Some of you may remember the
Game Neverending (
previously). But have you heard about
Glitch?
The
Game Neverending came out in 2002 from a small Canadian company called Ludicorp. The game was classed as a 'massively multiplayer online game', but was so much more. It was played in real time, was non violent (unless you count the marshmallow daggers and funk guns), and involved
spectacular items, such as a Metafilter, which you could make with combinations of other items (Mefi = Mathowie + Web + Bottle of Porkmuncher Gin).
The folks behind the great Game Neverending eventually moved on to a different venture - creating
Flickr, and the work on the game was suspended indefinitely. The small horde of devoted GNE players were told it would never be put back into play.
Now some news has started traveling down the great Internet pipes. The great minds behind the Game Neverending -
Stewart Butterfield,
Cal Henderson, Eric Costello, Ben Cerveny and more, have come together and quietly created a new company they call
Tiny Speck. Out of this new company has come a new game. One they are calling
Glitch. From the site - "Why is it called Glitch? because in the far-distant and totally-perfect future, the world starts becoming less and less probable, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and there occurs what comes to be called the 'glitch' — a grave danger of disemprobablization."
Although the game is still in development, they are taking requests to test the alpha, when it's released. This is similar to what they did with the GNE. If you're curious about what the game will be, a CNET reporter has written up some
sneak previews, and posted several images. If you're a tweety type, you can follow the
Twitter feed here. Whether this will be the next GNE, an entirely new thing, or a momentary idea followed by the developers getting distracted and creating something even bigger, it's hard to say. Stewart has been interviewed as saying
he wants the game to be "as permeable as possible", and they plan on integration with everything from Iphones to Facebook, and even potentially, Xbox 360 and the Wii.
posted by demiurge at 9:46 AM on February 17, 2010