Flickr founder's MMO takes place inside giants' imaginations

Early this year, Flickr cofounder Stewart Butterfield unveiled a new company called Tiny Speck, and teased its first project, a side-scrolling MMO called Glitch. Originally announced for late 2010, it's now due in early 2011. The Glitch site has relaunched with new information and a new trailer, which you can see after the break. The game is being made with the backing of investors including executives at LinkedIn, Groupon, and Google

"For a really long time," the song in the trailer explains, "eleven giants walked around. They thought of funny things, until their thinking came alive. And that's what this game is: you're inside their thoughts. Go and make them bigger, and we'll play for a long while." Said "giants" are a group of grotesque, many-eyed creatures, and "making their thoughts bigger" seems to entail increasing skills in several categories by interacting with animals and objects found throughout the world.

As they explore the world, players will have to fight off attacks from "the Rook," a group of evil birds who "can appear and attack plants, animals or players in the world," Butterfield told VentureBeat. "It can warp them, and players have to do some work to heal the injured animals and plants around the world."