Flickr Cofounder Creates Game Glitch

Back to his roots, Stewart Butterfield releases online game

When Stewart Butterfield and friends first set out to mint their fortunes on the Web, they built the Game Neverending.

But they ended up being best known for building the photo service Flickr instead, which sold for a pretty penny to Yahoo.

After leaving Yahoo (in hilarious fashion), Butterfield is back with a new company, Tiny Speck, and a new game: Glitch.

Similar to Game Neverending, it is meant to be a social, multiplayer affair. But not in the vein of World of Warcraft, though many of the game play concepts are similar. Instead, it seems to be a very well-produced and involved Flash game along the lines of popular Facebook applications like Farmville.

Instead, players wander around the imaginations of giants in the ancient past solving puzzles and developing skills. Each giant's imagination is differently, and beautifully, illustrated.

It's not necessarily out to attract the millions of hardcore gamers from Warcraft, argues Butterfield, telling CNet that instead it's looking for an audience along the lines of "the intersection of NPR listeners and game players."

Unfortunately, you can't play Glitch yet -- it is currently only offering a private alpha version still in development -- so you'll have to go back to watching Wes Anderson movies and reading McSweeney's while you wait for your invitation email.

Jackson West admits, he submitted an application for an invite.

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