Glitch is Dead

In news that is probably only interesting to me, the psuedo-MMO Glitch was declared officially dead. It's not in the least bit surprising to me- they spent a lot of time and effort on the art, the feel, the charm, and very little on making it an actual game.

I played Glitch, see, when it came out. I let myself be influenced by the enormous idiot that is Beau Hindman of Massively.com, and figured "Well, it's free. What's the worst that could happen?" And so I made my little green skinned ugly man, dutifully chose the color of my hair, and then off I went. And that was as close to a game as it got.

As you see from the picture above me, the world is very pretty and, during the launch, there were plenty of people out and about, doing things and running around and chatting about stuff. But the problem is that for all the charm and space, there was nothing to do.

I could choose to rub a pig, or plant some things, or pluck some sort of fruit  from a tree by clicking on it, and then watching a little progress bar advance. When it finished, I'd get an apple or a bit of bacon or an egg or something, and lose a bit of my stamina. And that was the game.

No, seriously. That's the entirety of the game. It was a very pretty (although samey) chatroom with basic facebook-styled gamification of completely mundane tasks. The developer's take, of course, is a bit more finger-pointy, sounding off on "pushing the limits of Flash" and having those limits "push back", or on the "decline of Flash" as opposed to having created a game with a complete lack of both depth and breadth, or of trying to create a browser based game that's supposed to be about "creativity" and "working together" while simultaneously allowing players to neither work together meaningfully or create anything in the game... No, it's that outside forces conspired against them. Of course.

I'm not surprised to see Glitch fall. I'd have been more surprised if it was successful. In the words of Forrest Gump- That's really all I have to say about that.