After I logged off last night, the second point I was going to make came back to me.
It was all about how to face the end of the world, in Glitch terms.
My original plan was to dress up in a funeral suit, but that seemed... Ghoulish, macabre and silly, really.
So I tarted my glitchen up in clothes that seemed best, and gave it some more thought.
Yesterday evening, I was thinking that the best thing to do would be to give up everything - all the tools, all the emblems, everything in my packs. Donate, sell, give away.
Then face the oncoming storm with nothing but my focussing orb and meditate, meditate, meditate.
I realised too late - i.e. after having the massive downsizing - that this was so not the right way to do things.
It depends on your worldview - or, more accurately, end-of-the-worldview - but I've come to feel that this isn't a world ending, it's just the closing of a door and a barring of the gate between this world and the world of Glitch.
All the glitchen will continue on, doing their things, exploring. But they'll be free to do it themselves, without worrying about doing what we wanted them to do. Freedom!
So why would you want to start this new, free life with nothing but a glass ball?
Today, I managed to - through some judicious luck and skill - finally learn every skill available to my glitchen. I then went and bought all the tools and bits and bobs you'd need to survive in the world.
When the end comes - at 4am my time, which is a bit of a bugger - I'm going to make sure my glitchen is under a cherry tree in his yard, with some sammiches, beer, and maybe a couple of snocones for afters. He can sit there, and watch the sun come up on the new world, whatever that looks like, and just... relax.
Then, free of meddling human influence, he can go and do whatever he likes, and I'll know that I've given him - or, more accurately, made him learn - all the skills he could possibly learn, and have all the tools he could possibly need.
I've made sure he's seen all of the world, too, so he can walk - or teleport - anywhere he likes.
And he can do whatever he likes in Ur, whenever he wants to.
That's how I choose to see the ending of this story.
*
Author's note: I know I'm talking about a virtual world and a virtual avatar in that game world, and there is a part of my brain that says stop being preposterous, it was only a game, and to that part I say; Enough! It may be preposterous to get emotional about this. But being preposterous is what made Glitch such a fun, enthralling, strange, curious, interesting, and above all beautiful experience.
So I'll be as preposterous - and as emotional - as I like, and I'll thank you very much to sit this one out, rational part of my brain. You can come back later when it's time to do things like... Say... Work. For now, though, enjoy the craziness!
Sunday 9 December 2012
Saturday 8 December 2012
Glitch Indiegogo Campaigns!
Also, this was dumbass of me, but I meant to mention way back when - there are some official (or at least semi-official) Glitch indiegogo campaigns going on.
The most recent is the soundtrack campaign, posted about an hour ago and already nearly 75% funded (yay!) which can be found here: (http://www.indiegogo.com/glitch-soundtrack).
The second is the official art book, which can be found here: (http://www.indiegogo.com/the-art-of-glitch). It's already something like three times over it's funding goal, which should help you understand how much people want this kind of thing!
Now, if anyone's got about $130 dollars they want to give me so I can get the book and the CD for Christmas... Oh, and the pouch, too, at (http://www.etsy.com/listing/116232741/customized-glitch-character-limited).
So many links!
The most recent is the soundtrack campaign, posted about an hour ago and already nearly 75% funded (yay!) which can be found here: (http://www.indiegogo.com/glitch-soundtrack).
The second is the official art book, which can be found here: (http://www.indiegogo.com/the-art-of-glitch). It's already something like three times over it's funding goal, which should help you understand how much people want this kind of thing!
Now, if anyone's got about $130 dollars they want to give me so I can get the book and the CD for Christmas... Oh, and the pouch, too, at (http://www.etsy.com/listing/116232741/customized-glitch-character-limited).
So many links!
The Night Before The End Of Ur
Tomorrow night - at 4am, my time, to be precise - Glitch ends.
I won't be awake for that - I like, y'know, actually sleeping - but I've been actively trying to see as much of this weird virtual world before the doors close and the Giants roll up the islands and put them back where they came from.
It's one of the biggest cliches out there, that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, but I kind of feel a bit more like I've tried to know Glitch more over the past few weeks simply because it'll all be over, soon.
There's a completist in me, too. Which is handy, because there's a lot of badges for being a completist.
This is my excuse, anyway, for having completely covered thirty-one regions in two days, including one that's really recalcitrant about giving out the completist badge.
Seriously.
Since yesterday, I've compulsively visited every location on the map (and a few others that weren't) because, while I'm asleep tomorrow, this world is just going to vanish.
For sure, it'll be backed up on some servers somewhere, but the doors will be shut and locked (electronically), so for some reason it mattered a lot more to me than maybe it should have to actually go and see the world.
It was fun, too. Along the way there were some beautiful sights, but it was - to be frank - quite a lonely pilgrimage, bumping into people being such a rare occurrence.
I wondered at this at the time, then realised this evening; it's all down to the whole time zone thing. Because now, late at night my time, the whole place is jumping.
It's still kind of sad, but at the same time... I think it's worth sharing something that Tiny Speck put together to help the grieving process in a uniquely Glitch kind of a way.
For the uninitiated, a recent addition to the game were Feats, which were global events that everyone could participate in (assuming they'd completed something called The Last Pilgrimage of Esquibeth, but let's not get into that now).
One of the first feats was, naturally, Streaking. (Although censor bars were allowed.)
This feat, however, on the day before the end... It's kind of floored me in the simple elegance with which it helps people cope.
The First Glimmer of the Giants' Awakening
Repeat the absurd incantations in as many locations as you can, with at least one other person present.
The first person must say "This game is absolutely preposterous." (1 point) and then a second person may say "I agree wholeheartedly!" (2 points, but only if it immediately follows someone saying the first line) and a third (distinct) person adds "And yet, I will really miss it." (3 points, but only if it immediately follows someone saying the second line in immediate response to someone saying the first line).
It's kind of You Will admit that this is coming to and end, but you'll have some fun doing it, recognise the nature of the game, and also cope with the oncoming end.
Because Glitch was preposterous. Everyone agreed this was true. And yet, as players, we will all really miss it.
So.
Once the majority of my explorations were done, I logged back in today wondering what else to do.
And then people started grouping together for the feats, and travelling the world, intoning the incantations. I got into two groups doing this, and got to see most of the world all over again, while we all said how preposterous it was - wholeheartedly - and that we'd really miss it.
And it was truly, genuinely, fun. Not that Glitch was ever anything but fun, but... Being given the opportunity to form these chanting groups of three and travel the world talking about preposterousness and loss was just a really nice way to do things.
The requisites for the feat - the points generated by our actions in-game - were filled with two minutes to spare.
And that was when God started talking to us.
No, really. Here's the transcript.
GOD Phew, that was close — down to the wire, one might say. I wasn't sure you'd make it!
GOD Soooooo I dug some of this stuff up for everyone at the last moment... let's see, there's a broken cubimal, and, um, something dusty? And some other stuff. I don't really know what it is, but I hear you might enjoy it.
So God gave me and everyone else a bundle of stuff. And then, because this is Glitch, God took his trousers off of his head, went outside - the neighbours having previously complained about his lack of trousers - found us some more rocks, and gave them out.
This is the kind of sentence you end up typing when you've been playing Glitch for a while.
I've played it for around ten hours, on and off, today.
Just to see the world, and talk to people, before tomorrow. Because tomorrow is probably going to be grief, rather than joy, which today ended up being.
There's two more things I'd like to talk about tonight before my brain shuts down from sitting in front of a monitor kind of quietly grieving and being joyful at the same time.
One, I finally - finally - managed to get the upgrade I needed to learn the last skill of the game. My character had previously managed to learn all the others, which was kind of cool, but this last one required a specific upgrade card.
Except that the learning time would have been two days after the end of the game.
So I spent a lot of icons - little medallions embodying the Giants ('gods') of the world - to up that time and now - and I'm curiously emotional about this - my little Glitch avatar will meet the end of the world with all the knowledge I could give him at his disposal.
Two... I don't think I'll ever complete the Noticing the Unnoticeable quest, so my Glitchen will go on to whatever's next not knowing what the last ghost would have said.
Note: that isn't the original second point I was going to write, but my brain is mush right now.
But, as someone said to me earlier... See you around the end!
I won't be awake for that - I like, y'know, actually sleeping - but I've been actively trying to see as much of this weird virtual world before the doors close and the Giants roll up the islands and put them back where they came from.
It's one of the biggest cliches out there, that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, but I kind of feel a bit more like I've tried to know Glitch more over the past few weeks simply because it'll all be over, soon.
There's a completist in me, too. Which is handy, because there's a lot of badges for being a completist.
This is my excuse, anyway, for having completely covered thirty-one regions in two days, including one that's really recalcitrant about giving out the completist badge.
Seriously.
Since yesterday, I've compulsively visited every location on the map (and a few others that weren't) because, while I'm asleep tomorrow, this world is just going to vanish.
For sure, it'll be backed up on some servers somewhere, but the doors will be shut and locked (electronically), so for some reason it mattered a lot more to me than maybe it should have to actually go and see the world.
It was fun, too. Along the way there were some beautiful sights, but it was - to be frank - quite a lonely pilgrimage, bumping into people being such a rare occurrence.
I wondered at this at the time, then realised this evening; it's all down to the whole time zone thing. Because now, late at night my time, the whole place is jumping.
It's still kind of sad, but at the same time... I think it's worth sharing something that Tiny Speck put together to help the grieving process in a uniquely Glitch kind of a way.
For the uninitiated, a recent addition to the game were Feats, which were global events that everyone could participate in (assuming they'd completed something called The Last Pilgrimage of Esquibeth, but let's not get into that now).
One of the first feats was, naturally, Streaking. (Although censor bars were allowed.)
This feat, however, on the day before the end... It's kind of floored me in the simple elegance with which it helps people cope.
The First Glimmer of the Giants' Awakening
Repeat the absurd incantations in as many locations as you can, with at least one other person present.
The first person must say "This game is absolutely preposterous." (1 point) and then a second person may say "I agree wholeheartedly!" (2 points, but only if it immediately follows someone saying the first line) and a third (distinct) person adds "And yet, I will really miss it." (3 points, but only if it immediately follows someone saying the second line in immediate response to someone saying the first line).
It's kind of You Will admit that this is coming to and end, but you'll have some fun doing it, recognise the nature of the game, and also cope with the oncoming end.
Because Glitch was preposterous. Everyone agreed this was true. And yet, as players, we will all really miss it.
So.
Once the majority of my explorations were done, I logged back in today wondering what else to do.
And then people started grouping together for the feats, and travelling the world, intoning the incantations. I got into two groups doing this, and got to see most of the world all over again, while we all said how preposterous it was - wholeheartedly - and that we'd really miss it.
And it was truly, genuinely, fun. Not that Glitch was ever anything but fun, but... Being given the opportunity to form these chanting groups of three and travel the world talking about preposterousness and loss was just a really nice way to do things.
The requisites for the feat - the points generated by our actions in-game - were filled with two minutes to spare.
And that was when God started talking to us.
No, really. Here's the transcript.
GOD Phew, that was close — down to the wire, one might say. I wasn't sure you'd make it!
GOD In fact, I'd sort of given up on seeing you reach the goal and I was ready to reward you all with a beer and a hearty slap on the back. That would've been nice, huh?
GOD Soooooo I dug some of this stuff up for everyone at the last moment... let's see, there's a broken cubimal, and, um, something dusty? And some other stuff. I don't really know what it is, but I hear you might enjoy it.
So God gave me and everyone else a bundle of stuff. And then, because this is Glitch, God took his trousers off of his head, went outside - the neighbours having previously complained about his lack of trousers - found us some more rocks, and gave them out.
This is the kind of sentence you end up typing when you've been playing Glitch for a while.
I've played it for around ten hours, on and off, today.
Just to see the world, and talk to people, before tomorrow. Because tomorrow is probably going to be grief, rather than joy, which today ended up being.
There's two more things I'd like to talk about tonight before my brain shuts down from sitting in front of a monitor kind of quietly grieving and being joyful at the same time.
One, I finally - finally - managed to get the upgrade I needed to learn the last skill of the game. My character had previously managed to learn all the others, which was kind of cool, but this last one required a specific upgrade card.
Except that the learning time would have been two days after the end of the game.
So I spent a lot of icons - little medallions embodying the Giants ('gods') of the world - to up that time and now - and I'm curiously emotional about this - my little Glitch avatar will meet the end of the world with all the knowledge I could give him at his disposal.
Two... I don't think I'll ever complete the Noticing the Unnoticeable quest, so my Glitchen will go on to whatever's next not knowing what the last ghost would have said.
Note: that isn't the original second point I was going to write, but my brain is mush right now.
But, as someone said to me earlier... See you around the end!
Thursday 6 December 2012
The November Update
Thought I'd post the November 29th update here, because otherwise it's just a wall of text over at IndieGoGo.
*
*
Update 29/11/2012
First Update!
This is just to cover a bundle of stuff that wasn't addressed totally in the original posting, so it's time for an F.A.Q.
So, how's it going?
Well, we've raised $176 over the past few weeks thanks to the generosity and kindness of select Glitch fans which is really heartening!
If you're into statistics, that puts us exactly 3.52% towards the funding goal.
Yeah, the goal you set was kind of high. What's up with that?
Well, optimism.
Not to get all gushy – again – but I believe in this project because I believe that Glitchis something that should be discussed in documentary form.
Everyone who's played Glitch will remember it after it's gone – this is just a way of collating some of those memories together in one place and sharing them like stories around a campfire.
Stories that may involve squeezing chickens, taking Essence of Purple and hallucinating, and streaking. But stories nonetheless.
That's nice, but why $5000?
Well, the goal was set at this level with the idea that Tiny Speck – based in San Francisco, a long way from where I'm writing this now – could be interviewed, which would require travel, equipment hire and insurance.
Like you most likely read in the previous brief, however, there's two models of how this works out, and the funding can be broken down.
It'd be good to know where the money's going, yeah.
Well, it's like this;
$100 - $200
This pays for on-site storage (in the form of external hard drives or such). The one thing I've learnt about film is that it involves bloody huge files, to use the technical phrases they taught us, and to get a lot of them together and backed up needs serious storage.
Currently we've raised enough for about 2tb – maybe 3tb at a pinch – in on-site storage, which should cover all the needs. So... Thanks for that, everyone who contributed so far!
$200 - $500
Past two hundred but up to five hundred is involved in finding ways to actually transmit the Bloody Huge Files™ to one location. There are a variety of free services that might be able to handle some of this, but it's envisaged that some sort of paid service will be involved.
At the same time, the two-to-five costs are going to be used on software upgrades and various fixes to the equipment that's available to bring them up to spec. The ability is there currently to edit whatever's sent, but it takes a long time to do anything without certain tweaks etc.
Equally, there have been a few offers from community members to help with editing, which should speed this up.
$500 - $1000
Anything above $500 will go towards licensing costs of any music and other media. It's not expected that these costs will be huge – especially if Tiny Speck give permission to use assets from Glitch in the documentary, which I really hope they will! - but there's all manner of bitty little things that creep up when you're making a film, and they all need to be solved before it can be released.
The five-to-thou tier also means more upgrades for software, etcetera. It also allows for a website to be set up to give out more information and updates about Glitch after the site shuts its doors.
Basically, anything up to $1000 gets ploughed into making sure the storage, equipment and software are up to scratch, because screaming She cannae take anymore, Captain! at the computer at 2a.m when the render crashes or the sound de-syncs or the footage needs re-encoding is not fun.
Oh, trust me on that last one, from experience.
$1000 Upwards
To be honest, maybe we're probably in pixie magical dream land here, but if this doeshappen anything above $1000 goes towards prospective travel and equipment hire costs.
For instance, it may prove easier to actually find a crew in San Francisco than to actually travel there myself, which is where these costs would come in.
This is based around the idea of an actual bricks-and-mortar business edifice, though, and given how Glitch's programming is distributed, this may not be the case – in which... um... case, this money would go towards interviewing the various brilliant people who created Glitch (if they want to be interviewed) wherever they may be and, again, finding ways of sending that footage back.
Surely setting the funding cap so high means that Indiegogo just guarantee a slightly bigger slice for themselves, though?
Well, maybe. But personally I'm okay with that, because they provide a great service and deserve to be compensated, whether it's 4% or 9%. It would just be silly to complain about paying the people who host your campaign and handle all the funding, now, wouldn't it?
So the $64,000 question – why are you doing this?
Because I think it should be done.
I'm not going to argue that it needs to be done on any level – there are more worthy causes out there than this documentary – but I think, deep in my heart of hearts, that this documentary should be made.
Not to start repeating parts of the brief, but there are a lot of people out there who will miss Glitch when it's gone. They'll all have their own favourite memories of the place, and I doubt they'll ever forget it. But these memories – if these people want to share them – should be put together and shown to others, so they can know whatGlitch meant to people.
Maybe this is just folly, but I think this documentary should happen because per-maybe-haps it'll be a little bit as unique as its subject.
Well, I can hope.
But are you some sort of Glitch super-fan or something?
I'm no fanatic. I haven't played as much Glitch as I'd like over the past couple of years, but when I did – and still do, time permitting – get the chance to play, I'm always amazed all over again at the kind of experience it is.
There are, I'm sure, people out there much more committed and much greater fans than I am – hell, I know there are because of the art, music and poetry that are being produced – but this is my way of celebrating it using methods I've been trained with.
Let's skip past the training part, though, before we get to “but what I do have are a very particular set of skills”, though. That wouldn't be pretty.
So what happens next?
Well, hopefully a few things happen;
(I) People keep contributing whatever they can, which is much appreciated;
(II) Tiny Speck maybe get in touch about interviews and assets
(III) In – *checks* - 50 days, the campaign ends, and the real work begins.
… Yeah. Why did you set the campaign end date over a month after Glitch closes up shop?
Um. Well. I didn't really think that through, but it may be for the best, because it gives people a chance to step back and think objectively about what Glitch meant to them, rather than during the inevitable grieving period that'll come immediately after the end.
Plus, not everyone will want to contribute in the run-up to the Holiday season, but maybe there's some New Year good will a-coming!
You really are an optimist, aren't you!
Yeah. But a realist, too; so I invite you to look at it this way. Currently there's enough funding to pay for on-site storage, so as long as there are ways to collate everything people contribute in one place, this documentary can go ahead.
Any additional funding up to the $1000 level will mean that the final product is just that much more polished and representative of the kind of enthusiasm people have forGlitch. Don't get me wrong; I'll work on this for as long as it takes, no matter the funding available, to get it to a state in which it can be released – but this is the real world, and, as we know, in the real world, money makes problems go away a lot faster and perhaps more gracefully than sweat.
I can give you an example of this, if you'd like a final anecdote.
When editing my last film, I discovered that – having had to borrow a different camera to the one I'd been using for the majority of filming – I had a whole bundle of files in what's called .mxf format.
The computer hated these files – or, more accurately, Final Cut Pro hated thes files – and as it was a public workstation, I couldn't download the updates or codecs necessary to translate the files for FCP's benefit.
I tried all sorts of things, culminating in turning an entire video lab of around eighteen computers into a kind of rendering farm, taking up an entire weekend, to try to get these *&£$% files into the right format, to no avail.
When I was that far away from giving up – which would have meant the film would have fallen apart – I found a piece of software for $25 that did the translating without fuss, muss or even bother. It did what I couldn't do in a weekend in about six hours.
So money isn't everything – not by a long shot – but sometimes it comes in handy.
Hope this clears a few things up, and all the best for the holiday season!
Thursday 29 November 2012
Donations!
Sorry for the time lag in celebrating donations. We're now up to $176 -
$176!
- which has made my day and my week.
Thanks go to MistressBrazen, Malakh, Eleanor Rigby and Eduardo Ferraciolli for your generosity and kindness! eduardo ferraciolli
Update!
I've finally had the time to post a proper update on the funding campaign at the website - (http://igg.me/p/278952/x/275415).
Hopefully it explains a bit more about how things are going and what happens next.
Either that or it makes me look like a crazy person who talks to himself on the internet via funding websites. But let's hope not!
Hopefully it explains a bit more about how things are going and what happens next.
Either that or it makes me look like a crazy person who talks to himself on the internet via funding websites. But let's hope not!
Sunday 18 November 2012
Glitch: The Documentary
Hi,
You may or may not be aware that Glitch, an online multi-player game and user community, is closing on December 9th. As part of this I'm trying to put together a documentary about what Glitch meant to so many people; you can see more information here.
As part of this, I'm running a funding campaign here to try and raise funds to go towards the technical and (hopefully) travel costs involved. If you can donate, anything you give would be appreciated, and if you can't, if you feel like forwarding it on to anyone who might be interested, that would be great!
This blog will be used to celebrate every time a donation comes in and to give updates and information about what amazing things are being put into the documentary and then to celebrate its release, so keep checking back for updates and news!
You may or may not be aware that Glitch, an online multi-player game and user community, is closing on December 9th. As part of this I'm trying to put together a documentary about what Glitch meant to so many people; you can see more information here.
As part of this, I'm running a funding campaign here to try and raise funds to go towards the technical and (hopefully) travel costs involved. If you can donate, anything you give would be appreciated, and if you can't, if you feel like forwarding it on to anyone who might be interested, that would be great!
This blog will be used to celebrate every time a donation comes in and to give updates and information about what amazing things are being put into the documentary and then to celebrate its release, so keep checking back for updates and news!
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