Topic
What disappoints me about this game sunset...
For the most part, I think TS's handling of the game's end has been great. They have gone above and beyond what most other companies would do. However, something still bothers me about how the game's end has been handled. Wednesday, I went to the forums like usual and I find that this game is cancelled and will be shutting down in less than a month. And it's a huge shock because there had been absolutely nothing before then to indicate any part of this game was in trouble. Nope, we were getting tons of new features and even a new major artist, and it looks like there were going to be tons of feats in the future for more unlocks, etc.
I find it hard to believe that TS only came into realization of this during this month. Surely there had to be some discussion behind the scenes, or at least some concern about low player rates. Yet we were kept in the dark about the entire time that there was anything wrong going on. Besides one spammy feat, there wasn't even any attempt to get players to recruit.
I'm no expert on business, but I doubt that word of mouth can cover for everything. However, I can tell you that I did not see an advertisement of this game anywhere. As for the lack of players, it's definitely not because this game can only appeal to a niche market. However, I only found this game because I was reading a MMO blog that usually caters top players of traditional MMORPGs and EVE Online, most of which aren't interested in Glitch, or at least they wouldn't be by reading a few blog posts. In hindsight (20/20, I know), I'm wondering why there weren't hordes of tumblr freaks here. This game caters to every single aspect of their sensibilities. And there are tons of teens and adults who have longed for a more mature version of Neopets. (Not in the pet raising aspect, but the economy and social ones)
And if the game was losing money, it must've been doing so on a trajectory. But in all, I just don't see that the dev team did anything to try and change its business model.
I'm just shocked by the abrupt ending of this game. I know that City of Heroes has different circumstances behind its closing, but it's had a couple of months for players to get ready for that. Maybe it's better for a game to go out with a bang than a whimper?
I guess this is all beyond my understanding, but I'm really baffled about how this has played out.
And preparing to be called "troll" in 3...2...1...
Replies
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Actually not at all.
I'm beyond the disappointment stage, I'm *angry*. I'm angry that TS didn't warn us that something was going wrong, to allow us to help out in some way, to allow us to try and come up with ideas to save the game.
I'm angry this absolutely beautiful, whimsical, wonderful game never opened to the public with some advertising because I think it would have succeeded - it at least deserved the chance.
I'm angry that a bunch of wonderful staffers (Stoot included), will be without jobs; and I'm angry that a group of people I've come to adore (including elf) will be spread to the winds on the internet.
I *wish* there had been some warning a bit ago. I can't even bring myself to log in because I don't *WANT* to see this game end.
There were so many positives about the game, it outweighed the negatives for me and a lot of others. And I think the community could have helped, if we had been asked. -
I had heard that they did run advertisements, don't have any proof to give though.
Probably they all had their hopes up that they could make it work and didn't want to upset us or cause us to leave by telling us prematurely that they had doubts about it? - I wish we had more time to prepare at least :( this sucks so hard.
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Obviously being doubtful is harmful in itself. But there was never any dedicated attempt to say, "Hey, we'd really like more players! Please spread the word." Maybe the aforementioned feat was an attempt to do so, but it just seemed spammy to me. Or there could've been the traditional form of getting the word out. You know, advertising.
And if your game is in close risk of going down under, I'm not sure why you hire a new artist, especially a very renowned one. I'm pretty sure this could've made a great marketing point for Glitch. - I just wrote this in another thread. I'm betting Stoot's VC made this decision, and fairly abruptly. Nothing else makes sense.
- I'm going to guess that they were shut down because they ran out of funding. Glitch was funded on VC money - 1.5 + 5 million dollars, according to Wikipedia. The game was built over 3 years, and MMOs aren't exactly cheap to build and run. I'm guessing they were in talks with whoever is funding them, and the talks fell through. You have to keep working on the game even till the last minute, of course - the game needs a constant stream of new content, and bugs to fix, new staff members to support new players, but at this point the game isn't viable (ie. profit making) and without funding they have to shut down as quickly as possible to minimize loss.
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@Synnia: You know only the game is shutting down, not the company? So not everyone is out of a job.
@Boom and Bust: Total funding was 17 million actually. -
Wikipedia missed the $10.7M Series B funding in April 2011. Total funding has been $17.2M and Stoot was acting as if he still had money in the bank. I can't imagine he wouldn't have been doing all the things players are mentioning (advertising, marketing, cost-saving, appeals to subscribe, limiting free content, etc.) if TS were running out of cash.
I've been in a situation where a VC company with >50% ownership in the company where I worked decided to attempt to sell the research project I was working on becasue we were having trouble hitting milestones. (As if you can do research on demand.) It wouldn't sell so they shut the project down and disbanded the research I'd poured heart and soul into for three years. It wasn't any fun. I mean REALLY not fun. It happened fast and while we were "on the sales block" we had to keep working as if everything were hunky-dory. Then the pink slips and job reassignments started. - They did advertise Glitch. I found Glitch being advertised on Facebook..that's how I found it and started getting hooked.
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I never thought to think about the investors behind this. Glitch has been out of closed beta, for what, a month, and someone decided already to pull the plug? What?
I guess investors pulling the plug would explain why the game is shutting down so soon. - This game had so much potential. I can only hope that with new technologies that hopefully something like this can come along in the future.
- Someome quick! Re-make Glitch
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Boom and Bust nailed it. I've worked for a couple businesses that closed their doors (a pizza company and a newspaper). The newspaper was looking for buyers well before they closed their doors, but both businesses kept going balls out to the last minute. If you're trying to sell the business to anyone, another investor or customers, you gotta show that it's worth it.
The other bit of the story is the quality of the product. Glitch has been incredible, but one of the reasons for that is that the staff have been uncompromising about what they're shooting for. They haven't always hit their mark, but they've tried to step it up and shoot even further every time. And what they were trying to create was tough: A 2D, flash based MMORPG, with no fighting, no ad revenue, and a very light weight buy in for players. You could play for free and have almost no disadvantage in terms of game play. All of these things together make for a very high bar. Some of them meant enormous inefficiencies in terms of cash flow. Some of them meant that they had to rely on the skill of programmers that they hadn't even hired (Adobe's Flash developers) to allow them to create the vision that they had.
It's not always about the money (though sometimes it is). But if you ever come to the point where it looks like you cannot achieve the mission that you set out to do even if you have the money, when the cash flow looks like it isn't about to get better, sometimes you have to call it quits. Not because you can't go any further now, but because it'll be even more painful down the road. You take what you've made, what you've created, and you put it to bed, and treat it as well as you possibly can. And then you move on.
We're getting our money back for a game we played the HELL out of. I have no more words for that but enormous gratitude. -
Interesting Tech Crunch article.
techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/a... - And Stoot's follow up: http://prntscr.com/ju4nn
- where did they say it had anything to do with funding? I thought they just said that it didn't have long term growth potential.
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I totally agree, if there would have been some kind of hint, I would have gladly renewed all my subscription even tho me and my friend were too busy to play, I would have done it to support it.
I have gone through the experience of a similar game called TirNua, which has had the same trouble. And I can tell that a decision like this is not made overnight, there is a lot of thinking and planing behind - trying to find solutions and to reduce " burn ".
I am sure many players would have bought a subscription if we would have known this game is in financial trouble, I am not saying this would have solved this issue, but maybe it would have bought some time for Tiny Speck, to try getting a bigger audience. - I feel the same way. I guess they were acting the way most companies would, but Tiny Speck felt different from most companies-- just doing the unlaunching at all made me think that they were willing to break a lot of rules, particularly ones about communication with customers/users, and I guess the fact that we didn't have any warning about this felt like a betrayal of sorts. I know you have to play the game, but they were already breaking so many of the rules that I figured that we'd know if the game was in danger, you know?
- They may have been willing to break a lot of the rules, but remember, their highest paying customers were their initial investors: $17million in venture capital. That dwarfs anything the player base could scrape together. Tiny Speck has a very real responsibility to them, enough to shape their highest decisions.
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Decision was made in consultation with the most senior members of the team and the board of directors (who represent our largest investors) but was mine, 100% — I even had to argue against a co-founder and one of the directors, at least a little. Buck stops right here. No one forced us to do anything.
And … we are not nearly as stupid as you think: some things just look different when you have all the available information. -
Apparently like many others, I believe that something quite unexpected and drastic must have happened, since everything around the game seemed to point just in the opposite direction (closed beta opening, unlocking of new content, new hires, etc). It just doesn't add up.
While most of the reasons described in the closing FAQ sound plausible, I also *want* to believe that it was some "external" factor that eventually triggered the shutdown. Glitch, as well as Tiny Speck, did so many things *right* from my personal point of view, that seeing them fail would imply things I deem "right" or "good" just don't work out in reality. Which obviously would be a pretty grim lesson to learn from all this :( -
However, I can tell you that I did not see an advertisement of this game anywhere
Quite a lot of greets came in saying they had seen adverts. -
we are not nearly as stupid as you think
stupid? hell, no. silly? sure. but the clever kind of silly.
leave stupid to the experts (of which I am one...ok, two).
I would just hope that all the information and data regarding Ur is carefully backed up so that later, maybe, it can come back when the time is right. When its even cheaper to run a rack of servers and they are night and day faster machines with much higher capacities - we get advancements in machines all the time, so down the road a server will blow the doors off one today.
Look at how fast an Apple II was (clockspeed for CPU = 1mhz) compared to a modern day desktop (anywhere from 2GHZ on up, and 2-32GB of RAM).
Glitch takes a lot of things to run, not just machines, too.
It just sucks to see it fold up like this. But its not anyone's fault. -
oh, stoot :( *sighs*
Time to pack those towels then -
Time to throw them in the ring, surely?
TOWEL METAPHORS ROOL -
"some things just look different when you have all the available information."
That's exaclly what I'm complaining, why the hell haven't you folks informed us with what you need to keep the game running?
Just read the posts, so many people in distress that relies on this simple game to have some quality living, and so eager to help you, somehow this game turnout to be a public service, and if you want to have the right to just give up you shouldn't have done such a good job. Refunding don't solve everything.
We dont mind to go thru a fucking snoting dino's ass, do you really think we will mind to click a banner or a ad a day, just to keep the game running? Why didn't you used the regular tools, limiting partial world access to non-members, except zilloween for ex., make a page with the necessary money you need, make a ad clicking feat, so many solutions you know better then myself, but that you just refused to use.
You have gather a awesome player community, maybe not in number (not our fault too), but that just love you guys, I never saw so many "satisfied" customers together, willing to help you.
You played God for so many time, just count with us "humble paesents" to give you a hand now, but again it was not fair for us the way you have done this, that "available information" should have come early, when it would make sense.
Sorry my english, I'm from Portugal. -
do you really think we will mind to click a banner or a ad a day, just to keep the game running?
do you really think it's that simple? -
no shhexy, it isn't neither simple or enough, it was just one example, as many others given in these topic of what it could be done as a whole, to convince the investors, and prove this is a profitable game.
my english is very poor to repeat the things others already said better then me. - I agree with some of zoom b's points. Glitch has the biggest satisfaction rate I've seen on any game. Heck, it has the best satisfaction rate on anything I've seen! Players love this game so much, they're willing to give up good meals to muster as much money as possible for all of the staff. The problem is, we're not being given the chance. Please, let us help save Glitch! And if we can't muster enough money, then it can be used by staff and laid-off staff to get through the holidays! You surely MUST have SOME hope!
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Yeah, I wish they had at least tried asking for help openly. Hell, running on donations seems to work for Wikipedia, why not for Glitch.
Even if there really was no way we could have reached the required number of subscribers, donators, sponsors or whatever, at least people would not have been caught so completely off guard and helpless. -
A charity drive isn't the same as a sustainable business.
Investors need return on their investment -
I agree that it feels sudden when everything was getting ready for a new launch. The game has not been open for new players that long, so at first I was confused at how they could conclude so quickly that a critical mass of players is not achievable. A new launch could bring press coverage and new players.
So I would speculate that too few new players stick around. A decent proportion need to become subscribers or buy credits for the game to make money and continue to grow. Presumably the data shows that this isn't happening despite all the re-beta changes.
Another issue is the remaining needed investments in the technical infrastructure. Flash is on the decline and as yet there is no mature cross-platform alternative.
There have been complaints of lag, such problems tend to get worse with more users.
And the closure faq explains that it requires round the clock attention from the engineering team to keep the game going. That also suggests further investment is needed on the server side to make it more resilient, these guys can't sleep in their cubicles forever.
In the end the reason does not matter of course, the result is the same and I will miss Glitch when it is gone. - [edit for kindness]
- Don´t be silly Stoot, milk those investing suckers for 3 more years, what the hell man?
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The only thing I'd like to call out from this that seemed like a super good point was that there were zero ads on other sites to bring people into the game. I accept that the servers may not have been able to handle the user load that may cause, and that advertising campaigns can be very expensive (and potentially useless) and that maybe they were trying to wait to do that until after the terminal beta... In the end, all I can keep saying is that I can barely believe it's all ending.
I rather hope to wake up and discover that rideable giant flying chickens have been put into the game and that it was all just a bad dream... - I feel sad for Stoot. Not only does he have to shut down such an amazing game that he poured his heart and soul into, he had to argue with people to make the decision to shut down and now he has to watch as we all bargain, cry, rage and break down.
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So basically it boils down to this:
1.- Flash game was not scalable / translatable to HTML5 in a short term.
2.- Paying huge amounts of advertising monies for a game that was in a programming language about to die is just a bad idea.
3.- Stoot had to take the bullet, shut the game because is financially inviable in his actual form.
amiright? -
It's business, man. And even dicier, it's business based on technology. The game went all in on Flash and PC at a time when there was a pivot to mobile, which isn't so Flash-friendly. Building a great product and making a huge investment and doing some amazing engineering feats on shifting sands means sometimes you fall into the ocean.
Stoot & co are not dummies. And maybe us Monday morning Warren Buffets should step away from the keyboard. -
I'm very very depressed about Glitch closing. I keep switching from anger to sadness, but even when I'm angry its a very cold, sad angry.
I've read all the articles/statements/etc., and the one that makes the most sense to me is the reasoning about Flash no longer being a viable portion of any business model, especially an MMO's.
The internet looked much different in 2007-2008. If Glitch's DOB was 2009, its conception came much earlier. I remember when my friends first got iPhones in 2008 and I thought it was the penultimate act of douchiness to own an iPhone (why would I bring my phone to the gym when I can use my mp3 player on the treadmill??).
Desktops and Laptops are quickly becoming a thing of the past. I don't think the new generation of computers will be strictly tablets and smartphones, but they will look an awful lot like tablets and smartphones.
If you're in the business of making a sustainable online multiplayer game you have to have a product that people can actually use. Especially if you have a target audience in mind. I'm speaking on behalf of Tiny Speck here, but I'm pretty sure they had a very specific audience in mind - and that audience is going to be mainly migrating to the world of mobile technology, if they haven't done so already.
It's very unfortunate that changing landscape of technology had to coincide with the development of Glitch - it was a fun game and I'll miss it greatly. Hopefully something similar, but better, can come out of this experience and Tiny Speck will release a Glitch 2 that meets all of their expectations, and ours, and we can play it while we commute.
Assuming, of course, that the world doesn't end in December and the Solar Flare doesn't wipe out the satellites and the poles don't shift so there's still enough humans around with enough leisure time to actually play video games. -
So, what if somebody among the player community turns out to be a rich sheik who wanted to buy a new football club next week and now decides to invest his $50 millions into Glitch instead?
Would that save the game? -
And … we are not nearly as stupid as you think: some things just look different when you have all the available information.
Posted 6 hr ago by stoot barfield
I'm sorry, but I found this comment to be a bit insulting, stoot. No one said any of you were stupid. People are grieving here... it's natural and normal and good for grieving people to come up with ideas to try to change the situation causing the grief. This comment even feels like you are calling *us* stupid for not knowing all the information.
We love Glitch. And we love Tiny Speck for giving us Glitch. We are sad that we didn't know - and still don't know - "all the available information" so we could help more before it was too late.
To all of Tiny Speck, and to all of Glitch... I am very sorry for your loss, and I mourn with you over the end of this dream. -
I have to say, I agree on Serendipity with this.
After I read the closing FAQ, I felt dumbstruck and disappointed, but I never douted that what stoot said was true: They had tried everything. It failed. There is no way. So that's it.
Fine. I can accept that.
Hearing now from stoot that "we" think TS is stupid, and that "we" don't have all the available information makes me feel a tiny bit frustrated: Well, obviously, of course we don't have all the available information.
You never gave 'em.
You gave us a few bits and pieces. A few beads from a broken chain. We just had to trust you. A lot of us did. Others still want to cling to hope. In many ways, you can make a great comparison to a broken relationship: You know the girl left, but you dream about her coming back and you imagine it was all just a dream, or you think of a lot of very brave, very creative, very incredible and (in truth) very stupid ways to win her back.
That's exactly what happens here for a lot of people.
But spelling that out ("You don't have all the information, that's why you still hope and make up silly plans") seems to me a bit like rubbing salt into the wound.
edit:
And now, please, Mr. Sheikh, hurry up and show up! - Actually, your first hint things weren't going well should have been the feats. Checking the feat leader boards gave a good indication of the number of active players. It only listed the top 1000 contributors, and the bottom of that list usually had pretty low participation. So even if we assume there were 2000 active players participating in feats, even 10% of them paying is nowhere near enough to sustain the game.
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True, we don't have all the information, just what has been announced and what we can guess from reading between the lines.
However, if the team has given up and is moving off to other jobs, I don't see how an infusion of money would allow the game to prosper. Someone could probably take the code and host it somewhere else to keep the game going in its current state, but that's not the same as having the team to keep developing it.
P.S., Stoot's comment is no doubt a reaction in sadness and anger just like many of ours. He loses the most of anyone. -
It did occur to me last night that maybe Stoot just got fed up dealing with it.
Maybe his heart just wasn't in it any longer and it was time to stop.
I wanted Glitch to go on, maybe be sold. Then I realised that anyone buying it would probably not run it the same, they couldn't if they wanted to make money. Can you imagine the uproar if everyone had to pay to play or there were adverts on the site? I know you may say now that you would be happy with that to keep Glitch going, but then it wouldn't be Glitch any more, just something that looked like it. -
I'm sorry, but I found this comment to be a bit insulting, stoot. No one said any of you were stupid. People are grieving here... it's natural and normal and good for grieving people to come up with ideas to try to change the situation causing the grief.
I find it insulting that anyone would think Stoot & co haven't considered every possible option before destroying a world they have poured their hearts & souls into.
Unless he's actually a genocidal maniac, in which case: HAWT -
I have to say that I was completely blindsided to Glitch closing as well. Maybe I'm dull or completely oblivious, but I felt there were no indications that the game was struggling to make it. Sure, the number of active and regular players left a little to be desired, but those who played love the game ardently. It's a small but extremely loyal group of players. Maybe telling us the game was in trouble would be a longshot, maybe we couldn't have halted it's demise, but you never know right? How can we help if we don't have the information? And if the staff thought we couldn't help... then maybe they shouldn't underestimate the power of Glitchens. ;)
To stoot, and the rest of the staff, I'm truly sorry that Glitch won't live on. If I had so much fun playing this game and if I had so much invested in it that I grieve it's passing with real tears, I can only imagine what you guys are going through. Godspeed. -
Stoot's reply to the Tech Crunch article ( http://prntscr.com/ju4nn) shows that Stoot has moved on already, which makes me think my guess that he got fed up with Glitch is not far off the mark.
No way could you carry on with such a time-suck as developing a game like this if your heart and soul isn't in it.
Who could blame him? We have witnessed how hard everyone at TS tried and maybe they are just weary of it. - shhexy... there is nowhere in my comments where I say I think they haven't considered all the options.
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Lets not even dredge this. Our community will move on, we have no choice. Lets remember what is important.
This did however change my mind about playing anything stoot is a part of in the future.
Because I disagree with his choice, for reasons.