SweetieGames

If you have been on social media within the past few days, there’s no doubt you will have heard of Wplace. The site bears a striking resemblance to r/place, which allowed users to draw individual pixels on a huge canvas to create a collaborative piece of artwork back in 2023. Now, Wplace has increased the scale, allowing users to draw their pixel art over the biggest canvas of all: the world map. The site has skyrocketed in popularity so quickly, the servers have crashed at the time of writing this article!

WPlace starts you at a random location on the world map, and allows you to traverse and zoom in on different locations to see what people have drawn over it. You can also draw one pixel every 30 seconds to create a homage to your favourite things. I loved r/place, and I’m so happy to see a similar project rise in popularity in a similar way. Wplace has brought together thousands of online fan communities, activists and artists and has allowed them to share something truly special; creating artwork collaboratively and sharing their love for their favourite games or shows, or showing their support for others in their time of need.

WPlace made their first post on Instagram on 21st July, and as of writing this article have already amassed over one million users, with one user painting a nearly 964,000 pixels since the site’s launch. You can feel the amount of people creating artwork when you zoom in on big cities, and fans of some games have come together in one place to create some truly stunning pieces of art. As a long time fan of the multimedia franchise Kagerou Project, it warmed my heart to see so much KagePro artwork in the city where the franchise takes place in Japan.

The standout fanbase taking over WPlace has to be Deltarune, though. You can be in a remote town and still find Spamton popping up there. As a Deltarune fan myself, the site has really demonstrated the sheer number of people that the game has touched. So many people around the world are attached to Toby Fox’s characters, and I’ve loved seeing it.

While it has been fun to see people coming together to draw ducks in local ponds and put Spamton in every nook and cranny, I do think Wplace has also highlighted the lack of awareness for internet safety. Young people have been posting pictures of their neighbourhoods, uncensored, to discuss what has been drawn there. If you’re reading this and planning on posting what’s near you on Wplace, at least censor your street names first! Don’t tell strangers where you live!

When used safely, Wplace has really highlighted the best of fan communities and of people online in general. Coming together, working on huge art pieces collaboratively with some big art pieces remaining untouched for days and celebrating each other’s successes on social media. I hope the site can stick around for a long time, and that the servers can withstand the sheer level of users pouring in!