Tell your Glitch/Eleven Story
Hi all! I thought it might be nice to tell our Glitch/Eleven Giants stories as we wait and chat and get to (re)know each other. So, what's your story? How did you find out about and first start playing Glitch? Why did you love it so? What did you learn? How has it impacted your life? With what intentions are you playing/joining Eleven?
Comments
I'll start! My first introduction to Glitch was at age 24, when my partner showed me the game trailer. I applied immediately and then spent the next week obsessively checking my email. I fell immediately and deeply in love, and in short order had all of my friends playing, and my mom. I played Glitch when I just started teaching, and it was a nice way to connect with folks when I was exhausted and swamped with work.
In late 2011 I went through a really tough depressive period and logging on to Glitch was one of the things I still enjoyed doing. It was the right combination of gentle, kind, and affirming. My Glitchen community was always there, both real life friends and those I never met in real life. I've since searched for that same community feeling in a game and haven't found it.
I'll be joining Eleven in a much better place than I was 8 years ago, thankfully. I'm excited to build community again, and hopefully give back to others some of the support I received from my Glitchen friends back in the day.
I don't think it really impacted my life much to be honest, it was just a game and a place to meet new people and hang with friends, it was when it was over and all of that was taken away that it really had an impact, because I have never been able to find anything else like it since.
I'm still waiting to get in to Eleven, I have no plans yet, to be honest, I think I am just going to wait and see what happens when I get there! But hopefully, I will see you all there soon
I found it when my mum played it was interesting
But I couldn't play it at that time because I had no computer
It was easy to fall in love with though - from the sense of humor throughout to the people who were always friendly and willing to help, and the world with so much to explore.
Not sure about too many specific intentions for Eleven yet, just the feeling of wonder, exploring, and maybe a bit of decorating.
My favourite part of Glitch was the sense of community. I loved the parties, the random events, the kind hearted people, and that's what I miss most and hope that we can recreate. I was pretty lonely in real life, and my friends in the game gave me so much joy. I visited the UK with my family one summer while playing and met up with one of my Glitch friends while I was there, and it was truly lovely. @nubbins I too was pretty depressed for a large part of the time I played, and I feel you on how affirming it felt to be here.
I've been pretty emotional wandering the streets here in Eleven. I am so grateful that this world still exists. My partner is playing for the first time (I've been talking about it for years and I'm glad he's getting to see this world I talked about for so many years) and I'm enjoying watching him explore too.
P.S. I was Sharmy Knope if anyone remembers me :)
We both mourned the closing of the one truly GOOD game we had both enjoyed.
I loved the fact you could gather resources and create things in a sustainable manner and the quirky humour drew me in. Loved the overall LOOK, the music and intelligence behind the NPC chats.
Doing quests and getting achievements at odd times kept me interested, and the helpful chats and comradery of the players was totally different to other online communities we have been in.
Building and decorating my little house...
..oh, .so much to rediscover once we get back in:))
If you ever got a bag of flaming poo on your doorstep, it was probably from me. Near the end of the game's run, I made as many of them as I could and spread them around liberally and methodically, with the help of Kastlin. I do believe Veluptua Sneezelips was my very first victim, though.
But then, for a lark, I thought I'd dress Carl up as Carla and had feels, and started my Cephalophoria account to explore that. And that was the first time in my life I've experienced gender euphoria. Not from dressing appropriately or anything in real life, but from playing this wonderful 2D game. That was in 2012, and I didn't actually come out to myself until 2014 after a long series of nearly deadly episodes of depression. But playing Carla and Cephalophoria in Glitch definitely got the ball rolling toward that self acceptance.
I'd been experiencing dysphoria and that growing depression my whole life, ever since I can remember, I just couldn't admit to myself what it was. Playing a largely anonymous game with free expression with characters of NO gender at all (except what you painted on as expression through clothes and features) allowed me to distance myself from the embarrassment of seeing my own body in clothes that didn't really fit right and feeling the shame of it. Also, the community felt extremely safe and accepting.
A large number of my friends list on Facebook today are old Glitchen friends, still.
I'm 44 now. I've been out as myself for nearly 5 years.
Carl and Cephalophoria (as humans, sort of) are part of a webcomic/graphic novel I'm working on trying to finish (it's been on hiatus for a while, but I just figured out how to fix a big problem with the story today, so I can probably get started on it again soon), called "the Epic of Sally Robertson". Carl's still a goatfish in the comic, but a boy who was stolen as a child by the Fomorians and turned into a goatfish, and only partially turned back by Sally's (Cephalophoria's) parents when they rescued him.
Glitch was a lot of fun, as a kid I had no idea what I was doing but I loved how vast the game was, at that time I was oblivious and didn't realise the game was shutting down until close to the shutdown date.
I'm really glad Glitch is being revived, it is a game that had a big impact on me as a kid and I'd love to share it with my friends now! Thank you for your hard work and I hope to see everyone when the giants wake up again!
I have a friend who played since beta when we were both in highschool, and I joined up shortly after it came out of beta. I fell pretty immediately in love, exploring every single location and reveling in the quirky weirdness of the game and how kind the community was. I used to work for hours making awesome stews to give away, and my glitchen was a huge booze collector, I had stacks upon stacks lining my tower shelves at closing time. I used to adore cooking and crafting, I made food to give away all the time (classic Potian, amrite?) If you happened to find a trail of rainbow spices up the long staircase of the giant building/museum in the bog, that was my doing!
I miss glitch terribly, it really felt like my home MMO and nothing has felt as comfortable or kind since. I'm hoping to let my old glitchen rest and make a new avatar instead, find some new things to collect, and continue making copious amounts of the best foods in the game to give away
Looking at it now, what a profound impact Glitch had on the adult I'd become. I believe the sense of wonder I have for daily life sometimes, as well as some of my silliness, comes from this little game. And my creative projects are super informed by the sheer love and dedication that went into Glitch. Maybe the best part of all this is, having played it as a kid while my brain was still all goopy, many of the memories I have from the game are stored as things that really happened. I know I never saw Giants, and that my little home in Muufo wasn't real, but the way my kid brain stored that stuff says otherwise, which is pretty magical