A Flickr Founder's Glitch: Can A Game That Wants You To Play Nice Be A Blockbuster?

the business model behind many social games acknowledges that the key to success is not about getting everyone to fork over a certain amount of cash but rather to create things that the small proportion of users who shell out vastly disproportionate amounts of money would want to buy. (On the other hand, those "super-whales," as they're called, also are often buying things that let them advance more quickly through the games.)

But the major key to Glitch’s success, Butterfield says, will be to maintain World of Warcraft-style engagement levels (some WoW players have been playing for years). And that will depend on whether the game he’s created, which is about creating a space for other people to make up their own games, will actually resonate with players.

It’s possible it will. The penultimate goal in any game is referred to as “the end-game.” In a combat game like World of Warcraft, the end-game often about conquering an opposing group or slaying a final creature. But in Glitch, Butterfield says, “the people who get to the highest levels tend to do a lot of things for the lowest level players, kind of like potlatch culture.”

It's that kind of spirit that enabled Burning Man to grow from a gathering of friends on a San Francisco beach to an annual seam-busting, thriving, ever-changing temporary city of 50,000 in the Nevada desert. Glitch will show whether that's also possible to pull off in an imaginary online world.

E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter. Email