Game Neverending (
GNE) was an innovative
massively multiplayer online game that was in development by
Ludicorp, better known as the creators of
Flickr, from 2002 until it was cancelled in 2004.
[1]Game Neverending was an atypical roleplaying game primarily based on social interaction and object manipulation. GNE was lighthearted and humorous; indeed there was no way to win, nor even any definition of success.[2] Many objects could be combined to create other objects, but any given object only served a questionable amount of purpose. A sense of community and communication between players was encouraged through gamewide and location-specific chat channels, as well as the ability to leave notes for other players at any location.[3] Another aspect of GNE's novelty was that it was being developed into a highly user-extensible game players were intended to be able to invent new objects and create new locations.[2] The official in-game currency was shekels, but sheets (and quires and reams) of differently colored papers also served as a de facto currency.[4]
The earliest prototype went live on the Internet in the fall of 2002 with the goal of experimenting with real time in-browser interaction, evaluating usage patterns and technical requirements and seeing how players would respond to the "tone" of the game.[2] This was closed February 3, 2003 and eventually a new version was released as a closed beta.[citation needed]
Although development of the game was later canceled, the tools built for GNE later evolved into Flickr, a widely-hailed photo-sharing service.[5] Occasional signs of this legacy are visible, such as the '.gne' file extension appearing in Flickr's URLs.[6]
