According to Glitch's site, "this is not something you've seen before." That's for sure! We tried out this unique MMO and got some details straight from Tiny Speck's president and co-founder.

Do you ever get the urge to nibble piggies? How about to milk a butterfly after a long massage? Perhaps get insulted by a talking magical rock? If therapy seems like too difficult a choice, I highly recommend signing up for Tiny Speck's new browser-based MMO, Glitch. Spear-headed by four members who formerly worked on or started Flickr, Glitch offers a unique game experience that seems to combine gameplay aspects of Civilization and EVE Online, with a hefty dose of humor similar to that of Kingdom of Loathing. I recently dove into the beta and had a chance to talk to Stewart Butterfield, president and co-founder of Tiny Speck, about the game overall.

If you haven't heard of Glitch before, I highly recommend you watch the following trailer as it gives a basic introduction to the game (fair warning: do not use drugs before watching or you may freak out for the next few hours).

The background of the in-game story is pretty easy: there are 11 awkward looking giants who make it their job to imagine things. Their thoughts become the world of Glitch, where players act as characters called “glitches,” which run around exploring, chatting, worshipping the giants, or pretty much doing whatever they want. Stewart said the game is designed to eventually become a sandbox game, primarily in control of the users. “Think of a game like SimCity, where you grow the world. Now, imagine you're the little tiny ants in the city, growing it from a micro-level,” he said. That's how Glitch is to be presented.

The game itself is a “spiritual successor” of a shelved Ludicorp game, Game Neverending. Back in 2002, says Stewart, Ludicorp started up to create Game Neverending as a lo-fi graphics-based game. But 2002 was a terrible year to start – the dotcom bubble had burst, 9/11 had happened the prior year, and investors were too nervous to gamble on a new company. A side project of Ludicorp, called Flickr, started to get more and more attention, and eventually became the entire point of the company. Game Neverending was shelved, but not forgotten. In 2009, Stewart and three other Flickr members created Tiny Speck to finally bring an accessible game to the market and, after batting around names and concepts for several months, Glitch was christened.

Some examples of the customizable glitches (players) in the game.

Tiny Speck wasn't looking for another traditional MMO. Unlike many games, there's little to kill (except time), and no archetypical roles like healer, tank and DPS. Instead, the game format offers a backdrop for social interaction and friendly competition or cooperation. Stewart likened it to golf. “It's like playing golf with friends. It's about the social context, swapping stories and trash talk while you play,” he said. Some people will play golf for the competition, but many will play just for a day out with their friends. Glitch offers a lot to do, but also plenty of chat and fun options for hanging out with your pals online.

And there was certainly plenty to do. Glitch started out with a good tutorial, teaching the basics of many things and getting a new player in rhythm with the humor found in the game. A new player will navigate the 2D world, receive a watering can to give a drink to a fruit tree (which thanks you appreciatively), and then learns to pet piggies who are more than happy to offer a nibble (yielding some meat from the oddly smiling animal). These materials can then be used for many things – the cherries from the fruit tree can be turned into other fruit through a fruit changer (at varying ratios and energy costs), and the meat can be used to cook up some tasty sammiches. The items can also be donated to shrines to the giants for favor and experience.

If you don't worship Cosma, those could be your eyes on her tongue. Haha, just kidding. Maybe.

The favor from giants can be used to speed up skills, which are learned in real time through the use of a magical talking rock (which acts as your narrator and quest-giver). Skills start off taking around 10 minutes or so, with subsequent tiers taking longer and longer. Players continue to learn skills while offline, making it beneficial to pick the longest skill right before bedtime (my Animal Kinship VI skill, for example, took over a day to complete). Later on, Stewart said the team plans to add a modifier after a certain number of skills, making them longer to learn. At the same time, there will be an option to forget less useful skills in order to forgo this penalty. And new skills will continue to be added to the game – some of the most recent introduced blockmaking, engineering, and fuelmaking.  

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