Topic
What Makes Glitch Amazing?
A lot of people are talking about what games to go to, and what everyone's favorite memories are, but I have a (subtly) different sort of question.
Why is Glitch, as a whole, so awesome?
A lot of people answer this with, "because the community is awesome," but what about Glitch is so great at fostering an amazing community? What about Glitch causes kind people to hang around, but makes griefers and rude people leave? I ask this for a few reasons. First, I want to know what it would take to make another game like it - I love studying game mechanics, understanding what about games is unique, but Glitch has a quality that I don't seem to know how to define. Second, I think that the answers to this way of asking the question will help show Tiny Speck exactly what they did right. Sort of a player-perspective postmortem.
Replies
- I think a lot of it has to do with the whole game play - you can't win, you can not especially get ahead by abusing other players. In fact, the best way to get the most out of the game (currants, IMG, fun, goods, whatever) is to play collaboratively with a wide range of other Glitchen.
- It's focused on cooperation and collaborative play, rather than competition. Things like getting more rocks from mining together than from rushing to finish before another Glitch ganks you.
- Open-ended gameplay, whimsical graphics, witty jokes and/or puns, friendly actually helpful staff, in-game drugs, and the whole cooperation over competition thing.
- I wonder if signups had been open for everyone & the game advertised all over the web, magazines, television etc. would we still hold such a cooperative and friendly community? A large number of players have been invited by other players. They are their friends or colleagues. People they likely already know and are of somewhat the same mindset. Had the game taken off and become extremely popular would the community as a whole have stayed as awesome? Maybe, maybe not. Just my thoughts on it :)
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^ The above is what I thought too. Mechanics are mechanics; some will still impose their winning mindset even when none is to be had.
Firstly, there's the target market. The crowd here is an amazingly diverse bunch and the median age is certainly above 25- from what I've seen very few people in that age group who play games are the childish kind.
Secondly, there's the game's focus. As someone mentioned, there's no damage, no killing and virtually no reason to have more currency than another player. Because you can do EVERYTHING, you don't develop the impulse to thrash people along the way so easily as these people may someday buy from you or you may need their help.
Thirdly, the playing field is level. It doesn't matter if you're playing for free or you're a premium subscriber, basically everything can be obtained with enough currants and if someone's willing to sell. While I understand the problem with this one I should also point out that Kingdom of Loathing does very well with its Mr.A that does provide huge gameplay benefits which can still be obtained without paying cash and you still need your smarts, unlike other games where wasting thousands means you've won the game.
Lastly, it's content. The content keeps you engrossed and makes you feel like a part of the world so that even if you're normally a grouchy person like me you leave that attitude at the login screen and play cheerfully as if you're your own Glitch. Most other games don't give enough content or backstory so it's much easier to impose your own personality onto your avatar. -
While a lot of things go into making Glitch amazing, I think there's one key to it all, and it's what Glitch does that is truly unique. It took me a while to recognize what it was, despite being a veteran MMO player (15 years and giants only know how many games at this point...).
Glitch completely breaks the progression model of gameplay. A player's activity is almost completely divorced from improving the avatar's skills and content availability. There are skills to learn, but that's mostly passive. There are levels to gain, but they are completely meaningless, no different from badges and trophies - you can go after them if you want to, or not. Any given "goal" in the game is clearly finite, and will not get tacked onto infinitely. Today my goal might be to buy a particular upgrade card. Tomorrow it might be to make a piece of furniture. My goal is never to gather materials for the sole purpose of incrementally raising a little number so someday I can do what I actually want to do. I can do almost everything that it is possible to do in the game from the moment my avatar is created; skills and upgrade cards improve those activities, but they are not fundamental to doing the activity. There are no unending to-do lists - there's only so many quests, they almost all appear to teach me a thing I've chosen to learn, and the repeatable ones provide a similar time:reward ratio as any other activity, so repeating them doesn't have to be part of some perverse end-game routine.
That is the one aspect of Glitch that I think is the hardest to imitate or substitute. Absurdity and cheerful design? Hello, Wakfu and Dofus. Non-violent play? Puzzle Pirates. Open character design? Mabinogi and City of Heroes (RIP). A friendly and often generous community? Ragnarok Online. Communicative staff? I hate to repeat, but Puzzle Pirates. I haven't played Spiral Knights much, but it's also OOO, so I imagine it would be similar in that regard. I do know it matches with another thing: emphasis and high rewards for cooperative play. FtPlayers on even ground with PtPlayers? LotRO is a good one there.
But no other game that I know of has turned its back on progression like Glitch has.