Three Rings has announced its inaugural Flash Game Developer Challenge for Whirled, a player-created virtual world. If you're not familiar with Whirled, here's the basics:

Whirled is a complete, self-serve Flash game development platform. Using Whirled it is possible to create and charge for virtual items, single and multiplayer games, avatars, furnishings, and much more by selling directly to players.

OK, now that we're all up to speed, let's talk about the challenge, which will occur every three months. Flash game developers who create games using the Whirled API can win some big cash prizes in categories for both single-player and multi-player games. First place for single-player is $2,000, while the top prize for multi-player is a whopping $7,500. Developers can even earn money based on the number of minutes their games are played.

The deadline for the first contest is Jan. 31, 2009. More information can be found after the jump. Even if you're not a developer, check out Whirled to give some other games a try.