This results in a time-traveling effort at saving the future, going back into the minds of eleven great giants walking sacred paths on a barren astero

Eventually, Henderson suggested an innovative solution that the team decided to implement: instead of trying to map the entire thing, they would represent the grid as a small number of main streets with just four sign posts. And each sign would have essentially a drop-down menu of choices: A to G and 1 to 8. The idea was that then anyone would be able to find any location by simply picking coordinates, as they might on a normal map.
"We've been wrestling with it since we started," Butterfield told me in August.
"I just thought about how cities are organized," Henderson said of how he came upon the solution, "how you would address something in a city if you can't just say the name of the street."
Many platforms At its core, Glitch is a 2D Web-based Flash game like many other social online titles. But Tiny Speck's business model depends on getting the game's players to branch out beyond their browser and onto other devices.
That's because while Glitch will be free to play for anyone, Tiny Speck plans to eventually sell a series of Glitch mini-games that will be available for iPhone and Android and allow players to unlock new skills that they wouldn't otherwise be able to access. That would, in theory, give those players a leg up over those who play only the free game on the Web.
Either as part of the same purchasable mini-games, or possibly as free add-ons, Tiny Speck hopes to give players the ability to use their mobile devices to send commands to their characters.
Perhaps, he explained, players would be able to command their "robots to tend to the crops from [their] iPhone...or participate in the [game] auctions."
Eventually, Butterfield said, Tiny Speck would like to make Glitch available, in some form or another, on as many platforms as possible, up to and including Xbox Live or PlayStation Network. Eventually, Henderson suggested an innovative solution that the team decided to implement: instead of trying to map the entire thing, they would represent the grid as a small number of main streets with just four sign posts. And each sign would have essentially a drop-down menu of choices: A to G and 1 to 8. The idea was that then anyone would be able to find any location by simply picking coordinates, as they might on a normal map.
"We've been wrestling with it since we started," Butterfield told me in August.
"I just thought about how cities are organized," Henderson said of how he came upon the solution, "how you would address something in a city if you can't just say the name of the street."
Many platforms At its core, Glitch is a 2D Web-based Flash game like many other social online titles. But Tiny Speck's business model depends on getting the game's players to branch out beyond their browser and onto other devices.
That's because while Glitch will be free to play for anyone, Tiny Speck plans to eventually sell a series of Glitch mini-games that will be available for iPhone and Android and allow players to unlock new skills that they wouldn't otherwise be able to access. That would, in theory, give those players a leg up over those who play only the free game on the Web.
Either as part of the same purchasable mini-games, or possibly as free add-ons, Tiny Speck hopes to give players the ability to use their mobile devices to send commands to their characters.
Perhaps, he explained, players would be able to command their "robots to tend to the crops from [their] iPhone...or participate in the [game] auctions."
Eventually, Butterfield said, Tiny Speck would like to make Glitch available, in some form or another, on as many platforms as possible, up to and including Xbox Live or PlayStation Network.

On Tuesday, as , Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield's start-up Tiny Speck announced its new online social game, Glitch.
As described on , "It's called Glitch because in the far-distant and totally-perfect future, the world starts becoming less and less probable, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, and there occurs what comes to be called the 'glitch'--a grave danger of disemprobablization. This results in a time-traveling effort at saving the future, going back into the minds of eleven great giants walking sacred paths on a barren asteroid who sing and think and hum the world into existence."