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Glitch Is Closing

glitch.com

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Re: Glitch Is Closing

#31

Post by ChuckMcM »

jpatokal wrote: post #15

This 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…

This was something I was curious about as well. It is a skill to make systems that can be managed by only a small number of engineers/operations types, but it is no more difficult than building a game world like this, just different.

I was wondering how much capital it would take to build that replacement infrastructure. If you went through game engine, databases , everything, and said "Hmmm, ok how can we make this thing basically run itself, or at a minimum with a staff of 3 or 4." Then you'd need a game population that supported that, and I don't know what it cost to play. But I'd love to do a deep dive into the business and technology and figure out if there was a way to make it work. I would expect to be disappointed because it looks like they had a great team and I'm sure they did all of this too.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#33

Post by jes5199 »

fernly wrote: post #18

About 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 w…

It's almost like Glitch was more fun for the game designers than for the players. It was full of gorgeous art and silly jokes. But, for the player, there wasn't much to do, except collect N of these so you can get another X.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#34

Post by jbrowning »

Truly a sad end to a great game. The Glitch player community had some of the most friendly people that I've ever met and I had a great time both playing the game and developing against their API[1]. I think what really killed their momentum was pulling the game back into private beta[2]. Quite a few players left after that and the game obviously never recovered.

[1] http://rubygems.org/gems/snafu [2] http://www.glitch.com/blog/2011/11/30/the-big-unlaunching/

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#35

Post by sirclueless »

hahla wrote: post #8
siaukia wrote: post #2

This saddens me on some aspects: 1. As a fellow game developer that published a game (and didn’t hit the jackpot). (We’re a small startup at the time launching our little game and it didn’t go well at all after a 2 hard-working year, about the same time when Glitch launched). 2. It’s the Flickr’s founding dream to create this, and if you read the backstory of Flickr, you’ll notice that the founder initially wanted to…

Seems like they weren't adequate at marketing.. The concept of the game is appealing but I have never heard about it until today, the people who have played it have nothing but praise haven't seen a negative comment yet.

Here's one. Even though it is more varied and complex than your average Zynga pump-and-dump, at a fundamental level it is still the same kind of get-on-a-treadmill-and-keep-walking sort of game, where the primary form of achievement is watching numbers increase linearly as rewards start getting exponentially farther away. You feel almost as used while playing it as playing farmville, which kills enjoyment. That is, you are acutely aware at all times that the game mechanics are subtly or not-so-subtly designed to keep you recurrently tied to the game. To profit you need to spend a certain amount of time per day doing menial tasks.

Thankfully it is a real MMO, and there are some redeeming social aspects to it, but it has very little to recommend it over, say, World of Warcraft. It's a browser game, so it's more accessible, but it doesn't actually play nicely with mobile since it runs in flash, and you might as well go big or go home.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#36

Post by lessnonymous »

jpatokal wrote: post #15

This 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…

I'd guess they've licensed libraries or patents from the non-open source world or developer their own that they're not willing to release.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#37

Post by jashkenas »

It's a bit beside the point, but I'd like to note how refreshing it is to read an honest shutting-down-and-wrapping-up post from a startup that had big dreams. It's all too easy to mistake bluster for confidence, and end up writing a shutdown note that claims some kind of hollow victory.

The true feelings of the Glitch team aren't being hidden here, and although it's sad, I think folks appreciate it a great deal.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#38

Post by trotsky »

jpatokal wrote: post #15

This 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…

Why can't you sell the game so someone else can take it over?

It's complicated, but it comes down to this: if that were a transaction that made sense to the purchaser, we wouldn't be shutting the game down.

Obviously that's pretty opaque, but i think this suggests that they've cut a deal to sell the assets. I dont't know a lot about that market but it seems to happen pretty commonly when 3d online games flop. Somebody in a market that never was exposed to the game buys them and repurposes them or uses them as a jump start in some tier 2 freemium project.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#40

Post by msluyter »

fernly wrote: post #18

About 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 w…

That was my experience as well. Although exploring the world was initially interesting -- and I enjoyed outfitting my character with a fez -- after a while wandering around squeezing chickens got a little dreary. And when you leveled up and learned new skills, most of the time they weren't all that interesting. Becoming 10% more efficient at gardening or whatnot.... It definitely seemed to be lacking a hook of some sort. I bet there are some interesting lessons for game designers there.
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