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'Glitch': a Gender-Tolerant Webgame


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A-folk! I don't know if you've heard of a webgame called Glitch (www.glitch.com), but i've been having an amazing time with it and wanted to share some considerations.

Glitch, I find, is silly, lovely, and a bit nonsense.

The entire game is supposed to take place inside the imagination of 11 giants, and players can help build up this imagined world or just walk around having fun and interacting with stuff and with other people. There's no monster-slaying and no Big Final Boss, and the sole object of the game seems to be to have an enjoyable time. It runs off your browser, in Flash, with (very) minimum hardware requirements.

In short, it's a bit pointless and ideally self-expanding – much like life itself. And it's also utter awesomesauce!

Now, more to the point of this post. A big part of my fondness for the game comes from the fact that it provided me with an amazing sense of personal identity freedom. Your character, admittedly designed to look cute but beaming with potential self-expression, is fully customizable, skin colour, hair, shape of earlobe and clothes. You are never asked to define your gender, and you can dress like a boy-glitch, a girl-glitch, or both. Or you can just around butt-nacked around the place. It is, I feel, very gender-friendly in this respect.

A senior level-25 member hosted a (virtual) party the other day. A LOT of people went, and the servers had some trouble dealing with the magnitude of the event. The party invitation

(full invite here http://www.glitch.com/forum/general/9205/) had a section, reproduced below, that basically sums up the reasons I fell in love with the game.

7:30-8:00PM: Popularity contests will be held

Best Dressed Lady- Glitchen vote on what female glitch wears the best outfit.

Best Dressed Gent- Glitchen vote on what male glitch wears the best outfit.

(If your glitch is neither male nor female (or both) you can still win exactly one of these contests)

So! Hooray for gender-tolerant gaming, and hooray for the great people behind the game. Keep up the good work, and don't give up on the brilliant - but probably hard-won - notion of a game that is played for fair fun's sake and nothing more. I'm trying to reach the developers with this praise, and hopefully boost a little bit both the causes of tolerance and good gaming.

(don't bother reading the rest of the post if you think you've heard enough about the game!)

Just for a taste of the game, consider the fact that you have to massage and ONLY THEN milk butterflies to be able to get the raw materials to make cheese (which you can then age). Or the fact that you never really die – if you run out of either Mood or Energy (the two main metabolics) you are sent to a cubist interpretation of Hell where the Devil has you squeeze grapes until you can get out.

Most of the in-game events, in fact, feel like they were conceived either by Monty Python or the King in Katamari Damacy. For instance, there are several types of cooking Spices, all synthesized (by yourself if you have a Spice Mill) from Allspice Trees scattered around the land. When you interact with each of these spices, you get an option to either Sniff, Taste, Consider, Study or Scrutinize them. Each time you do this you are let into a bit of knowledge (via in-game text). My favourite one is Camphor:

"You study a camphor. Camphor is bitter, but knowledge is sweet. Slighty sticky. too. You lose 2 energy, lose 2 mood and gain 2 xp."

To be able to grow your own chicken, you must first find a suitable Chick (or hatch an Egg that grows, appropriately, in Eggplant Trees). There's an option to 'Smile At' the chick, with the cautionary note: warning – potential disappointment. If you try to interact with a Chick in an area that he doesn't care for, the game says

‎'You smiled at a Chick. The chick's unblinking gaze conveys its extreme distaste for its surroundings. You feel embarrassed for smiling at it. You lose 5 mood.'

The game's general look and feel might be considered childish, but it might be more accurate to just think of it as Silly (specially in the more general context of the game universe). I met an entire family playing the game at the same time the other day (Marie, Marie's Dad, Marie's Mom, etc) and they seemed all to be having a lot of fun. I have neither a wife nor kids but I can attest to the fact that it is a lot of fun indeed.

Unfortunately for most avenites, baking some in-game cake (http://www.glitch-strategy.com/wiki/Oaty_Cake) requires a very high level of the cooking skill. I'm working on getting there though!

So, if you have a bit of free time and are looking for some silly fun, be sure to check it out! There might be a bit of a waiting list to create an account due to Server x Demand. If you do get into it, go ahead and add me (awdrone) to your buddy list and check out the Sparkly Rock Mining Community of Ajaya Bliss, where I'll probably be hanging out. We do poetry readings as well! You'll need a white-blue key to get in, but I'll leave that part for you to figure out.

Glitch developers: you win the internets, sirs!

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I think that I might give thiis game a look. Free, browswer based games can sometimes be a lot of fun.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have an account, and have played 5or 6 times, but I can't really play again til thanksgiving break cus I have a bunch of papers due soon :( . But I really like the game

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