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Glitch entering beta stage
According to a new post on its official website, Glitch is finally entering an official beta phase. What's Glitch? It's a browser-based side-scrolling MMO from Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, better known as the co-founders of Flickr. Glitch originally began its alpha testing phase a year ago, and Butterfield writes that while the developers didn't anticipate such a lengthy delay prior to the beginning of beta, the time has been well spent. "Hundreds of features have been added -- and nearly as many trimmed or re-thought -- thousands of pictures drawn and animations made, hundreds of thousands of lines of code written, all of it powered by support, feedback, patience, (and impatience!) from our testing community," Butterfield wrote. He also mentions a substantial infusion of capital as well as the fact that Tiny Speck is hiring, so regardless of the delay, it seems as if the title -- and the company -- is building up a head of steam. Check out the full details at the official website (where you can also sign up to be a tester).
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."
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.
