What is going to happen to all the IP?
Glitch Is Closing
11–20 of 109 posts
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#12We are offering refunds for all purchases made since November 1st, 2011 (a little over a year ago) and will immediately begin refunding all payments which can be refunded automatically through our payments processors (which will be nearly all of those made in the last 50 or so days). We will then move on to manual refunds for older payments. This will take some time to wrap up since there is not always a simple way to process the payments — credit cards expire or are cancelled, PayPal accounts are closed, etc. — and we may need to collect additional information from you in order to process your refund.
such an unusual and oddly endearing gesture. i am sure there is some kind of story behind it, but it's kind of beautiful in this industry full of people who first decide they want to make money and then decide what to build.
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#13Bummer for Stewart Butterfield. But maybe third time's the charm! This does seem to count as a vote against Big Production Up Front. I have to wonder if they had started smaller, used a more "Lean" strategy, got a product to market quicker, and started working on revenue, if they would've A) discovered the "insurmountable" problems sooner, B) had some revenue to play with, and C) been in a position to pivot when the…
My initial reaction to your comment was to snort and roll my eyes, but I am sincerely curious: can you name any similar games that found success by building an MVP and evolving into a sophisticated MMPORG?
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#14I really like the concept and I also liked the changes and direction it was going. Sad to see it go. :(
>Why don't you give the game away or make it open source or let player volunteers run it?
So will it be lost forever in the ether? Please, Glitch owners, preserve it in some meaningful way.
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#15This bit I don't quite get:
Why don't you give the game away or make it open source or let player volunteers run it?
Glitch looks simple, but it is not. [...] It takes a full-time team of competent engineers & technical operations personnel just to keep the game open. Even if there was a competent team that was willing to work on it full time for free, it would take months to train them. Even then, the cost of hosting the servers would be prohibitively expensive.
That explains why making it free or open-sourcing wouldn't save the current game world, but why not open-source it anyway? Then somebody can give it another shot, with a smaller, limited world, and see if it gains any traction the second time around.
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#16Now that the main page is just a gravestone, what is glitch?
Found this About page via the "Log in" link at the top: http://www.glitch.com/about/ "Glitch is a web-based massively-multiplayer game which takes place inside the minds of eleven peculiarly imaginative Giants. You choose how to grow and shape the world: building and developing, learning new skills, collaborating or competing with everyone else in one enormous, ever-changing, persistent world."
I always got Maple Story vibes when I tried it.
edit: that said, I haven't for quite a while, and it was only briefly. But I was mostly lost and wandering, where Maple Story had quests up the wazoo to keep me focused. Was that part of the appeal, or a transient attribute?
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#17This bit I don't quite get: Why don't you give the game away or make it open source or let player volunteers run it? Glitch looks simple, but it is not. [...] It takes a full-time team of competent engineers & technical operations personnel just to keep the game open. Even if there was a competent team that was willing to work on it full time for free, it would take months to train them. Even then, the cost of hostin…
Presumably, there's some novel IP that is keeping some of the company alive. From the website:
What will happen to Tiny Speck?
Tiny Speck, the company behind Glitch, will continue. We have developed some unique messaging technology with applications outside of the gaming world and a smaller core team will be working to develop new products. But now is not the time to talk about that. Right now our concern is with the players and our comrades who are suddenly looking for new work.
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#18About a year ago I somehow got an invite to the beta and played maybe 20 or 30 hours, on and off, over several weeks. The whimsy and quirkiness of the design elements were always impressive. And it was commendable that they were building a family-friendly, kid-safe game that could still be appreciated by adults. But somehow it just didn't hook me and I stopped going back.
In hindsight it reminds me of my experience with Second Life: once you've got the basic ideas, and toured some of the more creative or amusing islands, what is there to do? At least in 2L you could build something that would remain in the world. In Glitch there were endless skill-building exercises that had meaning only in the game world. The only payoff for building a skill was to be able to learn some more skills.
Meanwhile millions are obsessively playing Minecraft, whose design could not be farther from Glitch in every way.
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#19Now that the main page is just a gravestone, what is glitch?
This is the best recent video I can find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHX9PZpKjgI
Re: Glitch Is Closing
#20MMOs are difficult. It's a pretty daring endeavor, considering that Tiny Speck raised $5m in 2009 for just this one game.