Glitch | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Tiny Speck |
Designer(s) | |
Engine | Adobe Flash |
Platform(s) | Browser |
Release | September 27, 2011 |
Genre(s) | MMO |
Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Glitch was a browser-based massively multiplayer online game created by Tiny Speck (which would later publish Slack and be renamed Slack Technologies). The game was developed under the leadership of Stewart Butterfield. [1] Glitch was officially launched on September 27, 2011, [2] but reverted to beta status on November 30, 2011, citing accessibility and depth issues. [3] Glitch was officially shut down on December 9, 2012. [4]
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. [5]
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.
The game also had "groups". Groups were tabs in-game (along with individual user IM tabs[ clarification needed ]) 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, whereas 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.
Eventually, Tiny Speck introduced "Guides", which were players specially appointed by the staff to help others learn the game in a special, introductory area.
If a player was being disruptive, disrespectful, rude, flooding[ clarification needed ], or cursing constantly, the player character could be taken to a black room with a single, low light lamp. The user would be accompanied by one or many staff members trying to calm them down and if that did not work, the avatar could be locked down to a chair and the player booted off for an amount of time, called a "Time-Out".
Glitch's lead designer and Tiny Speck co-founder Stewart Butterfield began conceiving the game that would later become Glitch as early as 2002. But because of difficult financial circumstances at the time, he and his colleagues at Ludicorp instead focused on a side-project which later became Flickr. In 2009, Butterfield founded Tiny Speck with the aim of creating a social game. [5]
Glitch has been confirmed to be created on February 21, 2009 (first day of official gameplay).[ citation needed ] However, the earliest date on the Glitch calendar is either April 1, 2009 or May 22, 2009, which therefore presumes that the game was created before the calendar was implemented. The game was also played on the company's website (tinyspeck.com) before being transferred to glitch.com. Glitch was announced in July 2009. All traces of gameplay history have gone as far back as July 2, 2009. In February 2011, the game went from closed alpha to beta. [1]
Glitch was officially launched on September 27, 2011. [6] But two months later, on November 30, 2011, Glitch "unlaunched", reverting to beta status. [7] The developers cited issues of accessibility for new players, and depth of gameplay for experienced players. [3]
Glitch had test sessions that ran for usually about a week to a month, in which bugs were recorded, and then for a week or two, revisions were made improving the game, based on player bug reports, staff found bugs/errors, and/or source code updates. At the end of each one, Glitch would throw a massive party, called an End of the World Party, a.k.a. EOTW, EOW, in which a large majority of the players would gather in a suggested area and party, several items were dropped and people even decorated with the items. At the last 60 seconds, the staff members, on an account called "GOD", would speak so everyone in the whole world (also known as "Ur"), even those not at the party, would see him speak, his text would also be shown in the game windows itself, and a song would play called Good Night Groddle, made by Lelu, and improved by Daniel Simmons, Glitch's musical editor, [8] replacing trumpets that sounded the original ending. The last message of the game was GOD saying "*poof*".
Glitch was permanently closed in December 2012, [9] due to limited audience appeal. [10] The company received praise for providing players with continued access to certain game resources and for caring for its laid-off staffers. [9] One year after the game's closure, some of its source code and Flash sources were released to the public under the Creative Commons Zero license.
An attempt was made to revive Glitch as a fan-made fork named "Children of Ur" which aimed to keep the charm of the original game while adding a few twists. [11] The project is hosted under MIT license on GitHub where Glitch's original ActionScript was ported to Dart. [12] As of 2020 the game remains pre-alpha, but most of the textures and basic fundamentals were implemented.
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". [13] A 2014 video released by the developers of Eleven demonstrates many of the gameplay features functioning as they originally did in Glitch. [14] The "Eleven Giants" source code repository is hosted on GitHub under the MIT license. [15]
In January 2019, another Glitch remake was launched under the name of "Odd Giants". It is closed source, developed by a small team and by 2022 it has more than 1200 registered users, having regular players online. The team has attracted multiple supporters via Patreon, launched a Discord server, and constantly releases new versions of the game, coming closer to the original, plus adding features on their own. [16]
In 2021, Slack added a group voice chat feature named Huddles. [17] When all but one participants leave a Huddle, Slack plays a jazz track that was originally used in Glitch for the last participant as hold music. [18]
Glitch was well received by The A.V. Club, who gave the game a B+ and commended its open-ended approach and variety of tasks. [19] Ars Technica found the game fun, filled with funny little touches. [5]
Joystiq's Beau Hindman named Glitch "Most Charming" in his 2011 Frindie Awards (selected from free-to-play, indie, browser-based games). [20]
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally and on the same computing system, locally and on different computing systems via a local area network, or via a wide area network, most commonly the Internet. Multiplayer games usually require players to share a single game system or use networking technology to play together over a greater distance; players may compete against one or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner to achieve a common goal, or supervise other players' activity. Due to multiplayer games allowing players to interact with other individuals, they provide an element of social communication absent from single-player games.
Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based multiplayer role-playing game designed and operated by Asymmetric Publications, including creator Zack "Jick" Johnson with a small team. The game was released in 2003, with ongoing small updates continually released.
Free-to-play video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content without paying or do not require paying to continue playing. Free-to-play is distinct from traditional commercial software, which requires a payment before using the game or service. It is also separate from freeware games, which are entirely costless. Free-to-play's model is sometimes derisively referred to as free-to-start due to not being entirely free. Free to play games have also been widely criticized as “pay-to-win”— that is, that players can generally pay to obtain competitive or power advantages over other players.
jMonkeyEngine is a game engine made for developing 3D games written in Java. It uses shader technology extensively and can be used to write games for Windows, Linux, macOS, Raspberry Pi, and Android. It uses Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) as its default renderer and supports OpenGL 2 through OpenGL 4.
Wurm Online is a 3D massively multiplayer online video game developed by Code Club AB in Motala, Sweden. Development started in 2003 by friends Rolf Jansson and Markus Persson, and it was released for personal computers using Java in 2006. Both players versus player and realm versus realm combat are possible in the game.
Xfire was a proprietary freeware instant messaging service for gamers that also served as a game server browser with various other features. It was available for Microsoft Windows.
Daniel Stewart Butterfield is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr and the team-messaging application Slack.
Lord of Ultima was a free-to-play, browser-based, massively multiplayer real-time strategy (MMORTS) video game by Electronic Arts. The game started a beta test on April 20, 2010 and was developed by EA Phenomic. While it is, technically, part of the Ultima series of games, there was very little actual connection to the other games in the series.
Battlestar Galactica Online was a browser-based massively multiplayer online game (MMO) loosely based on the 2004 television series Battlestar Galactica. Released in open beta on February 8, 2011, it was developed by Bigpoint Games and Artplant using the Unity game engine for the game client in the browser. The game server was written in Erlang. In less than three months of release, the game surpassed two million registered users.
Slack Technologies, LLC is a Canadian international software company founded in 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, known for its proprietary communication platform Slack.
Robin Hunicke is an American video game designer and producer. She is a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Funomena.
Illyriad is a free to play massively multiplayer online persistent browser-based strategy game developed by the UK software company Illyriad Games Ltd, the company's first full online strategy game, first released in beta in 2010, and launched in 2011.
Family Guy Online was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based on the animated television series Family Guy, developed in a partnership between Canadian studio Roadhouse Interactive and 20th Century Fox. Family Guy Online was free-to-play using the Unity game engine. The game originally launched into public beta on April 17, 2012. On December 21, 2012 the developers announced that the game would not be developed beyond beta status and would be permanently shut down on January 18, 2013. The shutdown took place as announced, and the game is now closed. Until January 18, 2014, the game never left beta and the Family Guy Online website redirected to the Fox website for the show.
Trials Evolution is a racing video game for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows in which each player controls a motorcycle trials rider who traverses an obstacle course. The game was developed by Ubisoft RedLynx and published by Microsoft Studios. It is a follow up to Trials HD of 2009 and successor to several preceding Trials games by the same developers.
Klint Honeychurch is an American graphic designer, video game designer, programmer, and writer. He designed Double Fine's free Adobe Flash games: the graphic adventure Host Master and the Conquest of Humor, sports game parody My Game About Me: Olympic Challenge, puzzle-platform game Tasha's Game, and fighting game Epic Saga: Extreme Fighter.
Wizardry Online was a free-to-play MMORPG developed by Gamepot, Inc, based on the classic Wizardry computer games originally created by Sir-Tech. It was released in January 2013 before being discontinued in July 2014.
Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms was a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) under development by Bigpoint and Artplant. The game was based on the television series Game of Thrones.
The Wii U system software is the official firmware version and operating system for Nintendo's Wii U home video game console. Nintendo maintains the Wii U's systemwide features and applications by offering system software updates via the Internet. Updates are optional to each console owner, but may be required in order to retain interoperability with Nintendo's online services. Each update is cumulative, including all changes from previous updates.
Slack is a messaging program designed specifically for the office, but has also been adopted for personal use. Developed by the Canadian software company Slack Technologies, and now owned by Salesforce, Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms (channels) organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging. In addition to these online communication features, Slack integrates with other software.
Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a social experiment and channel on the video game live streaming website Twitch, consisting of a crowdsourced attempt to play Game Freak's and Nintendo's Pokémon video games by parsing commands sent by users through the channel's chat room. It holds the Guinness World Record for having "the most participants on a single-player online videogame" with 1,165,140 participants.