Flickr co-founders giving MMO design a second try

Before Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson launched the successful photo site Flickr, they tried their hands at MMO design. Back in Flickr's early days, they ran Game Neverending, an MMO that closed about nine months after the launch of Flickr.

They're back, this time with an eye toward developing a browser-based, sidescrolling MMO with the hopefully ironic name of Glitch. The game is described as an exploration in "the minds of eleven great giants walking sacred paths on a barren asteroid who sing and think and hum the world into existence."

While Glitch has a simple, youthful feel at first glance (check out the teaser trailer), the developers are aiming for players in their 20s and 30s. Don't expect all of the simple graphics to remain, either. The Glitch site mentions the avatars in the game, saying "Those are placeholders, an early prototype we're using for testing."

Glitch is expected to launch in late 2010. You can sign up for private alpha testing now, and expect a public beta this summer.