Glitch Blog

The Big Unlaunching

Stewart Butterfield — Thu, 1 Dec 2011 03:46:04 +0000

Two months ago we launched Glitch to the world. Now we’re unlaunching it. Eh??

The response so far has been truly fantastic. Piles of praise, love and devotion have poured in and we have to be doing something right for people to say things like “[it’s] Zork fun, Pac-Man fun, Super Mario Brothers fun. It is video game fun like you never thought you’d have again”* or “probably the best thing you can do with your web browser”.*

Indeed, in many respects the game and the launch worked out just as well as we could have hoped: the back end scaled effortlessly, we were able to keep adding new features and content — even the number of subscriptions matched our very optimistic projections.

But at the same time, there are two obvious and huge improvements we need to make: the first is to make the early game reveal itself more easily to new players so they can get into the fun faster. The second and larger task is to give those players who have gotten over that initial hump and fallen in love with the game — spending dozens or even hundreds of hours playing — the creative tools that they need to change the world in more tangible ways: building whole new locations themselves, designing new buildings, setting up resource flows and forming flexible organizations to create bigger things together.

These challenges are surmountable — we’re hard at work surmounting them even now. But we always thought we could evolve our way there and the experience of launching taught us that we can’t. Some fairly radical changes to core game mechanics are going to be necessary to make Glitch what it needs to be.

And making radical changes to core game mechanics is something that’s a lot harder to do while the front doors are open and we have to focus on scaling to support growth, stability and providing the quality of service we aim to achieve for the live game. Going back to beta will let us make the changes that need to be made. And so we’re “unlaunching” — and going back to beta.

That doesn’t mean we’ll slow down at all: we’re going to be continuing to release new features and content as fast as ever. Indeed, earlier today we released the biggest update since launch, with seven new skills, many new quests and more. The game will still be open 24/7, though we might be slower in fixing non-critical bugs; for more details on what to expect during this beta or to give feedback, please see this post in the forums.

We’re fortunate to have the time and resources to get this right (Thanksgiving this year included a healthy dollop of gratitude for our supportive investors and energetic team). And we’re committed to giving people a square deal: we know going back to beta was not what you expected, so if you have bought anything from us and you don’t feel like you got your money’s worth or you don’t like the idea of everything changing, we will give you a 100%, no hassle, full & complete refund. (For more details about the refund program, visit the refund program page.)

We are more optimistic than ever that Glitch can deliver on its promise of a unique, imaginative world, full of delights and ripe for experimentation and expansion by players — and we know what we have to do to get there. We want to make something worthy of all that love: we want to make the game you deserve to play.

Thank you for all your support so far and we’ll do our best to continue to earn it.

Our One Month Anniversary

Stewart Butterfield — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:48:29 +0000

It was one month ago today that we launched. Phew! It’s been all crazy! Before The Big Day we imagined that we’d spend the first month just handling the growth, fixing what breaks and generally not getting much new stuff in while we made the oft-exhausting adjustment to 24/7 operation.

But it didn’t turn out that way: instead, we’re a bit proud that we’ve actually been able to keep up the old pace of development, releasing about a dozen new features, big and small, along with a hundred or two little tweaks, fixes and refinements (causing our list-crossing-off department to scramble for stronger pens).

(For the nerds among you: since launch, we’ve had 4,909 (!) revisions checked in to our source control system by 23 contributors — a net of 31,353 new lines of code (46,581 added and 15,228 removed). More to the point, we’ve deployed new code onto running production servers an eyebrow-crunching 1,015 times. And all the while, players zoom around constantly changing the state of the world, which persists as intended, even as underlying reality shifts.)

If you’d like to follow along, we now have the @glitchlog Twitter account set up for posting changes live as they happen (the dozen most recent entries show up in a sidebar in the forums, so you don’t have to be all Twitter-y to see them). And, starting with this entry, we’ll be posting weekly roundups of what’s new in Glitch, right here on the blog. Finally, over the next few weeks we’ll also be posting a bit about what’s in development and what’s planned for the future.

What’s New Since Launch

Since the whole list is way too long, what follows are some of the highlights. (If you want something more comprehensive, most changes that a player could notice are on the log.)

Party Spaces: we’ve long had a “Party Chat” feature for messaging ad-hoc groups of players, but we never gave it the love and nourishment it deserved. So we raised the maximum size from 7 players to 71 and introduced a whole new way of partying in the game: Party Packs (like this one) are now available from the Toy Vendors. Once “activated”, they create a new, whacky, short-lived private locations into which Party members can teleport and share some cheer.

Though they are expensive, the Party Spaces come with a lot of (respawning) resources. So all the hosting needs are taken care of and it’s easy to justify asking some friends to kick in to cover the costs (any Party member can contribute the currants to keep it going too). More details in this forum thread.

Status updates inside the game: Players can now write, read and respond to status updates from within the game itself in the new “Updates” channel. Since the same feed also flows to the Home page and iPhone app simultaneously, players can carry on conversations with their in-game friends seamlessly whether they’re frolicking around Ur, surreptitiously peeking in from work or in the dentist’s waiting room (true story).

Camera mode & Eyeballery: Press ‘C’ in the game and you’ll have activated the new Camera mode which lets you pan ‘n’ scan around your current level without moving an inch. The super-oglers can learn the new Eyeballery skill to expand their field of vision and scope out the entire level from corner to corner.

And once you’ve got that down, the Snapshotting skill lets you save screenshots straight to your hard drive without having to mess around with other software to do the screenshot or cropping of UI elements and overlays out of the frame. (Note: you’ll also need a Camera!)

Emblem spending & Icons of the Giants: If you are the kind to donate a lot to shrines, you’ll appreciate the fact that excess emblems can now be put to good use: individual emblems can be “spent” (once the first related skill has been unlocked) to speed up learning times by a value equivalent to 1,000 favor points. Or, you can save up eleven of one type of emblem to create a valuable Icon of the related Giant: eleven Emblems of Cosma, for example, can be turned into an Icon of Cosma.

Triple Jump: If you can jump … then-land-then-jump … then-land-then-jump juuuuuust right, you will now woo-hoo with additional height: if your timing is precise and you’re moving pretty fast, you’ll get so high up there you’ll wonder if you activated some spinach without noticing it. This introduces both new sources of challenge in races and new sources of delight in everyday travel around the world.

A better interface: The quantity picker now allows for free-form entry of the number you need to get the job done; both the friends online section of the home page and the pages for individual status updates are beautiful-er and more useful; a menu built into each chat pane allows for useful features like copying messages to your clipboard; you can see which items you already own when browsing through a vendor’s wares and there’s now a chat feature built right into the trade window to make negotiations easier.

And in order to not make this list go on forever, A Whole Bunch of Other Stuff: To give you some peace of mind when stopping to organize your bags, items you drop on the ground are now temporarily “locked” to you so they don’t get yoinked by passers-by. Gift subscriptions are now available. The Emotional Bear now has a new verb ‘Anthropomorphize’, which you can use once per game day to boost your mood.

Energy adjustments, nerfs, and balancing tweaks have been performed on dozens of items: some things now flow more freely (like musicblocks and Gameshow Tickets) while others harder to come by (the Rube has started limiting number of trade offers he’ll make before disappearing in a huff). Several exploits were closed off (sorry cheese-agers and noodle makers!)

We’ve added two new regions to the game (Callopee and Pollokoo) and over 100 new items to the Wardrobe plus five new hairstyles in the Vanity. Several quests have been simplified or completely revamped, had their instructions tuned up or otherwise improved. There are now Community Guidelines! Prices have changed on many items at the vendors and many more are now completely unavailable from vendors: as the first part of the switch to a freer economy, they must be obtained from other players. And, of course … much more!

What’s Coming Next

Now that we’re back on our feet, the focus has switched back to the bigger picture changes. We’ll outline some of them here and give you more details over the coming weeks and months.

We’re now hard at work on locations which groups can build and develop on their own — a much more ambitious and highly customizable version of what we previewed just before the end of beta. Many new skills will be added in order to support the magical aspects of patch creation, garden building or rock summoning (like potion making, enchanting and crystal casting). We don’t do dates (so don’t ask!), but it’s likely that this will be the first of the big new features to make it into the game.

The tutorial is being completely overhauled and the early levels re-organized so that new players can better get the basic concepts of the game during the first 30 minutes of play (right now it is both overwhelming in some respects and completely lacking in others). This will lead to some big changes in how new players enter the world (and the opportunities you old hands have to, uh, “indoctrinate” them).

A bit further down the road we’ll be making it possible to completely customize your house (from furnishings and wallpaper to shelving and lights). Depending on the house’s basic plan, you may also be able to upgrade and expand, adding rooms or new floors. And all the land-development features coming up for the group locations will also apply to your back yard.

As the developer program matures and more tools are available, you can expect to see Glitch make its way to your phones and tablets in the forms of games and other apps which let you advance your character, challenge friends and interact with the Giant’s imagination wherever you are.

Finally, we’ll be progressively removing the scaffolding from the economy— trade offers will be introduced with the return of market locations, non-player vendors will be completely overhauled and their economic importance de-emphasized while much larger goals will be made available to individual players and groups.

All of this will take time, of course. And on along the way we’ll continue with the little tweaks and refinements, improving existing stuff and adding new locations, items, skills and quests (including plenty of the whacky, weird and whimsical things you’ve come to expect — look for some of that tomorrow).

Thanks for playing with us in the first month. It’s only the very beginning of a long and wonderful journey. Despite the exhaustion and lack of sleep, we’re stupid with glee for the things to come. And it’d all be nothing without you. So, really: thank you.

[This blog post has a corresponding thread for feedback in the forums.]

Zombies and Shakespeare: Happy Zilloween!

Kristel Ottis — Sat, 1 Oct 2011 10:58:47 +0000

The end of Remember —the 8th month of the Glitchy calendar— is here, one of our most favorite in-game holidays right upon us, and we’ve added a few more items to the Zilloween collection to honor the occasion.

The brand new zombie masks (with emote animations) go spookishly well with the fancy Elizabethan outfits:

Of course, there’s plenty of other costumes to choose from, whether you want to dress up as a gorilla, unicorn or hot dog. We’ve been adding new clothes to the wardrobe every week, so be sure to check in often for the most recent additions.

Happy Zilloween, for Year 17!

Why it's taking you so long to get an invite

Stewart Butterfield — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:57:46 +0000

This is just a quick note to those of you who have been waiting to get into the game: we’re sorry! It’s not a technical issue (servers are running fine and it takes moments to add more capacity). Instead, we’ve been throttling a little bit to make sure the starter areas are not overcrowded so that (a) you have a good experience when you first get in, and (b) everyone else playing is not swamped by the new players.

Glitch is pretty unique in that it is all played in one big world (there are no separate servers or “shards”). That means that the world needs to expand as new players enter and that certain locations can be bottlenecked. We’ve been adding new starter areas and redistributing to make a better balance, and it’s working.

We’ve let in about 9,000 people so far today and are still 29 hours behind right now—if you’ve been waiting longer than that, check your spam folders!—but we expect to have that down to about 12 hours this evening.

Again, many apologies to those who’ve been made to wait. We are excited to have you join us and we know it can be frustrating checking your email. You’ll only need a little more patience though: we’re going at max speed!

Thanks, and see you around the world!

Let the Games Begin

Stewart Butterfield — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 23:46:23 +0000

About a decade ago, I read a book which opened with these lines:

“There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” — James P. Carse, Finite & Infinite Games

… and that has stuck with me ever since.

Glitch launches today. Launch is an important milestone, but in most ways, this is just the beginning. The end of Beta means we have something stable enough and fun enough that we’re happy to invite the world to play. But we want to create a game and world with the real possibility for infinite play, and that means Glitch will be continuing to grow, develop and evolve for many years to come.

We have a phenomenally talented and rapidly expanding team and we’ll be investing everything we’ve got to expand the world, add new features & content and, most of all, build more avenues for players’ creative expression and more opportunities for generative play. The community that has come together during the test periods is an amazing inspiration to us, and we know that the more power we give them to create, the closer Glitch can come to reaching its highest potential.

This is a big day for us: we’re proud, apprehensive and a little giddy with excitement. We hope you like what we’ve got so far and we believe you’ll love where we’re going.

Yay!