Glitch (video game)
| Glitch | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Developer(s) | Tiny Speck |
| Designer(s) |
Stewart Butterfield Keita Takahashi |
| Engine | Flash-based |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux |
| Release date(s) | September 27, 2011 |
| Genre(s) | MMO |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Glitch was a browser-based massively multiplayer online game created by Tiny Speck. The game was developed under the leadership of Stewart Butterfield.
Glitch was officially launched on September 27, 2011, but reverted to beta status on November 30, 2011, citing accessibility and depth issues. Glitch was officially shut down on December 9, 2012. In 2013, Children of Ur was created as a fan project and is currently up and running for public use. The whole game is being rewritten in HTML5 as an alternative to Dart, Glitch's original language. On December 9, 2014, another fan project to relaunch Glitch under the name Eleven began alpha testing. An alpha tester described Eleven as "identical to Glitch". The two fan relaunches was made possible when all of Glitch's artwork and most of the source code was released under the public domain-like Creative Commons license CC0 on November 18, 2013.
Glitch was a casual, 2D browser-based game featuring a strong multiplayer component. It deliberately steered away from combat mechanics, instead focusing on collaborative crafting and gathering activities. Players were prompted to complete quests and perform various activities that would change the persistent world. Players were invited to expand upon the world, shaping its growth through various activities such as growing plants and trees and cooking food items. The game was free to play, but players could spend money to acquire a number of things such as customization options for their avatar.
Upon logging in for the first time, a user was brought to a one-time street (area), in which a staff member, or specially appointed user (called a "greeter"), would briefly explain the game and show them some features. Once left, the greeting street could never be re-entered. After the "unlaunch" they had a new, more complex and full introduction, in which it was done by NPCs, rather than players.
The game also had "groups". Groups were tabs in-game (along with individual user IM tabs) that functioned quite like modern chat rooms. The players could create their own groups, join another person's group, or go on either one of the two default groups, one of which was "Live Help", in which users could help one another with general gameplay, the chiefer authority (excluding staff members) here was a "Helper," separate from a staff member, as helpers were mature and professional players appointed by staff members, where as staff members had contracts and worked for Tiny Speck, the other default chat was "Global Chat," this was for general discussion of any appropriate/popular topic.
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