Standing On The Minds Of Giants: Glitch
This piece over on CNET, which looks at Tiny Speck's social puzzle MMO, Glitch. I love the idea:
"The whole world was spun out of the imagination of 11 great giants," said Stewart Butterfield, the president of Glitch developer Tiny Speck, and better known as the co-founder of Flickr. "So you have to go back into the past, into the world of the giants' imaginations and grow...the number of things in the world, grow it in terms of physical dimensions, to make sure the future actually happens. So all the game play takes place in the past inside the world of the giants' imagination."
The developers are hoping that the 2D MMO - which is based on developing in-game resources and co-operatively solving puzzles - will appeal to the older gamer of more sophisticated tastes. "There's not a better way to say [who we're targeting] than people with above average intelligence and sophisticated tastes, in their 20s or early 30s...The intersection of NPR listeners and game players," says Butterfield. You can sign up for "private alpha test" on the site.