Titan Network
Graveyard => Save Paragon Retirees => Save Paragon City! => Topic started by: JWBullfrog on November 15, 2012, 04:11:22 PM
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I just found this announcement about a game called Glitch closing down. I understand how their fans feel but I think we might (might) have made it a bit easier for them. Linked below is the shutdown notice from their developers. Please note how it differs from the one we got.
http://www.glitch.com/closing/ (http://www.glitch.com/closing/)
We're not just fighting for ourselves. Vive la City!
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I played Glitch back when it was in Beta.
I can say, with some confidence, that their shutdown message isn't stated the way it is due to our influence. Tiny Speck's always been simple and honest with its playerbase; they're as emotionally invested in their game as much as any player. They're not the kind of dispassionate IP-squatter that NCsoft is.
When they say they're heartbroken over it, I believe 'em.
[sings]There's Humbaba, and Friendly, Alph, Tii, Zille, Lem, Grendaline and Spriggan, Cosma, Pot, and Maaaaaab~ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=b6O5QXj6n18#t=28s)[/sings]
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That's heartbreaking just to read. I now wish I'd heard of and at least given the game a shot while I could have. It sounds, honestly, like a marketing failure more than anything else.
It's a browser-based game? I wonder if they tried making it a Facebook Game, or if they have given any thought to expanding it to a Mobile platform. Browser-based should be able to translate to ap-based, I think.
I'll look into contacting them, if only to offer suggestions they probably already have thought of and rejected on the off chance they haven't thought of an angle on them. This is very sad.
(And, depending on their financials, it's exactly the sort of thing I want to become a wealthy mogul so that I can try to support it and turn it around. It's what Romney made his fortune doing, and there's something admirable about that, to me.)
Edit: For Plan Z and/or a reformed Paragon Studios, though, this might be a boon; their employees are looking for work, and if we can get our funding together...
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Wish NCSoft had their refunds policy which seems tremendously generous, would have been $300+ just on points I bought.
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I am actually surprised that no-one has suggested yet that you try to force them to release the source code/server software yet..
I mean, that is what you are trying to do with NCsoft and City of Heroes...
If you read their FAQ, they already said they had considered it, but nobody has the money and time to keep it running as a free and open doohickey.
However, given that you've accused the collective "us" of trying to "force [NCSoft] to release the source code/server software," it's pretty clear you've not really been paying attention. While some calls for that have happened, the primary thing people have been doing is trying to get NCSoft to either continue running the game or to sell it to somebody who will. Both of which are only even vaguely plausible because CoH is making money.
The tragedy of poor Glitch is that it seems NOT to be, and they've not figured out how to make it do so.
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I too was a beta tester for Glitch. I made some great friends and contacts through them.
I'm surprised I haven't gotten that email myself. :'(
When I was in the hospital last year the staff and players were there to sustain me.
They have project going on that might work with something connected to Plan Z. I have the personal email of the company founder and president. They are a good bunch of people and creative. If anyone has anything they can reasonable suggest or any kind words, I will attempt to forward them.
If we had a way to save it it would be great, but I think, unlike NCSoft have really considered all their options with their staff and players in mind.The fact that they took the extra step of trying to find employers for their people says much about them.
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There is no singular clear message, and that what message you get all depends on who you talk to.
With the unicorn activity on the CoH forums as it is now, this is moot, because there is no way to HAVE a singular clear message. Anything that is said will simply be torn apart. Bickering goes back and forth, someone says one single poorly-worded phrase, which then becomes the entire focus of the message. The unicorns run wild with THAT and spread it as fact, and nothing gets anywhere. The only real way to try and counter that, is to waste so much time so as to post more than the unicorns, which NOBODY should have to do in the first place.
And even if the unicorns weren't there, you still have over-excitable people who want a miracle to happen. They see something that means "maybe this will happen" and then they go telling their friends that this IS what is going to happen. And when it doesn't go that way, those people turn around and start whining about SaveCoH spreading lies and deception.
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TimTheEnchanter is right about the CoH boards. There are some decent people over there grieving, but the unicorns are out in force.
I'm not sure why this topic was brought up in this thread - it is about the closing of another wonderful game by a company who has a much better set of ethics than NCsoft - but I can understand the sentiments.
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To be fair, NCSoft did run a couple of job fairs for the developers as well which helped them secure jobs. Similar to what Bioware did when they laid off a lot of the SWTOR developers as well.
I was unaware of that. Thanks for that correction.
I've already sent a message to Tiny Specks's CEO. Additionally I also released the balance of my remaining funds with them to the company to do with as they will
I have let them know about what is going on over here, or at least gave them enough info that if any of the staff is interest they can begin contact through me. I wish I could do more.
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To be fair, NCSoft did run a couple of job fairs for the developers as well which helped them secure jobs. Similar to what Bioware did when they laid off a lot of the SWTOR developers as well.
True.
While I find your comments like us "forcing" NCSoft to release code, etc as ridiculous hyperbole, you are correct that NCSoft didn't entirely throw those laid off under a bus. I live in a region frequently hit by layoff, and here, they're generally "have security escort em out of the building carrying a cardboard box of your stuff & hand em directions to the unemployment office." I don't have enough visibility to know how the Paragon Studios team feels about their experience, but it does appear they did more than the employers I know around my neck of the woods.
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"To be fair, NCSoft did run a couple of job fairs..."
...and also, according to tales I've heard, rousted the devs from their offices like they were criminals. But that's just hear-say and the job fairs are pretty well agreed-upon, so that kinda cancels-out.
My hat is off to the people behind Glitch. Early-on I wrote a thread called "How to End an MMO," and I'd swear they read it. Didn't even know Glitch existed until now, and I vaguely mourn it. Obviously a class act.
As to the CoH boards, whenever you have an unregulated board, the strange people come out to play their weird little GIFT games. I dunno whats up with that guy trying to turn it into a My Little Pony fansite. (No hating on the Ponies, quality writing, Tara Strong rocks, and real men watch Ponies when they're babysitting their best bud's daughter.) But what the heck is that about?
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Glitch and the people behind it are a class act. They had a phenomenal pool of talent involved and they really enjoyed their work. Everyone, and I mean everyone, including the CEO contributed actively to listening to their players and getting a wonderful, unique, and fun game together. Read up on what the gaming magazines said about it. The reviews were glowing. And you could easily form friendships with not only the regular players, but the development and administrative staff as well. If I hadn't been so caught up with other needful stuff I'd have been playing more at the end. I had an annual subscription and was about to renew it here soon. I figured it money well spent.
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Yeah, as others have mentioned, Glitch has always been a bit of a class act. What we see here is what you'd expect from them, probably not our influence at all.
However, the contrast is helpful here. Hopefully people will compare/contrast the two shutdown messages- one serving as a positive example and one serving as a lesson in what not to do..
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But if they give it away, then it is *no longer* on their money side to run the game. So what would they have to lose by giving it away? Let another company take up the costs for it. Unless of course, those costs are so high that no one would be interested... *shrugs* Looks to me like they *havent* exhausted all their options though.
It's not just a matter of money, it's a matter of knowledge needed to keep things running.
It takes a full-time team of competent engineers & technical operations personnel just to keep the game open. Even if there was a competent team that was willing to work on it full time for free, it would take months to train them. Even then, the cost of hosting the servers would be prohibitively expensive.
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I would be interested to know what problems with their business model led to it not working. I'd hate to think it was their efforts to be, as a few have rightfully called them, "a class act." I know they feel they've exhausted all options - and their reaction looks more genuine than NCSoft's claim, given what we know about both situations - but I wonder if that's actually true, or if there's something they might've missed.
It could well be; I am certain they're more expert on their market than I. I just wish I, myself, knew, so I could even brainstorm effectively.
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I'm personally well connected to these people and my contacts that I gained from them have been instrumental in the development of Kingdom Come Game's professional assets. The CEO and principle founder, Stewart Butterfield was one of the principle founders of Flikr. After he sold that to Yahoo! he used the funds (in the millions of U.S. dollars) to start up Tiny Speck and begin the process of developing Glitch. He has had the support and advice of multiple professionals in the fields that apply.
Here is Mr. Butterfield's Wikipedia profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield
The original poster provided a link that explained the pertinent details. Glitch was built on cutting edge Flash technology. In fact one of the lead developers was also one of Adobe's original Flash creators and he still has strong contacts with that company. It was a matter of lively discussion on the Glitch forums about the future of continuing to use this for Glitch. The problem was that the company had heavily invested in a browser based platform that did not with the changes in technology and social patterns. Believe me that I find this news heartbreaking. Not just as a player, but as a friend of the people involved. This loss was not due to any incompetence of the staff. If someone who cared about the game had the means to take it off of their hands and nurture it they would be glad to simply give it to them and have said so. They do not want to see it die. They simply are being honest about the situation and letting their people know. Unlike what happened with Paragon Studios, every member of the staff of Tiny Speck would have been involved in this decision and been able to contributing solutions - they were that good a company. And they would have listened to the suggestions of their players. They have given refunds that they have had no obligation to give and done other constructive things for their players and community. The in-game community was one of the tightest and closest I've ever seen. And I'm including the community here in that comparison.
Glitch might be dying but Tiny Speck is still alive. So please, please, whatever they do next show your support.
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With hindsight, developing on Flash was a mistake, it locked them out of much of the mobile/tablet market which would have been a good fit for the game.
Edit:
avelworldcreator seems better placed to state the reason than I but I cba to change my post :p
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Can a mobile ap not be developed with an integrated flash virtual engine?
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Glitch might be dying but Tiny Speck is still alive. So please, please, whatever they do next show your support.
And maybe we can devote some of our energy to this very idea. Support those companies that seem to be doing things the right way. I'd never heard of Tiny Speck before this but I am far more likely to keep an eye out for theie future projects. If they put as much care into those as they seemed to here, I think they deserve my support.
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For those of you who do play, or have played Glitch, my character name is "Fokian Fool". You may still contact me there via my profile if you are so inclined.
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When did that go up? I swear I was just on there questing and flipping my training skill... seems it's only a tiny link on the front page not on the okay skill's done choose your poison page. right now at 245% training effort I'm LadyWizard over there. Only signed up a month ago and never did find what we spend credits on or where half the keys I have go
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Just wow! That was heartfelt and warm. Definitely, how things should be handled. Acknowledging your player base is key.
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With hindsight, developing on Flash was a mistake, it locked them out of much of the mobile/tablet market which would have been a good fit for the game.
Edit:
avelworldcreator seems better placed to state the reason than I but I cba to change my post :p
Yeah, but look how quickly the industry's changed there.
The IPad's been out for less than 3 years. At the time it was released, Flash was on 97% of all browsers, was the basis for virtually all casual games online (yahoo games, kongregate, etc), online multimedia training, and the bulk of all web video. Heck, its ubiquity had led it to be used more often than java applets for programmability functions like upload managers, web-based file browsers, and the like. Browsers had only started getting their javascript engines performing at a rate that made html-5 game programming seem an option (albiet a distant one), and there were no good development tools for such a thing that could compare with the ease of authoring in Flash. To top it off, Flash had a sizable base of developers that were fluent in that interface.
Even over the first year of its release, the iPad's greatest weakness was often cited as its lack of Flash. It was widely believed that Adobe would eventually tackle the barrier and be as dominant there as it was on the PC.
if you were going to start development of a browser-based online game at that time, there was really no safer bet than Flash.
Unfortunately, safe bets still lose on occasion.
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That was actually a security decision on Apple's part. The ubiquity of Flash has made it a target for virus programmers, much as Windows' ubiquity has made it a target. HTML5 was seen as a "safer" replacement, so Apple took the chance that Flash was on its way out. While this hasn't really come about, it hasn't been a long-term failure for the iPad or Apple. I haven't used OSX newer than 10.6, but my recollection is that Flash would be excluded from "future" versions of the OS, as well.
(Please excuse any inaccuracies; I'm working from memory, here.)
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When did that go up? I swear I was just on there questing and flipping my training skill... seems it's only a tiny link on the front page not on the okay skill's done choose your poison page. right now at 245% training effort I'm LadyWizard over there. Only signed up a month ago and never did find what we spend credits on or where half the keys I have go
I have friended you on Glitch. On November 30th we have an end of the world party, and on Dec. 8-9 we have another. Too bad both games are blocking new members now. I think both sides need to mourn together.
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I know I would have given a free account on Glitch a try in its last days; unlike CoH, it probably wouldn't freeze my poor outdated laptop when I tried to exit.
I still wonder about the technical limitations of building a flash emulator into an ap. A browser-based game just screams for porting to mobile market, and if flash is the only bottleneck, I feel so much worse for them when their business concept was within spitting distance of what they seem to think a true success would have been.
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The conversion to HTML5 was being closely examined. Unfortunately that technology isn't yet mature enough for what they were doing. Well, technically they might have been able to do it through Java rather than Javascript but that would have taken a lot of code rewrite, conversion, testing, and debugging that they simply could not afford. If they could have held on profitably enough for about another year or so, they could have pulled it off, but the circumstances worked against them.
It would be interesting if they would allow an outside group to examine and tinker with the code to make it more modern and viable commercially. It's worth asking. It's not within any realistic range for Plan Z or KCG at the moment, but there might be hope elsewhere.
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Well, that's the reason I keep wondering if putting an ap together that has a virtual Flash engine on it to encapsulate and run their existing browser code - modified for mobile controls - would be possible.
I honestly don't know how difficult that would be.
ARE there mobile devices that support Flash?
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Well, that's the reason I keep wondering if putting an ap together that has a virtual Flash engine on it to encapsulate and run their existing browser code - modified for mobile controls - would be possible.
I honestly don't know how difficult that would be.
ARE there mobile devices that support Flash?
Yes. Android and Windows devices do.
Screen size is probably the other issue. It needs to be tablet sized. That's now more common, but not when Glitch started. The window is there, they just don't have the funds. :(
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Then it's a question of what funds they'd need...
Man, I really want to talk directly with their business planners/team/etc.
I can't stop thinking there's hope for them or their game if we can help them just reach hard enough.
I say that recognizing that they probably HAVE wracked their brains and thought of everything they could, but I really would love to know what "everything they could" encapsulated and what obstacles made each option unviable. Costs vs. expected increased profits vs. other considerations...
I'm just going to have to try to get in touch with them tonight at some point. I won't be back at my apartment until latish, though, sadly, and I have a very early morning tomorrow to catch a plane.
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Then it's a question of what funds they'd need...
Man, I really want to talk directly with their business planners/team/etc.
I can't stop thinking there's hope for them or their game if we can help them just reach hard enough.
I say that recognizing that they probably HAVE wracked their brains and thought of everything they could, but I really would love to know what "everything they could" encapsulated and what obstacles made each option unviable. Costs vs. expected increased profits vs. other considerations...
I'm just going to have to try to get in touch with them tonight at some point. I won't be back at my apartment until latish, though, sadly, and I have a very early morning tomorrow to catch a plane.
There web page is mostly blank now. I'm keeping an eye out for one of the staff and I'll drop a note. I have an idea but it's long term.
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Actually I have a current Nexus 7 Jelly Bean and no flash support.
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I always feel bad when I read about a game going down or being canceled. (CoH isn't the only one I felt bad about, not by a longshot; it's just the only one I was literally logged into at the time)
I hadn't played Glitch, but the head developer of Kingdom of Loathing talked about it on their weekly radio show back when Glitch was in beta, and I wanted to try it, but the beta at the time was closed, and I forgot about it after that.
Now I'm sorry I won't get a chance to play it. Maybe if their next games do well and the company gets large enough, they can afford to bring it back.
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Actually I have a current Nexus 7 Jelly Bean and no flash support.
Yeah, Adobe has basically decided not to do Flash for new mobile devices anymore.
A big problem with Flash was its own overreach. They wanted it to be more than a multiplatform multimedia/game platform. They wanted it to be a full app development platform- you could do videoconferencing through it, share files through it, do anything you do with applications on the desktop, essentially. It also wasn't efficient-- not a problem on a plugged-in PC, but even laptop users noticed well before Mobile how quickly using flash unplugged drained their battery (as if the wireless wasn't a drain enough.)
So, in very little time, flash developed interfaces to videocameras and microphones and the localfilesystem and some of us that developed in it started to wonder if we could (for example) access any file in the filesystem and upload it to wherever we'd like... and we could... Could we unwittingly turn in the mic and stream it? yep. Could we hide flash in an off-screen window, hidden to the user, and have their entire screen activity, video, and audio stream to wherever we'd like? Done. Adobe patched a ton of this, so don't panic and run to uninstall it, but since each of these had a legitimate purpose too, each patch had to keep the functionality while putting some sort of barrier in place to prevent the abuse. People would figure out what the barrier was, figure out how to get around it, and another barrier was put in place. It was starting to get reasonably secure near the end, but all these patches added to the platform's bugginess.
By the time Apple's security decision came out, flash wasn't the security hole they made it out to be, but it had enough of a reputation there that Apple was able to make it stick. It was still inefficient, and using it would quickly drain a mobile device's battery (and overheat the device) so Apple had a legitimate grouse there. The biggest threat to apple was its versatility, though. Anyone could develop anything for flash to do exactly what an app would do and then bypass apple's store completely. They point fingers elsewhere, but that is one of the core concerns they had.
Adobe still developed for Android, and there was a lot of hype given to that. It DID still drain batteries like crazy, but I could go to Kongregate and play flash games on it rather well. There, the problem was that to get full flash functionality on these mobile devices, it needed to be developed for each system to account for those systems' different hardware and proprietary drivers. It just wasn't feasible to keep up, so they declared that they'd not make flash for any new Android devices earlier this year.
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I played Glitch back when it was in Beta.
I can say, with some confidence, that their shutdown message isn't stated the way it is due to our influence. Tiny Speck's always been simple and honest with its playerbase; they're as emotionally invested in their game as much as any player. They're not the kind of dispassionate IP-squatter that NCsoft is.
When they say they're heartbroken over it, I believe 'em.
[sings]There's Humbaba, and Friendly, Alph, Tii, Zille, Lem, Grendaline and Spriggan, Cosma, Pot, and Maaaaaab~ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=b6O5QXj6n18#t=28s)[/sings]
I think they named that game perfectly...
Playing the trailer for that game caused my computer to glitch and I had to reboot. :o
I guess it had to happen to somebody. But why me and not Ironik? :P
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That was the alpha trailer that used to be on their (now blank :'( ) home page.
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I did the death watch to the end of Glitch tonight. We overloaded the server so much it shut down about a minute early. That's two in less than 2 weeks and two studios gone. Over 140 people out of their jobs of years
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I did the death watch to the end of Glitch tonight. We overloaded the server so much it shut down about a minute early. That's two in less than 2 weeks and two studios gone. Over 140 people out of their jobs of years
Dude... PLEASE tell any friends or devs you know over there that our heart goes out to them, and I hope that Glitch may live again someday.
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Dude... PLEASE tell any friends or devs you know over there that our heart goes out to them, and I hope that Glitch may live again someday.
I am. In fact, just like with CoH, they are coming together. Even have an offer of server space. They may even talk about linking into the Phoenix Project as their own group and such. Same fundamental goal as we have. I've offered to help them with the little bit of time I can spare helping them get off the ground.