7 ms·

The Hiveswap Fiasco (2020)

38 points by luu 5y ago

nepeckman 5y ago
Interesting drama associated with this article. The story documented here was used in a video essay about Homestuck in general, and the inclusion of this article lead to (empty, frivolous) legal threats to the creator. In a follow up video, pretty much all details of TA are corroborated https://youtu.be/gsM9bQvpt_c https://youtu.be/gsM9bQvpt_c
klodolph 5y ago
Homestuck is a phenomenon that I see at the periphery of my experience on the internet… it’s always a source of interesting reading material about internet culture even for those of us who never participate. This followup article has some interesting speculation about a key reason for the Kickstarter’s failure: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/01/14/more-on-the-hiveswap-odd-gentlemen-debacle/index.html https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/01/14/more-on-the-hiveswa... > … Andrew and The Odd Gentlemen committed to a development schedule that started with a design document Andrew needed to write. However, he failed to produce that document on time, which wrecked the schedule. > … This period of limbo lasted for nearly two years of development time because Andrew wouldn’t deliver the cornerstone design document. … > Eventually, TOG decided they had wasted too much time making comic assets for Homestuck and needed to work on [King’s Quest] To me it looks like Andrew Hussie successfully created a moderately successful IP, but never developed the necessary management skills to run a business based on that IP of that scale.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  > To me it looks like Andrew Hussie successfully created a moderately successful IP, but never developed the necessary management skills to run a business based on that IP of that scale. There's a lot to support that idea. The lawsuit threats from What Pumpkin and the subsequent email chain between Hussie and this creator betray a very poor communication style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsM9bQvpt_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsM9bQvpt_c
Lammy 5y ago
HN’s audience may not be familiar with what a gigantic deal Homestuck was to a particular generation of people at a very particular point in time. This write-up is really interesting, but starting it at the time of the spin-off makes it hard to appreciate the sepulchritudinousness of it all.
theogravity 5y ago
I'm a Homestuck fan, but this article is just as lengthy as the comic itself. Is there a high-level overall summary of this fiasco?
- jVinc 5y ago
  Yes, if you click the link the first section is a brief overview, but if you skip that the second section has an Executive Summary.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  I'll... try. MSPA/Homestuck/Hussie kickstarts a videogame. Contracts it out to The Odd Gentleman (TOG), who proceed to not actually work on the game as Hussie fails to provide a design document or anything. They instead work on a King's Quest reboot that is later blamed as the reason why Hiveswap was late, even though they were also paying TOG to finish Homestuck. Hussie burns TOG and announces What Pumpkin as a new studio created to restart Hiveswap development. WP balloons to two offices. They proceed to burn through a lot of money writing their own 3D game, that they planned to release as episodes. This continues up until they run out of money and shitcan one of their two offices. This is done in the frustratingly industry-standard method of lying to everyone in the studio up until everyone is fired without notice. Meanwhile Meanwhile, Toby Fox kickstarts and releases a game on a small fraction of Hiveswap's overall budget and it's release becomes a minor cultural phenomenon rivaling Homestuck itself. The closest thing to a controversy it ever has is one of the backers' fursonas being a secret boss. This really has nothing to do with Hiveswap, it's just to show what proper project management can do. Anyway, Hiveswap is re-relaunched as a 2D project and WP starts looking for private fundraisers to complete the game with... despite the fact that 3D Hiveswap was significantly in development. Hussie also accidentally deletes the MSPA forums and claims it was compromised. The fired NYC office team leak out stuff over the years, including a very detailed 4chan post claiming Hussie was also personally funding development as they had gone significantly overbudget. Homestuck ends. 2D Hiveswap's launch date is announced on Steam Greenlight. This promise is not kept because it was a month out. More trailers are released, followed by another release date, which turns out to be Act 1. Turns out they're going episodic and there's four of these things still in production... which, BTW, physical backer rewards are still tied to. Oh, and it turns out a lot of the WP NYC team were never credited on 2D Hiveswap despite the game having their work in it. Hussie would eventually admit to having cut them out of the credits due to personally disliking certain employees. Then Hussie licenses Homestuck to Viz Media. Turns out they also had some involvement with Hiveswap, too. Oh, and Hussie coauthors some other Kickstarter project despite being banned from Kickstarter. Viz also gets involved with relaunching the Homestuck site, which was supposed to involve fixing the forums Hussie deleted. Also they entirely butcher converting the site's... extremely high amount of Flash movies and games. (I don't blame Viz or Hussie for that, though - Adobe basically left Flash creators high and dry on that one.) Oh, and Hiveswap Act 2 is now on hiatus. They're working on a series of visual novels collectively called Friendsim. Oh, and they're firing the entire Hiveswap team. Oh, and they nuke their entire Tumblr blog as part of a bad ARG. Meanwhile Meanwhile, Toby Fox stealth-drops a "survey program" that turns out to be a full demo of an upcoming game project that he's secretly been working on since before Hiveswap even hit Kickstarter. Oh, and his other game is now on two consoles and has an official Japanese translation. Did I mention good project management works wonders? Hussie/WP/Viz/whoever releases a Homestuck epilogue. Actually, two of them - under the guise of it being "dubiously canon". This apparently gives them enough money to rehire much of the WP staff and get Act 2 development back on track. Oh, and now they're announcing another visual novel project called Pesterquest, which has nothing to do with Hiveswap. WP then announces a Homestuck^2 Patreon, presumably because their other fundraising avenues ran out. Pesterquest ships. In keeping with tradition, WP breaks more of their site. Several more Hiveswap Act 2 trailers are dropped in concert with website closures. Act 2 releases without credits, ostensibly due to online harassment, but several of the people involved claim they were never asked about this. A bunch of cut content is found, some of which is retroactively cut after-the-fact with an update. WP then sells keys directly to try and front-run Steam's 30% cut. Hussie starts working on an entirely different project and What Pumpkin kills their Patreon. WP then freaks out over Sarah Z's video and the blog post I'm summarizing and releases a very long Hiveswap backer update failing to refute any of those. The TOG demo leaks. Hussie quits Homestuck a year after quitting Homestuck. tl;dr Oh my fucking god it's still two pages how the hell can anyone be this mismanaged
cobertos 5y ago
The IRL drama lore feels almost as sprawling and convoluted as the Homestuck universe lore itself. Is this actually sustainable to build a business on? Constant social/company drama, but instead of peddling it as interactive content in itself (like TMZ, reaction channels, etc, though these Homestuck drama explanation videos/blogs come off the same way), it is the foundation for the entire community that keeps the interaction and discussion going, to keep it relevant? There's truly a lot of talent in the Homestuck community and still steam in the brand so I assume it still has inertia and will move forward.
- cyber_kinetist 5y ago
  Nah, I think Homestuck is basically over at this point, too many former fans and fan creators seem to be incredibly burnt out by all the recent drama. I think Hussie should release Homestuck as public domain at this point, it seems to be the only way for him to redeem himself as an artist, after all the accusations towards his mismanagement of his workers.

38 points by luu 5y ago

Interesting drama associated with this article. The story documented here was used in a video essay about Homestuck in general, and the inclusion of this article lead to (empty, frivolous) legal threats to the creator. In a follow up video, pretty much all details of TA are corroborated https://youtu.be/gsM9bQvpt_c https://youtu.be/gsM9bQvpt_c

klodolph 5y ago

Homestuck is a phenomenon that I see at the periphery of my experience on the internet… it’s always a source of interesting reading material about internet culture even for those of us who never participate. This followup article has some interesting speculation about a key reason for the Kickstarter’s failure: https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/01/14/more-on-the-hiveswap-odd-gentlemen-debacle/index.html https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/01/14/more-on-the-hiveswa... > … Andrew and The Odd Gentlemen committed to a development schedule that started with a design document Andrew needed to write. However, he failed to produce that document on time, which wrecked the schedule. > … This period of limbo lasted for nearly two years of development time because Andrew wouldn’t deliver the cornerstone design document. … > Eventually, TOG decided they had wasted too much time making comic assets for Homestuck and needed to work on [King’s Quest] To me it looks like Andrew Hussie successfully created a moderately successful IP, but never developed the necessary management skills to run a business based on that IP of that scale.

jszymborski 5y ago
> To me it looks like Andrew Hussie successfully created a moderately successful IP, but never developed the necessary management skills to run a business based on that IP of that scale. There's a lot to support that idea. The lawsuit threats from What Pumpkin and the subsequent email chain between Hussie and this creator betray a very poor communication style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsM9bQvpt_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsM9bQvpt_c

Lammy 5y ago

HN’s audience may not be familiar with what a gigantic deal Homestuck was to a particular generation of people at a very particular point in time. This write-up is really interesting, but starting it at the time of the spin-off makes it hard to appreciate the sepulchritudinousness of it all.

theogravity 5y ago

I'm a Homestuck fan, but this article is just as lengthy as the comic itself. Is there a high-level overall summary of this fiasco?

jVinc 5y ago
Yes, if you click the link the first section is a brief overview, but if you skip that the second section has an Executive Summary.
kmeisthax 5y ago
I'll... try. MSPA/Homestuck/Hussie kickstarts a videogame. Contracts it out to The Odd Gentleman (TOG), who proceed to not actually work on the game as Hussie fails to provide a design document or anything. They instead work on a King's Quest reboot that is later blamed as the reason why Hiveswap was late, even though they were also paying TOG to finish Homestuck. Hussie burns TOG and announces What Pumpkin as a new studio created to restart Hiveswap development. WP balloons to two offices. They proceed to burn through a lot of money writing their own 3D game, that they planned to release as episodes. This continues up until they run out of money and shitcan one of their two offices. This is done in the frustratingly industry-standard method of lying to everyone in the studio up until everyone is fired without notice. Meanwhile Meanwhile, Toby Fox kickstarts and releases a game on a small fraction of Hiveswap's overall budget and it's release becomes a minor cultural phenomenon rivaling Homestuck itself. The closest thing to a controversy it ever has is one of the backers' fursonas being a secret boss. This really has nothing to do with Hiveswap, it's just to show what proper project management can do. Anyway, Hiveswap is re-relaunched as a 2D project and WP starts looking for private fundraisers to complete the game with... despite the fact that 3D Hiveswap was significantly in development. Hussie also accidentally deletes the MSPA forums and claims it was compromised. The fired NYC office team leak out stuff over the years, including a very detailed 4chan post claiming Hussie was also personally funding development as they had gone significantly overbudget. Homestuck ends. 2D Hiveswap's launch date is announced on Steam Greenlight. This promise is not kept because it was a month out. More trailers are released, followed by another release date, which turns out to be Act 1. Turns out they're going episodic and there's four of these things still in production... which, BTW, physical backer rewards are still tied to. Oh, and it turns out a lot of the WP NYC team were never credited on 2D Hiveswap despite the game having their work in it. Hussie would eventually admit to having cut them out of the credits due to personally disliking certain employees. Then Hussie licenses Homestuck to Viz Media. Turns out they also had some involvement with Hiveswap, too. Oh, and Hussie coauthors some other Kickstarter project despite being banned from Kickstarter. Viz also gets involved with relaunching the Homestuck site, which was supposed to involve fixing the forums Hussie deleted. Also they entirely butcher converting the site's... extremely high amount of Flash movies and games. (I don't blame Viz or Hussie for that, though - Adobe basically left Flash creators high and dry on that one.) Oh, and Hiveswap Act 2 is now on hiatus. They're working on a series of visual novels collectively called Friendsim. Oh, and they're firing the entire Hiveswap team. Oh, and they nuke their entire Tumblr blog as part of a bad ARG. Meanwhile Meanwhile, Toby Fox stealth-drops a "survey program" that turns out to be a full demo of an upcoming game project that he's secretly been working on since before Hiveswap even hit Kickstarter. Oh, and his other game is now on two consoles and has an official Japanese translation. Did I mention good project management works wonders? Hussie/WP/Viz/whoever releases a Homestuck epilogue. Actually, two of them - under the guise of it being "dubiously canon". This apparently gives them enough money to rehire much of the WP staff and get Act 2 development back on track. Oh, and now they're announcing another visual novel project called Pesterquest, which has nothing to do with Hiveswap. WP then announces a Homestuck^2 Patreon, presumably because their other fundraising avenues ran out. Pesterquest ships. In keeping with tradition, WP breaks more of their site. Several more Hiveswap Act 2 trailers are dropped in concert with website closures. Act 2 releases without credits, ostensibly due to online harassment, but several of the people involved claim they were never asked about this. A bunch of cut content is found, some of which is retroactively cut after-the-fact with an update. WP then sells keys directly to try and front-run Steam's 30% cut. Hussie starts working on an entirely different project and What Pumpkin kills their Patreon. WP then freaks out over Sarah Z's video and the blog post I'm summarizing and releases a very long Hiveswap backer update failing to refute any of those. The TOG demo leaks. Hussie quits Homestuck a year after quitting Homestuck. tl;dr Oh my fucking god it's still two pages how the hell can anyone be this mismanaged

cobertos 5y ago

The IRL drama lore feels almost as sprawling and convoluted as the Homestuck universe lore itself. Is this actually sustainable to build a business on? Constant social/company drama, but instead of peddling it as interactive content in itself (like TMZ, reaction channels, etc, though these Homestuck drama explanation videos/blogs come off the same way), it is the foundation for the entire community that keeps the interaction and discussion going, to keep it relevant? There's truly a lot of talent in the Homestuck community and still steam in the brand so I assume it still has inertia and will move forward.

cyber_kinetist 5y ago
Nah, I think Homestuck is basically over at this point, too many former fans and fan creators seem to be incredibly burnt out by all the recent drama. I think Hussie should release Homestuck as public domain at this point, it seems to be the only way for him to redeem himself as an artist, after all the accusations towards his mismanagement of his workers.