Little Poundcake: “To follow up on this, since I'm a numbers person and I know that some of you are, too: Think about how often you or anyone you know will click on an ad because it looks interesting. Not very often, right? We spent *well* over $10K (I don't remember how much) to get about 1,000 clicks on our ads. Those are expensive clicks. Okay, so we have 1,000 people who did not know about Glitch and then clicked the ad. They ended up on a version of the home page with a big shiny "Play Now!" button. Now what? Only 100 of those people decided to click the "Play Now" button, which took them into the brand new cloud and flamingoes tutorial. Boo: we just lost 90% of those expensive clicks. :( Anyway, bright side! 100 new players! They're playing! Except... oh, shit, we lost all but about 30 of them before they even registered for a real account. Fuuuuuck. When we stretched that trend out over more ad dollars and a longer period of time, it turned out that we would hang on to maaaaaybe 5 of those people for longer than a week. The rest just vanished, usually somewhere around level 3-5, never to return. Glitch was a wonderful, magical thing for those of us who loved it, but it was simply not loved by most people who encountered it in the wild. It sucks, but it's the truth. Tens of thousands of people saw Glitch and did not instantly love it! We don't know what's wrong with them, either. :( Ad conversion was a total shit sandwich. We tried! We put lots and lots of dollars into the ad machine after spending lots and lots of time making a new tutorial for all of those new people. We had smart people helping us target ads towards our most likely players. A few of them came, fewer of them saw, almost none of them stayed. As Kuke mentioned, we needed significantly more players. There was no indication in any of our data that we could get there — or even remotely close — with more advertising. In short, math: sometimes it's a bummer.”

Dearest Brent/Kukubee, I just want to thank you - REALLY thank you - for taking the time that you have taken over these weeks to talk about this very difficult subject. It is getting touchy now even for those of us who have tried to stay upbeat about it, because, I think for me at least, the loss - the monumental loss - is finally becoming real. At first I was in denial - wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't go to the forums, would only go to my little house and play by myself, pretending like it wasn't going to happen. Then I started thinking about it. Went to the forums - posted sad but loving posts about our beautiful world and all the things I would miss. Then, when you and Dan (and others) started your efforts to save what you could of Glitch, somehow it didn't seem so bad again. I felt like it (and I) would be okay. And then (though please don't take this as any lack of appreciation for your efforts - I am still so totally stoked to have the book coming, and am ordering a CD & music box as soon as I have the cash this week, as well as being on the waiting list for the next go-round of pouches), I realized that NONE of this would bring it back. It could only ever be memories. From now on. Forever. I cried again when people started saying goodbye here on the update page, that they couldn't hang around anymore because there was no point. And then... I think that's when it happened. Things started getting quietly, understatedly angry with many of us who have never been that way. We started questioning the closing for the first time - wondering if it was purely a business deal - get what you can from it and get out. People brought up Flickr, and I (thank heaven) had my computer delete a reply I made that well, stoot was a businessman first and foremost, what did we expect. (Oh GOD - I can't believe I told on myself). I kicked myself for two days and didn't come back to the update page because I felt so bad about saying something like that when you ALL have obviously done everything and more so far above and beyond to give us everything you can of this game. Even to have left the site up for us to communicate - the forums - even (the closet of my dreams) the wardrobe?!!! It is just so clearly the action of people who care about other people and about doing the right thing as much as possible. There IS no other explanation. Stoot was even posting snaps a week after closing. Now tell me those are the actions of a cold-hearted business-only dude. So okay, I have rambled quite a bit here, forgive me, all of you, but it just means a GREAT DEAL to me coming from you, Kukubee - with all the craziness you have going right now with the projects - that you would take the time to look at these last few posts from us last few hangers-on, and actually be completely, truly honest. It helps readjust my attitude, because although anger IS a legitimate part of grief, it isn't healthy to stay there, and Glitch is something I want to always remember fondly - not have some niggling feeling that SOMEBODY could have done SOMETHING to save it and didn't. Let's face it - Glitch WAS really unusual - for me that was a great thing, but for mass marketing, yeah - I can see it might not be so good. It sucks, but its true. How many times, people out there, have you said - damn it! I loved that show - why did they cancel it and WHY is Keeping Up with the Kardashians still on the effing air?!!! (Sorry to all of you who love the K's) It's just a matter of - unusual not being enough of a draw to make a good living at. Anybody watch Firefly (the Sci Fi series)? Perfect example. Hilarious - unusual - great characters - rich with color... just a BIT too unusual to make it. And like Glitch, the people involved were really broke up about leaving it. Tried to save it. But in the end, it was numbers. I have always been an unusual person - creative, artistic, a bit poetic - didn't meet many people like that, EXCEPT HERE. So, it stands to reason really - now that I think of it. Yes it seems like there were quite a few of us, but realize, people that we were all over the world - from everywhere - and put that into perspective with any other big mass-market game, TV show, whatever, and you have to see that we just weren't enough. I can see it now. I couldn't before, and so for me, that's why your comment here meant so much. Thanks again. *sigh* (((Kukubee))) Love and hugs to my fellow hangers-on if you managed to hang with me through this post. :')