft Paint and Google Maps. Wplace also appears to be a permanent experience, unlike r/Place, which Reddit has only made available for a few days every time it revives the experiment. That said, it appears to be straining under the weight of its explosive popularity, limiting its availability. The painting aspect of Wplace is made intentionally challenging — new users have a limited pool of 30 pixels that they can place, and regain one spent pixel every 30 seconds. Though the maximum pool size expands the more you draw, the recharge time remains the same. Those limitations mean that Wplace users either have to work extremely slowly and hope that nobody paints over their progress, or collaborate on large projects with help from other users. That makes some of the expansive paintings that have been shared across social media all the more impressive. Gaming and fandom-related content seem especially popular: fans of the NBC TV series Hannibal have littered images and quotes all over Florence, Italy, which is the setting for some of season 3, while Las Vegas, USA, is covered in homages to the Fallout games. Wplace itself has some gamified aspects too, such as leaderboards that track which countries are painted with the most pixels and which country has the most users who are contributing to the global canvas. The website has attracted more than a million users since Friday. Some functions are currently offline at the time of reporting; however, with Wplace saying that it's 'experiencing technical problems.' Existing users can add to the canvas, but new users are unable to create accounts, and the leaderboards feature isn't displaying any information. It's unclear when regular service will be restored, but for now you can still visit the website to scroll through all of the artwork that was placed over the weekend. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Jess Weatherbed Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Design Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Web
