The Hiveswap Fiasco (2020)
blog.giovanh.com
blog.giovanh.com
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-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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Reference: https://drewlinky.com/Drew/SPAT/relatedmaterials/appendC.htm...
Toby Fox was actually quite heavily involved in the production of Homestuck, he was in the Music Team from the early days. The Music Team was a ragtag group of people on the Internet who volunteered to make some background music for Homestuck Flash animations - basically the team members would upload whatever work they've done on a single netdrive and Hussie would pick and choose some files to use in his next Flash animation. Basically your work can potentially end up on Homestuck if it's good, but it's not guaranteed and totally at Hussie's whims. This disorganized way of creating art obviously has its problems - the first thing that happened was the whole Bill Bolin drama, which basically had one artist throw a tantrum when Hussie used some of his work that was unfinished and not intended to reveal to the public.
Later on, Toby's music work became more and more respected by Hussie until he became head of the Music Team. (Toby's an incredibly talented and gifted composer - he didn't even knew how to use a DAW when he first came in the team, and half a decade later he's considered as one of the greatest video game composers!) But the problem was that Hussie was starting to give too much priority to Toby over the remaining Music Team members - Toby's work would frequently show up but others wouldn't. There was also barely any communication with the team at all, but in contrast to this Toby was really close to Hussie at this point. (One obscure fact: Toby created the first sections of Undertale inside Hussie's basement.) Anyways, this basically created a huge rift among the team. The other Music Team members thought that they were being ignored/neglected by Hussie, and this eventually resulted in some Internet callout drama that resulted in Hussie explicitly kicking out some of the team members.
This drama is also conflated with the fact that the community was kinda split between people who came in before and after Act 5 has started: the old-school fans in the (now gone) MSPA forums vs. the new fans from Tumblr. These two had incredibly different views on how they saw Homestuck: the former mostly revolved around appreciating the intricate worldbuilding and its convoluted plot, and the latter mostly focused on its characters (Act 5 introduced the troll species, which resulted in a Cambrian explosion of shipping and all sorts of weird headcanons). The Music Team strongly associated with the old MSPA forums, but Toby was clearly much more active in the latter group, which might have resulted in a cultural detachment between him and the rest of the team. Toby was already a superstar inside the Tumblr portion of the Homestuck fandom - everyone knew his name, and his initial fanbase would help in kickstarting Toby's first game project (Undertale).
You've said that Toby was really good at managing the release of his games and all that professional project management jazz, but you have to understand that Toby probably learned a lot from this incident. Toby wasn't always the quiet, reserved Internet creator that everyone seems to assume. (Try watching "The Baby is You" on Youtube and you'll know what I mean.) Though Toby really doesn't really seem to be at fault for this whole drama, in my opinion Hussie's more in the wrong here for not communicating clearly with his former contributors about their roles. If Hussie was intending to switch to a more closed-style development, he should have explicitly disbanded the team, instead of meandering until frustration and resentment builds enough to reach a critical point.
What's interesting about this is: the whole 'in-group close to Hussie' vs 'out-group neglected by Hussie' dynamic now seems to repeat in a much grander scale if you see how the drama at What Pumpkin NYC turned out. Sarah Z. didn't disclose the full emails from Hussie so there are a lot of details that are missing, but the basic picture could be roughly drawn: there was a in-group close to Hussie and anybody not inside that group basically felt they were neglected and ignored. Eventually some of the latter try to start a coup inside the company and it ends in total disaster. A lot of the conflicts related to Homestuck's production seems to be fueled by a pattern of jealousy, resentment, and cultish behavior, and this gets further repeated in Homestuck^2. (Though that's for another day, this post is getting way out of hand.)