Egad, only ten more days?!?! When the forums close, so will the surveys. So if you want to talk about your Glitch experience, now's the time!
If you'd like to see more than 200 player Glitchstories, keep an eye on http://glitchstories.rdonahue.net/, which is where they'll be posted. Thank you to everyone who's contributed, and thanks especially to those who gave permission to share their responses in full!
Player Glitchstories
Staff Glitchstories
Hello, Glitchen! In real life, I'm an archivist and a videogame preservation researcher. I have honest-to-goodness credentials, which you can feel free to read at your leisure (http://rdonahue.net/RDonahue_CV112012.pdf). As soon as I heard Glitch was closing, I started thinking about how I could use my skills to help preserve its history. With a console game, you can pretty much just keep a playable copy of the game, and you're ok.* Not perfect, but ok. Saving an MMO, on the other hand, is more akin to saving the history of a small town--without the community, you have nothing. Part of preserving the history of a community is conducting oral histories with its members--I want to collect YOUR individual Glitchstories to help preserve the history of the game.
But there are a lot of us. Like, a LOT. So I'm taking a short cut and "conducting the interviews" through SurveyMonkey. These surveys are full of open-ended questions designed to gather your stories in as much detail as possible. I DO want to conduct a few real, synchronous oral history interviews, and there's a spot at the end of the survey where you can indicate your willingness to participate.
With the exception of the age verification question at the start, every question is optional. If you can't think of an answer to one right now, that's ok--you can go back to it at the end. If you have cookies enabled, you can go back to the survey at any time, so you can stretch it out over a few days. Please ramble as much as you'd like, and don't feel like you have to write beautiful prose with complete sentences and stunning metaphors. Bullet points and stream-of-consciousness-type writing are very welcome.
There's one survey for Tiny Speck staff, and one for players. Staff are welcome to take both if they're feeling really bored/generous. There's a question in the player survey asking if you developed API tools--if you did, you'll get a few targeted questions about it, so keep an eye out.
Staff Survey: http://surveymonkey.com/s/glitch-devs
Player Survey: http://surveymonkey.com/s/glitch-players
I'll leave both surveys open for at least a month. After it's closed, I'll do two things with the responses. First, and most interesting to yous, I'll post full "transcripts" publicly on the web (in cases where I have permission, which you must explicitly give). Second, I'll be using them to inform my dissertation on working with and preserving videogames and the records of their development. That'll be public on the web, too, but probably not as interesting to read.
Thank you so, so, soooooo much for donating your time to reading this post and (hopefully) preserving the history of Ur and all the Glitchen who lived there.
*This is a vast over-simplification. But suffice it to say it's much less complicated than an MMO!
ETA: FAQs
Can I share this link beyond the forums?
Yes! Please! The more respondents the better, and I know not everyone reads the forums.
Can I share my responses elsewhere (personal blog, etc)?
Absolutely! I am in no way claiming "ownership" of anyone's responses. I will protect your privacy as far as you've asked me to at the beginning of the survey, but you are free to share your thoughts however you'd like.
I'm under 18, can I still take this survey?
Unfortunately, I can only solicit responses from those 18 and over. Doing this makes me exempt from submitting to my institutional review board; allowing minors would have meant waiting til February or later for approval. I decided getting it out sooner was more important than opening it up to a broader audience. Sorry! :(
I want to give you permission to quote, but prefer to be called "X." Is that okay?
Sure thing, just make a note of it in the space where you give permission to quote by name. For folks who give me permission to quote, but don't provide a real name, I will be defaulting to your Glitch name.