Glitch Is Closing • Hacker News Board

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#101

Post by tomkit » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

dgreensp wrote: post #48

I played Glitch for a couple hours once and it's pretty obvious to me why it didn't work. After all the pre-launch hype about changing the face of gaming forever, the game was dreadfully boring -- you basically walk around and click on things. I described it to a friend as "FarmVille where you don't get your own farm." Sure, there was a lot of art; I think I had my pick of several dozen hairstyles and encountered hun…

I tried this game out when it was in pre-beta too. I found it novel and refreshing that there was an MMO aspect to a flash-based game, but I didn't find myself going back to the game. I have no recollection of what the aspiration was supposed to be, and like you, all I remember about the core mechanic of the game is clicking on things I see and performing various actions on them.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#102

Post by peterhajas » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

I remember signing up for this service years ago. They emailed me years later, saying it was ready.

They took forever to launch, but the idea seemed novel. Sad to hear that its shutting down.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#103

Post by jeremyarussell » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 7:03 PM UTC

klrr wrote: post #76

Release the source and let the community continue?

They list the reasons why they won't do that in the FAQ at the bottom. That said I think they are greatly underestimating their fans.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#104

Post by janulrich » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

I'm sad to see this game go. It was really fun to play. The beautiful art and non-violent gameplay made it really a really unique whimsical game.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#105

Post by napillo » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #67

trotsky wrote: post #12

We 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 t…

I wish they had people opt-in to refunds. It seems that they received a lot of VC funding so they can handle it, but it sets a precedent that an ailing bootstrapped game company, or one that blew through all their funding, would have a hard time following. I think automated refunds for the last 90 days, and giving refunds to the people who asked before that, would be a nice sustainable way to handle it.

Stewart Butterfield isn't hurting for money.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#106

Post by engrocer » Thu, Nov 15, 2012, 7:48 PM UTC

So they burnt through $10.7M within 1.5 years? $600k/month? I wonder what they have left. I'm curious about the ramifications after this sort of thing transpires.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/12/online-game-startup-tiny-s...

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#107

Post by guiambros » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 3:20 AM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #94

guiambros wrote: post #65

It's a gorgeous game, and I'm heartbroken that they're shutting down. I was part of the very first wave of beta testers when they first launched. Even though I didn't spend much time, I remember being shocked by their attention to details. Every little thing was nicely planned, designed and implemented. But, aside from the intrinsic beauty, the truth is that there was no reason for you to keep coming back. It didn't…

I think its pertinent to note that the American successor to Habitat still exists and is live, some 17 years later. (vzones.com) They spun off from compuserve, went public as Avaterra, got delisted, and now are owned by some other company. If you design your business right, the online life cycle can be very long. Unfortunately the current nature of startups, venture capital, and exits encourage go big or go broke ins…

Agree. To me the problem with most/all online worlds is exactly that they are all passive: Worlds Chat, The Palace, Second Life, now Glitch. They all stayed in their weird limbo between MMORPG and objective-less platform game. Some better than others, but all share the same (lack of) purpose.

Sadly, we still far from a true Snow Crash experience. A decade ago Second Life was our best bet, but they simply ignored all the Lessons from Habitat. Not dead, but not much different than vzones.

I guess it'll take a several more years for someone to put money and years of hard work to try their chances on something like this again.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#108

Post by wmf » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 3:44 AM UTC

engrocer wrote: post #106

So they burnt through $10.7M within 1.5 years? $600k/month? I wonder what they have left. I'm curious about the ramifications after this sort of thing transpires. http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/12/online-game-startup-tiny-s...

I would guess they're not completely out of money. Probably just out of ideas for how to turn the metrics around.

Re: Glitch Is Closing

#109

Post by Khurrum » Sun, Nov 18, 2012, 10:12 AM UTC

What these people need is the kind of person who specializes in disaster management. It really doesn't feel like what they have there should be unrecoverable.