The Kickstarter Campaign§

On September 4, 2012, Andrew Hussie launched a Kickstarter project for a point-and-click adventure game based on his comic, Homestuck.

MSPaintAdventures had always been inspired by adventure games (like King’s Quest), even in its stories before Homestuck. As the Kickstarter campaign post explained:

Homestuck, like all other stories on MS Paint Adventures, was built on extensive parody of video games, most notably classic adventure games. The “mock adventure game” format has driven the creation of every page in the story, often with readers supplying commands for what the characters should do next. So for the project after Homestuck, I think it would not only be fitting, but quite exciting to present the story in the form of an actual adventure game.

…

When [Homestuck is] complete, I’ll work with an independent game developer to create a game involving a new story based within the Homestuck universe—assuming this project is funded, of course. The readers, through their participation, have helped make Homestuck what it has become. They may continue to participate in Homestuck’s evolution by helping to fund this project!

The scope of the game was drafted out very roughly; it would be “like a spinoff” “based on homestuck” in a “shorter, self-contained story”. What Pumpkin (the company that handled homestuck merch) would be “working with an experienced game developer” for the development of the actual game. Once game development began, backers would get weekly updates.

The total funding goal of the project was $700,000. For $15, you could get a digital copy of the game, which was set to release some time in 2014. (Remember those numbers.)

(If you go to the live link on Kickstarter and scroll down to “Risks and challenges”, the field is empty, which is humorous in retrospect, but that’s just due to the Homestuck Kickstarter predating that field. No issue there.)

There was a very wide range of tiers available that included various combinations of merchandise (some exclusive to the Kickstarter, some not), the game, and the soundtrack. I’ll note a few of them here that are representative of the selection:

• $15: A digital download of the game
• $25: A digital download of the game plus the game soundtrack
• $55: Game, soundtrack, and a physical print
• $75: A limited-run physical edition of the game, signed by Andrew Hussie
• $100: The game, a shirt, some stickers, and some enamel pins
• $250: The game, a plushie, a tote bag, a shirt, some stickers, and some enamel pins

This was also the literal peak of the famously passionate Homestuck internet fandom. It was the perfect storm.

The project made its entire $700,000 goal within 32 hours.

As the project kept generating interest and support, they introduced stretch goals for the game, promising the extra funds would go to “higher production values.” As the project got more and more funding, they passed several stretch goals, adding more platforms, translations, merch, and an art book to the project. This was all fairly standard.¹

Some of the stretch goals met included support of new platforms (Mac and Linux), multilanguage support (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish), a closed beta where all backers could beta test the adventure game, a “making-of” art book, and — at the very peak — a full digital copy of Homestuck (the comic) to be included with the physical game.

Andrew made another news post on the main Homestuck site on September 24, expressing extreme gratitude, going over a few logistics, and adding the option to back directly with PayPal.

On October 4, 2012, the Kickstarter campaign finished at 2.48 million dollars, plus an undisclosed amount of additional direct backing through PayPal that put them over the 2.5 million mark². (Andrew later confirmed this.) This number is noteworthy because it met their $2.5 million stretch goal, which added that digital copy of Homestuck (the comic) to be shipped with physical copies of the game. They made more than three times their original goal, and were the 6th most successful Kickstarter project of all time. Andrew made a news post and things were looking good. Andrew had been producing great content for years now; imagine what he could do with resources!

As of Update #36 from April 2021, What Pumpkin mentions that the campaign itself was actually managed and directed by George Rohac, croudfunding specialist and WP’s one time Director of Business Development:

The Kickstarter was planned by the What Pumpkin business development team in mid 2012. One member of the team was a crowdfunding specialist who led the planning process and managed the contracts with the developer. Prior to the Kickstarter opening for pledges, What Pumpkin worked out a plan for a flexible game concept that could be refined according to how much the campaign ultimately brought in.

According to this post, the Kickstarter was planned with flexible funding in mind, so that the game could be made for as little as $700,000 but could also scale up if the Kickstarter made more than its initial goal (as it did). Excellent!

Learn about accountability on Kickstarter§

(moved)

But first, merch.§

Before the game, though, came merch fulfilment for the Kickstarter rewards. An enormous amount of people contributed to the campaign, so the process of sending out backer surveys, collecting addresses, and doing the actual work of shipping items to 11,000 people was a significant amount of work.

Regarding the merchandise, the Kickstarter campaign says

…the reward bundles here are so nice, that they actually still represent a pretty good value for the pledge. I think the scalemate plushes came out especially great. They are of almost impossibly high quality for something produced in bulk. This item is in very limited supply—note the finite number available for that tier. There are a couple more hidden bundles to be revealed later, but once they’re gone, that’s it! That’s all we have. But if the response to the scalemates turns out to be strong, we’re going to look into making more sometime next year.

It’s been noted that most (if not all) of the merchandise³ was, in fact, resold in other places since the campaign, but personally I’m glad it was, as it is very nice.

The signed physical print is a beautiful piece by Skeptic Archer. Oddly, it’s only credited in a small footnote at the end of the Kickstarter page, and the beautiful 36”x24” print is only signed (initialed) by Andrew. Odd art crediting is a minor note, but something to keep in mind going forward.

(This is unconfirmed, but according to a now-deleted comment, Rachel from What Pumpkin estimated the actual production budget for the game after merchandise and backer rewards as $1.6 million.) As of Update 38, the $1.6 million number was confirmed. Further, the approximate cost of manufacturing and distributing Kickstarter rewards (which may or may not include rewards that have not been produced yet, WP leaves it ambigious) was $730k.

Announcements about this came through Kickstarter project updates.

According to the FAQ,

A backers-only blog will be going up and weekly updates will tell you about behind-the-scenes work not only with regards to this game project, but also about how we choose, develop, and deliver the merch that you see in our store and in these paks. If you don’t become a backer, you will not receive access.

Future updates were meant to take place on a “backer blog”, which was to be a subforum on the MSPA Forums exclusive to Kickstarter backers, where What Pumpkin would keep backers updated on progress. The Kickstarter promises to give detailed weekly updates until the full game releases. This is, of course, entirely appropriate and expected for a project that was given $2.5 million — transparency is expected, and opacity is cause for suspicion and alarm.

The only news out of the Kickstarter was shipping updates until 2013.

Comic Gigapause§

There had also been a brief note in the October news post for the latest comic hiatus that mentioned working on the Kickstarter project:

I also have to allocate some time to work on the Kickstarter game. That didn’t stop being a thing I have to do. It’s coming along. I’ll probably have a more substantive update on that before the end of the year. There hasn’t been much to report yet since it’s mostly been in a high level planning and writing phase. And firming up tons of legal minutiae. Stuff like that.

“Firming up tons of legal minutiae” here presumably describes doing legal footwork for the IP and setting the appropriate contracts with the “experienced game developer”.

Update 1§

Update #14 (Backers only)

Greetings, and Happy New Year. Welcome to the First Annual Homestuck Kickstarter Update of 2013!!!

On December 31, 2013, MSPA released the “First Annual Homestuck Kickstarter Update”. This was a much-anticipated behind the scenes look at the game design and high-level planning. This post mostly consisted of notes about how things were actually coming along, while trying not to spoil anything about the game. A few plot elements were confirmed or disconfirmed: it was revealed that Sburb would not be in the game, but trolls would be involved somehow. Stuff like that.

One new human character was shown, with rough sketches and a 3D model.

Andrew also teased the “experienced game developer” they would be working with for development, but did not reveal the company in the update. (This would later turn out to be The Odd Gentlemen.)

There was no news yet about the backer blog or how the weekly updates would be handled.

Namco High§

December 2013 was also the release of Namco High, a dating sim developed by What Pumpkin Studios with Andrew Hussie as the game’s Creative Director.

Namco High is a simple visual novel. It’s primarily about characters from Namco franchises, but there are some stories about Homestuck characters mixed in as well that you could purchase and play. There are quite a few newsposts on the MSPA website.

What Pumpkin is now the development studio§

Over the last several months, we’ve been shifting the development operation from the previous studio over to What Pumpkin. We have both agreed it will be the best move to continue production in-house, given the future game development plans for the Homestuck property (more on that further down). So this means exactly what it sounds like. As of this moment, in addition to everything else What Pumpkin does, it is officially now a game dev studio as well. Pretty cool!

Setting up a game dev studio from scratch is fairly tricky however. Hiring new people, getting them up to speed, and setting up the infrastructure represents a bump in the road on our previously devised rollout schedule. The original plan had us testing the game by this point. Looks like testing within first half of next year is more likely.

…

But given that we have decided to pull a game dev studio out of thin air over the last couple months, it has gone alarmingly well. All the hiring was done quickly, and people have been cranking out great stuff (see samples above, all of which was done in-house). I’m pretty psyched about the new team!

The game is no longer being developed by The Odd Gentlemen, allegedly due to “the future game development plans for the Homestuck property”. As far as I can tell, The Odd Gentlemen never mention Homestuck again after the two blog posts already mentioned. What Pumpkin will now expand and, in addition to its existing responsibilities handling the merchandise for Homestuck and Hiveswap, become a game studio “out of thin air”.

There will be two games§

So as a result, from the start I conceived of a story that revolved around the idea of there eventually being two games

…

The second game is not intended as a sequel though. It is meant to be a story told in parallel with the first. So when both games are finished, people will be able to play them in either order.

There will be two games with parallel storylines. They will be produced sequentially, but can be played alternating once both are released to get the full story in sequence. (This seems to be a similar concept to what would become the Homestuck Epilogues, years later.)

The entire first game would be considered the “Homestuck Adventure Game” that was funded by the original crowdfunding campaign and owed to backers. Presumably, the second game would be funded by profits off the first game and the rest of the franchise, or perhaps by a separate Kickstarter. Regardless, backers would not be entitled to the second game.

The first game is called “Hiveswap”§

This is the title of the first game.

The first game, Hiveswap, is the Homestuck Adventure Game that the Kickstarter supported. The second game (which will later be titled Hauntswitch) will be released later.

Hiveswap is now episodic§

When I say “first game” and “second game”, I mean those will be two distinct storylines that each consist of several episodes to be released in sequence. Four episodes per game is looking likely. The fact that there will be multiple installments won’t change much for backers. Anyone who backed will be entitled to each download for the first game. I’m sure there will be other questions that come up as a result of this release model, such as how physical copies are handled, but just keep in mind that we’ll be working things out to stay favorable to backers. We’ll have more answers as things take shape.

Designing the story around two games is an old idea, based on having a plan in place to continue the series if the demand is there. But releasing each one episodically is a new idea, based more on the emerging realities of production. I think it’s the right call, both to get something out sooner, but also I think it will add some dimension to the story itself and the way it’s received. Much of the fun for Homestuck readers was in following an ongoing story, getting together with other readers and discussing new developments. So releasing the game like this should preserve that part of the experience somewhat. Leaving some space between episodes should build some anticipation for what happens next. I suspect a lot of people will enjoy the story more this way.

Instead of releasing a complete game, Hiveswap will be released in (probably four) episodes, due in part to “the emerging realities of production”. Hussie also seems to believe that the serial nature of the comic will translate well to the game, and actually enhance the experience for players.

Episodic game development is known as being an especially high-risk game development strategy. Just quoting from Wikipedia here:

Essentially, the business model of the episodic gaming is still considered high-risk for developers… Experts cite that this can be demonstrated in the limited number of successes of episodic game ventures. Specific disadvantages include the following:

…

• Some developers choose the episodic model because they lack the resources to complete a full-length game, and hope the sales of episodes will fund further development. If earlier episodes fail to sell, then funding for future episodes may suffer or disappear, forcing developers to renege on promises of future episodes and cut storylines short.

I’m quoting from Wikipedia here to emphasize the point that this isn’t an industry secret; the disadvantages and risks of the episodic business model are well-known. Just saying the phrase “episodic” immediately brings to mind that one example you’re already thinking of.

Andrew assures everyone that “The fact that there will be multiple installments won’t change much for backers” and “we’ll be working things out to stay favorable to backers.” (He will not follow through on this.)

Concept Art Dump§

This update was frontloaded with a “concept art dump” that closely resembles the game that would become Hiveswap: Act 1, including designs for the manor, attic, treehouse, Alternia, and portal.

This post also included 3D models rigged with animation! Very exciting stuff.

King’s Quest and The Odd Gentlemen§

or, The Odd Gentlemen robbed us, as ipgd put it.

In July 2015 (the future), ipgd, friend of Andrew’s and general insider published a post (alt) that was the culmination of their research into the Kickstarter:

i’m sure that everyone has noticed by now that the homestuck game is very, very late. boy, do i have a fun reason why!

you may remember that what pumpkin announced that the game studio “the odd gentlemen” was originally attached to develop the game, and you may also remember that they quietly moved to in house development in 2014. what they didn’t tell you: the reason they did this was that odd gentlemen stole kickstarter money and spent it on king’s quest.

i imagine most of us who backed the homestuck game kickstarter are pretty curious about what was going on there. i’ve done some work on the comic and talk to andrew from time to time, so i tried asking about what happened and got some very cagey non-responses. eventually, he tells me he actually can’t tell me anywhere but through kickstarter because of a settlement he signed (already fishy). so, i sent in an inquiry through KS and what i got was a big steaming load of bullshit worse than anything i could have imagined. i’m talking multiple counts of embezzlement and fraud.

according to the timeline in the doc i got, WP gave 788k to TOG in 2012 to develop hiveswap. they then proceeded to do next to nothing, completely blowing off the dev schedule that they agreed to. (the game was supposed to be done by oct 2014. instead, that was when WP ended up having to switch to in house development and start from scratch.) the doc included a detailed rundown of everything TOG actually did. in summary:

“Over 8 months of development, TOG produced exactly one “playable build”. It is a single room, involving one character, no animation, and almost no other key features. Virtually nothing works properly. It was submitted in February of 2014, and no improvements or additional versions were submitted beyond that date.”

a link to it was included in the doc. it’s… probably the worst thing i’ve ever seen in my life?? if you try to click on ANYTHING, joey runs into a bookcase and flies into the air and the demo gets stuck. the only thing that distinguishes it from an out-of-the-box adventure creator demo is its very subpar models and the fact it is unplayably bugged.

at some point TOG apparently just completely gave up working on hiveswap, because they were tapped to develop king’s quest (you can see them admit this in public here at about 1 minute into this video). however, instead of dropping out of developing the game, they decided to just… not tell WP, and proceeded to spend the money they were given on KQ’s development instead.

eventually, after months of platitudes and refusals to communicate (at one point andrew even moved across the country to be able to visit TOG’s offices and get the ball rolling on development, but they wouldn’t even let him come in), WP realized that they’d have to drop TOG, so they terminated the contract in late 2014.

at that stage, TOG said they had 390,000 dollars left of the money WP gave them that they hadn’t spent on “development” or taxes. but, get this – in the 7 months it took them to agree on a settlement for returning the money, they spent 170,000 of it on king’s quest. seriously. like, they didn’t even try to hide it – they straight up spent it after they’d already officially stopped working on the game, and were just like, haha, whoops? pay you back later i guess.

this isn’t acknowledged in a binding settlement like the king’s quest embezzlement is, but i’m pretty sure most of the 190k they claim they spent on hiveswap’s development before they picked up KQ went into neil gaiman’s wayward manor. they picked THAT up at around the time they were supposed to start working on hiveswap, and admitted the workload was conflicting with their ability to devote time to hiveswap. given the egregiously overstated man hours claimed for how little work they actually did, and the fact they admittedly stole the money for another game, i think it’s a pretty obvious conclusion to reach.

it doesn’t look like there was ever a point where TOG wasn’t funneling homestuck’s KS money into another game. it’s unclear whether they EVER actually intended to seriously develop the game. they straight up signed up to steal money from us.

andrew mentioned that this was one of the biggest reasons for the gigapause, and that all the logistics of dealing with TOG’s incompetence meant he couldn’t get much work done on the comic in that time.

why am i posting this? well, king’s quest was developed with stolen money, so it’s probably in your best interest to know this before you buy it. all things considered, it’s a miracle that hiveswap is doing as well as it is – at this point, i think hiveswap has moved past this fiasco and isn’t in any danger of falling through. it’s uh, pretty late, but from what i’ve seen, they’re well on their way to an Actual Game that may be Actually Good despite getting jerked around by a circus of incompetent clowns for 8 months.

at this point, i’m not sure what to DO about this. what pumpkin is bound by the settlement they had to sign if they wanted to get any of the money back at all, so there’s not much that they themselves can do to retrieve the money TOG stole from us. i actually tried messaging sierra, the company that licensed KQ to TOG, but they don’t seem to care that KQ was made with stolen money. maybe activision might want to know. in any case, it’s important that this info get out there so people know what they’re dealing with when buying something from the odd gentlemen.

The key allegations ipgd makes here are:

• What Pumpkin paid The Odd Gentlemen $788k to develop Hiveswap by October 2014
• The Odd Gentlemen did not meet the agreed-upon schedule
• The only thing The Odd Gentlemen produced for Hiveswap was an awful and unusable demo
• The Odd Gentlemen being horrible forced What Pumpkin to switch to in-house development in order to produce the game at all
• TOG spent a significant amount of What Pumpkin’s money on King’s Quest instead of Hiveswap
  • Even after they were told to stop entirely, they kept siphoning money
• What Pumpkin eventually got a formal settlement
  • Including admission of wrongdoing from TOG
  • But the details of the settlement were kept secret even from the development team and other insiders
• As of late 2014, What Pumpkin was left with ~$200k and no game The ~$200k number here is only what What Pumpkin was able to reclaim from the TOG contract; this does not include their other operating funds or the other revenue that should still have been left over from the Kickstarter campaign.

Andrew Hussie himself later explicitly “no-comment”ed on the allegations:

andrewhussie@andrewhussie

Replying to ryan5162000:

@ryan5162000 post wasn't official in any capacity. asked the user to delete it. i have no comment on matters between WP and TOG.

Jul 4 07:07:00 +0000 2015

(Archive copy)

Of particular note is the sentence “i have no comment on matters between WP and TOG”, which is exactly what you’d have to say if you had settled with a binding NDA, as is the claim.

Not only did ipgd take down the original Tumblr post, since then, someone (either WP or ipgd herself) submitted a special request to the wayback machine to manually prevent the post from being archived. (See here.)

Hiveswap Friends§

Update #18 (Public)

This update is another asset update. The main piece is a video, featuring high-quality views of the 3D character models. There are some more character designs, also with 3D models. This is going to be a 3D game.

Andrew reveals the music team for Hiveswap: James Roach (known at the time for his fan music as part of The Homestuck Fan Musicians and tracks on coloUrs and mayhem and Toby Fox (known for his work in the music team and Undertale, which would release in September 2015).

We also hear something about more troll symbols:

The original Homestuck trolls corresponded with zodiac signs, of course. You can see these ones are wearing different symbols. We ended up making quite a few new ones to create an “expanded zodiac.” Around 250, actually. The majority of which won’t appear in the game, but we made a bunch of extra ones I guess in case of an emergency. This can be considered the canonical extended set of troll symbols. I’ll let you see them later, in a more meaningful context. If there is really such a thing as a meaningful context for 250 fake zodiac signs.

Emerald City ComicCon§

There is another post shortly after about What Pumpkin having a booth at Emerald City ComicCon. We get this interesting tidbit about a playable demo of the game:

If you’re one of the thousands of comics and gaming fans who’ll be hitting the Seattle Convention Center this weekend for ECCC, don’t miss your chance to visit What Pumpkin at booth #305 to try a preview segment of Hiveswap. Bear in mind this is an early preview of a work in progress. It’s one room, with some features disabled, but it’s playable, looks very good, and gives a strong sense of what it will be like to play it. It’s not the sort of thing we can put online anywhere yet, but we’re more than happy to let people visiting the booth try it out on our machine.

There is some footage of this version:

It’s a fully-3D version of Joey’s room, with an inventory, and pointing and clicking. Great!

Hiveswap Press Sheet§

Around this time, What Pumpkin Studios NYC released a press sheet about Hiveswap. This is a one-sheet that just lays out the basics: developed by What Pumpkin NYC, four acts, releasing throughout 2015, “describing what an adventure game is”, that sort of thing. It also compliments how good the game is, as press sheets are liable to do.

GDC Italian Interview§

A GDC interview given in Italian revealed a few more details about the game.

Some translations from a reddit thread:

• It will be out on MAY, split into four parts and available for PC, Mac and Linux.
• “the graphics are a bit outdated, but recall the webcomic’s drawing style and upgrade it to 3D”

There were also a few plot details that were confirmed by later updates.

Jess Haskins Gameplay Preview§

(These names are somewhat misleading: the “Gameplay Walkthrough”, doesn’t feature gameplay, but is rather a narrated slideshow of concept art and renders.)

These two videos of “Prototype 1.1” were posted to “GamerHubTV” and are narrated by Jess Haskins. The gameplay looks very similar to the Emerald City ComicCon demo.

The prototype version has multiple playable characters (Jude, Joey, and Xefros) with 3D models. (Joey is wearing a dog shirt that has not yet been seen in any other media.)

The Gameplay Preview includes a sample of the 3D intro cutscene with Joey and Jude, and some 3D adventure game gameplay with adventure game commands and a sylladex inventory. There are several 3D maps available, including Joey’s room, Jude’s treehouse, and a basement. It ends with another 3D cutscene featuring the cherub portal in the attic.

Kickstarter Update & Trailer§

Update #20 (Public)

Have you noticed that we’re posting more updates lately? That’s because things are really moving on the game right now, and there’s a lot of exciting progress to report.

This last trailer was also posted on the WP NYC Tumblr.

Gameplay!

There was some criticism of the gameplay trailer for the low framerate and lack of a specified release date. But we have the makings of a game here! And don’t worry, it’s definitely still in 3D. Why would it not be in 3D? Everything is okay.

(We’ll later learn that this trailer was posted to YouTube by the office manager before it was ready, and without the go-ahead from the art team or anyone involved, which could explain issues like the low framerate and unfinished textures.)

Backers are encouraged to pay attention to What Pumpkin Studios’ new YouTube channel, “since we’ll be posting more cool stuff there in the coming months as we get closer to the game’s release.” The two videos from GamerHubTV were never uploaded to the official YouTube channel. (In fact, nothing was uploaded to the YouTube channel after this point.)

What Pumpkin’s acting Creative Director, Jess Haskins, also gave several interviews about the making of the game at Review Fix, Tap Repeatedly, and Hey Poor Player:

Review Fix: Jess Haskins talks Hiveswap§

Review Fix

Review Fix: What has the development process been like thus far?

Haskins: It’s been kind of crazy, but going really well so far. The game is a spin-off of the Homestuck webcomic and was funded a couple of years ago on Kickstarter. After that, the script was in a sort of gestation period for a long time as we worked on building up the world and filling out and refining the story during pre-production. Back then I was working on it as writer/narrative designer/game designer along with Andrew Hussie, the creator of the webcomic, and our assistant producer Mike Christatos, who helped develop the characters and story. Last year we founded a game development studio basically from scratch here in NYC to launch into the production phase, and since then we’ve been plowing ahead full steam. Since going into active production it’s really been coming together in quite a short time.

Day one in the new office we had a skeleton team of me, our senior producer, our lead artist, and one animator. We were still waiting for our lead programmer to serve out his two weeks’ notice at his last position so he could come in! The team grew very fast from that point, though, up to a current total of 12 full time here in the office.

When we all saw the very first test animations come back, Joey walking around and wielding her flashlight, we were just floored. After designing and writing and talking about these characters for so long, actually seeing them alive and moving across our screens was like a revelation. Since then we’ve been moving forward in leaps and bounds, and the first episode (out of four) should be out this spring

Review Fix: Lets [sic] talk about the visuals. How tough as it been to capture the look that you wanted?

Haskins: It’s been interesting translating Homestuck’s 2D aesthetic, or I should say the many different 2D aesthetics as they evolved over time, into a 3D format. We wanted something that was visibly grounded in the comic’s visual style, but with a 3D environment we had some room to play around with the way it was rendered and create something unique.

We didn’t want to be slaves to the look of source material, which was very informed by its methods of production – heavy photomanipulation and stark colorization on the backgrounds, copy-paste static sprites, wacky 2-frame Flash animations. We couldn’t just copy that and have it look right. So we have things like 3D modeled characters with animated 2D textures for their facial expressions, and a toon shader that gives a light 2D outline effect to the characters, walking around in a slightly cartoony, stylized 3D world. But we always go back to the comic for reference, and find ways we can bring elements of its visuals into this game.

Review Fix: How important was the fans’ support in the creation of this game?

Haskins: Absolutely huge. This project wouldn’t exist without the enthusiastic outpouring of support we received from our fans and backers on Kickstarter, so thank you! We took to Kickstarter asking for $700,000 to make a small little adventure game, and wound up with $2.48M in pledges. So it’s no longer a small little game! We were given a license – no, a mandate! – to go out and create something really amazing, so that’s what we’re doing.

On another level, many Homestuck readers and fans actually go on to work for us professionally, contributing to projects like the Paradox Space series of spin-off comics, or lending their skills as artists, musicians, and writers to the game. Like Mallory Dyer, an insanely talented artist who makes these incredibly detailed plush dolls of Homestuck characters – fabric sculptures, really – and now works for us doing a bunch of our concept and 2D art. Or Phil Gibson, who’s worked on the Paradox Space comics and does double duty as both dialog writer and artist concepting our NPC designs. In addition to the full-time staff who are part of our New York studio, we have a big team of remote contractors and freelancers all over the world who are passionate, talented fans and were just so amazing at what they did that we had to hire them.

Tap Repeatedly: Hiveswap§

Tap Repeatedly

Andrew Hussie is, according to Haskins, highly involved in storytelling for the project and creating high level vision. Drafts are sent to him, and it’s “very collaborative,” but the project isn’t micromanaged by the creator either. Experienced game developers on the What Pumpkin team have a lot of input. Haskins also mentioned Ryan North, of Dinosaur Comics fame, as an early collaborator on the game’s high level story. Haskins herself was brought on to the Hiveswap project as a game designer after the Kickstarter ended along with the New York based studio. Haskins has worked on a variety of games, from puzzle platformers and social games to the multi-player shooter Guns of Icarus Online.

Hey Poor Player: Hiveswap’s Jess Haskins§

Hey Poor Player

Jay: Hiveswap got its start as a Kickstarter campaign, which saw monumental success. Did the projects crowdfunding success expand the scope of what you could do with the game?

Jess: It definitely did. What we would have been able to achieve with the original funding goal would have still been neat and fun and interesting, but much more modest in scope. There’s a certain kind of epicness that’s part of the feel of Homestuck, not just in the cosmic sweep of the story but in the sheer amount of content and attention to detail. It’s wonderful to have the budget to be able to think a little bigger and make the game feel grand and epic as well, and we’re touched and grateful for the outpouring of support the project received to make that happen.

Jay: We know the game will be episodic in nature. How big, both in time and scope, will the episodes be? And what made the team decide on an episodic format?

Jess: The episodes themselves (which we call Acts; there will be four Acts in total) will be pretty hefty – a fair bit longer than, say, a typical Telltale episode. That was one of the reasons for breaking it up, because each Act will take a good chunk of time to play and spacing them out will make them a little more digestible. There’s room to play, discuss, mull it over, maybe replay and try some different choices, and have something left to anticipate and look forward to. That’s part of the structure of the webcomic, as well – big, action-packed Acts with a lot of drama and twists and turns, and then a pause to build up excitement and anticipation before the next content release.

Plus, we’re really excited to share the game with the world, and releasing it episodically lets us get it into players’ hands that much sooner.

Jay: Hiveswap was originally announced to be a collaborative effort with indie studio The Odd Gentlemen, but has now been moved to What Pumpkin. What made What Pumpkin a better choice?

Jess: Forming a game studio and bringing the project in-house was a big development for us, obviously! We have a bunch of game ideas for the Hiveswap universe and beyond, so it just made sense to move all production in-house. It opens up the opportunity for us to work on other game projects in the future once Hiveswap is completed, if all goes well. It’s been nice to have a direct line between the creative vision of Andrew Hussie and the writers to the rest of the development team.

When we started the studio I was the sole What Pumpkin employee working full-time on the project as writer and game designer, and we were fortunate in that there’s a great pool of creative talent here in New York City. That’s where I’m based, and where we established the game-development branch of the company. We were able to very quickly put together a wonderful team and dive right into production work, and since then we’ve been making great progress. It’s been really exciting to see the game come together.

(Again, Jess’s answer here to the question about in-house production was a lie, as explained already.)

Jay: It was said in an update about the game that development was going “alarmingly well.” What have some of the biggest surprises and challenges been along the way?

Jess: A lot of it is just the basic challenges of any software development, but especially games – establishing our tools and pipeline, building out the core features of the game, and getting it all working seamlessly and bug-free. We’re developing the game in Unity, and we’re building our own adventure game engine on top of that. We looked at a few off-the-shelf options, but apart from some piecemeal plugins and tools, none of them really offered what we needed. Apart from the game engine, we’re also building our own custom tools for managing data, since everything we looked at was either overpowered for our needs or really lacking in flexibility.

The first and biggest hurdle has been just getting the first playable room, which requires basically the whole asset integration pipeline and all the game systems and features to be in place and working together. After that, it’s all just content creation. This is a huge game with a lot of content, but we have a bunch of brilliant writers and awesomely talented artists cranking out loads of funny jokes and beautiful art. We might be going faster if we didn’t have to stop all the time to goggle at the new assets or laugh at stuff in the script as it comes in, but it’s that good.

Jay: Hiveswap is planned to be the first in a pair of games that will round out the original Kickstarter-funded project. What then? Are there plans or ideas floating around for future game projects once this is done?

Jess: There are always tons of ideas, but nothing concrete after Hiveswap and the companion game, which we plan to make if the first one does well. At that point we’ll have two big games spanning eight episodes under our belt, and be ready to take over the world. Obviously we would love to keep working on stuff and keep making projects after that. So we really really want Hiveswap to do well! We hope people have as much fun playing it as we’re having while making it.

“King’s Quest in Good Hands”§

While seemingly not directly related to Hiveswap, The Odd Gentlemen gave a video interview with Polygon about the King’s Quest project, which contained this quote from Rob Thompson, The Odd Gentlemen’s lead engineer:

When Lindsey [Lindsey Rostal, Producer at The Odd Gentlemen] came to me, she actually gave me a choice; we had another project going on and she’s like “You want this or you want King’s Quest” — King’s Quest, no doubt, give it to me, I can’t wait, I can’t wait to get started.

This is noteworthy here because, as far as I can tell, the only other project The Odd Gentlemen had going on at this time was Hiveswap. With that in mind, it makes it seem like the staff at The Odd Gentlemen was very excited about King’s Quest and relatively disinterested in Hiveswap, which is obviously concerning. Are they just openly saying here that they’re not interested in Hiveswap and are happy to keep their best people off the project? And if they’re not interested in Hiveswap — or working with Andrew — why? (See other article)

What Pumpkin NYC Tumblr§

What Pumpkin NYC makes their first introductory post on their Tumblr (now deleted), kicking off a few introductory posts about their offices and the apparently compulsory homestuck references.

What Pumpkin NYC would continue to post aggressively and interact with the fandom.

Offline, What Pumpkin would also do some miscellaneous work for Homestuck that wasn’t related to the adventure game, like managing art for Volume 10.

There was also a remote team of developers who did work for the game but weren’t physically colocated with WP NYC, as mentioned briefly in the Review Fix interview. This team included people like writer Cohen Edenfield, animator Angela Sham, artists Shelby Cragg and H. “Rah” Esdaile, and musicians James Roach and Toby Fox, to name a few.

GameNews.ovh Interview§

In May 2015, yet another interview with Jess Haskins came out on now entirely defunct website gamenews.ovh confirming that “Hiveswap Act 1 is due to launch in Q2 2015”, which was imminent.

There were a few questions about the new episodic direction of the game, but Jess insisted that there was no cause for concern:

The game is due to launch a full year after the date in the initial Kickstarter pitch, but Jess assured us that the project is otherwise running smoothly, and that its episodic structure is no cause for alarm.

One: We are not running out of money. We are not splitting the game in two. The game is planned to be episodic. We’re releasing it in four acts, which will be evenly spaced. This isn’t: ‘Oh crap, we only have money to make a quarter of the game! Let’s raise some more!’ We feel that the game is better enjoyed and digested in chunks, sort of like the comic itself, which has a big rush of content, and then a long pause, while the audience can read, absorb, speculate, theorise, tear it apart, dig in, and then anticipate the next instalment.

Jess Haskins makes a few key assertions here. Allegedly, the team is not low on money, and they will not need to push out interstitial content to make money to reinvest into the rest of the game. That concern is denied outright. (Various reports, evidence, and behaviour suggests that this is all blatantly false, that What Pumpkin is and will continue to be low on money and continue to be unable to fulfil their commitments without interstitial fundraising and other gambles.)

There was also the standard interview stuff:

Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie has been involved in every aspect of the writing and production, from the outline level all the way down to the final text and finishing touches; yet it’s been a highly collaborative process. ‘’en to really he’s open to really good ideas, and mostly really funny jokes, wherever we can get them. So if you throw something in that makes Andrew laugh, then it’s in.”

Hiveswap is being developed in Unity, and the production process has been surprisingly fast. “The game has been in pre-production for quite a while. Working on the script and the story at a really high level. It was back in October when we actually started up the studio here in New York, and really got the team together to dive into production. Since then we’ve been tearing through it at a really fast clip. It’s been really nice to see everything come together after it’s been gestating for all this time.”

If this first game, once it’s out, it does well, we’d like to move on to do a second, companion game, also set in the world. [sic]

This last line is a reference to Hauntswitch, the planned sequel to Hiveswap, which will be required to tell the full story.

Meet James Seetal§

WP NYC posted a bio on James Seetal, their Director of Production (mentioned briefly earlier).

I’m responsible for both Hiveswap’s production as well as the maintenance, management, and operations of the game studio. I also function as the Lead Producer for Hiveswap. I manage and run team meetings, create schedules, organize production pipelines with the senior staff, and meet with dev team members individually if they are blocked from completing a task. We use an agile software development process and I organize everyone’s work to insure the project and the studio is running smoothly.

James is responsible for the actual production of the game. He says they’re using an agile development methodology, but doesn’t specify which one.

BigShinyRobot interview§

BigShinyRobot had a rare interview with both Jess Haskins and Andrew Hussie:

What inspired you to make the game? Were you surprised that your Kickstarter was able to get as much money as it did?

Andrew Hussie (creator): I wanted to make another story that took place within the already very big Homestuck universe, to help develop that universe further. I also wanted to do so in a different medium. The stories on my site, like Homestuck, were all adventure game parodies, so why not make a real adventure game, right? And: was I surprised by the funding? Kinda! But kinda also not really, because Homestuck is pretty popular. We did some math in advance, and figured hitting a mark like that was pretty feasible. And that turned out to be true. But getting there was still pretty cool!

What do you think people will like most about the game? Do you think not just fans of Homestuck, but others will like the game as well?

Jess: Hiveswap will appeal to classic adventure game fans and anyone who enjoys a deep, story-driven game with rich character interactions and a detailed world to explore. Players familiar with Homestuck will find a lot of connections to the comic and will definitely recognize the world and style of Andrew Hussie, with his trademark storytelling and humor.

This last answer from Jess is interesting, because it implies that the story is going to be written and scripted by Andrew.

What are the challenges in making a video game Vs. a web comic?

Andrew: A web comic is a huge solo effort. Homestuck has art and music contributors for some Flash animations, but that content is like 1% of the comic. The rest is a huge one-man grind, for thousands of pages. Over the course of years that gets pretty arduous to make, given how much content there is. A game is much more of a team effort. It’s also very challenging, for different reasons. It’s less about doing every little thing yourself, more about generally conducting the efforts of a team of creative people. As the team grows, it’s more about conducting the conductors. It’s pretty complicated, as a lot goes into making a game. Thousands of art assets and such. One major difference is, with my comic, there weren’t many limitations. Any idea I had, I could write and draw and it could be on the website the next day. With a game, with how complicated and expensive production can get, the sky isn’t really the limit. You have a budget to consider. If you throw every crazy idea you have into a game, you’ll burn through all your money very fast.

More info§

We also got a 3D render and name of another character from the game.

3D world of Hiveswap§

What Pumpkin NYC made a blog post about their design process:

Building the world of Hiveswap is becoming a finely tuned system: we rely on a lot of different people to transform an idea in Andrew Hussie’s mind into a finished 3D model. From artists to modelers to painters, everyone involved adds a bit of their personality and perspective to make the game feel like a fully realized place.

The post talks about the general process of building a 3D game environment, from concept art to modelling to lighting. They’ve developed a finely-tuned system to convert designs and concept art to the 3D models used in the game.

Changes at What Pumpkin§

July 20, 2015

Update #21 (Public)

There are a lot of changes taking place at What Pumpkin. These are mostly good things! But one consequence is an inevitable delay in Hiveswap’s release date.

As you may know, What Pumpkin has been primarily concerned with selling merchandise related to Homestuck. Recently, we’ve partnered with We Love Fine to handle all future merchandising, and have been taking steps to put the company’s focus solely on game development. This little restructuring phase means soon we’ll be able to put all our resources and attention into games

This update is about What Pumpkin’s shift from merchandising to game development. WeLoveFine, a third party retailer, had been announced as What Pumpkin (the merch store)’s replacement earlier that month. (WeLoveFine is another complicated story that deserves its own article.)

Meanwhile, What Pumpkin Studios (now possibly just What Pumpkin? but definitely a game development studio) has been expanding so much that they need a bigger office space:

Meanwhile, as our warehouse winds down, things at the studio are trending very much in the opposite direction. So much so that we’ll be moving to a bigger office. What Pumpkin NYC launched last fall with just a handful of people in a tiny office on Wall Street, but since then we’ve grown so much, we literally can’t fit everyone in the room anymore. So an office upgrade is definitely in order. We’ll be moving somewhere that not only can sustain our current operation, but accommodate future growth as well.

Hiveswap is delayed again, this time indefinitely, but they promise that the final product will be polished, fine-tuned, and a deep adventure game experience. The new release date will be announced sometime later.

Meanwhile, What Pumpkin NYC says they’re doing so extraordinarily well that they’re planning to invest in a bigger office space to accommodate their growing staff.

FemHype Interview§

Femhype interviewed the UI designer and texture artist at What Pumpkin NYC. You’re welcome to read the interview for yourself, but I’m actually more interested in the screenshots throughout the article (credited as “Courtesy of What Pumpkin Studios”) of the prototype version of the game, as these were never shared with backers are some of the very few existing screenshots of the NYC prototype:

These screenshots (and a few others) were later put on Paperback Studios’ portfolio page for Hiveswap (although the format makes them hard to see).

Insight into NYC Team Firing§

There was extremely poor communication between What Pumpkin and the staff about all of this. According to conversations I had with a member of the remote team, they actually found out about the studio closing through the public Kickstarter post:

then when the kickstarter post about wpny closing and the game switching to 2d got posted i thought ‘holy shit do i even have a job anymore’ because this was the first time i was seeing anything about either of these things

Gio: did you actually find out through the kickstarter update?

yeah

…

thats why it felt so jarring to me seeing that update, because as far as i knew, 3d hiveswap was still ongoing

A journal post that will have been published by an ex-WP NYC employee in March 2016 gives us a little more insight into how brutal the WP NYC firings were, and confirming the other stories. (Source NSFW).

The Shit Storm that started this all

… I LOVED working there. I had taken so many SHIT jobs, working with creeps for bosses, not getting paychecks, working two jobs sometimes, that I felt like I finally made it! It was backed with some money, we had a popular/funny IP, and it seemed like we had a solid team. But in late October, the entire office was laid off abruptly.

Aside from one very incomplete trailer video, which was released onto youtube by our office manager without telling the art team, no one has really seen any of the game that we made in action. And that hurts. To think people believe we worked on this game for over a year, and made garbage really fucking hurts. The finished trailer with proper textures, lighting, FX, frame rate, etc, looked like an actual polished product. Hell, the last month I was working there, I was working on the second game already, because there was [nothing left for me to do] on the first one! We already had an alpha of the first game, and were hoping to reach beta in a little over a month. The fans really don’t know how close we were…it’s insane.

Because [my husband] worked there too, working there went from being the happiest time of my life, to the worst…Now we were both unemployed. Everyone in the office was losing their shit, rightfully so. We had issues with the owners of the company (aka the web comic creator) and them being transparent with us. We had known 2 months prior to the layoffs that there was a tightening of the budget, as we had to let go of an animator, and two writers/data people. A few others, myself included had their hours cut. The night before we all got laid off, we had received an e-mail from our investor recruiter that we had interest from angel investors, and things were looking good! Hell, we might even get pay raises! Talk about mix signals. :) The owners didn’t talk to us. They didn’t tell us when we were in trouble, and we trusted them.

We were a real team. Like a family. We saw each other more than our significant others, we had so many crunch nights at the office prepping for cons together. The day after the layoffs, we all went into ‘work’. We had planned to just pack up and leave, but we all ended up spending the day together. Playing games, drinking, and watching a hilarious homemade mockumentary one of our programmers made like 10-15 year ago. It was awesome. I couldn’t help but feel hopeless....I had worked with so many idiots, I finally had a well oiled team, and no one willing to fund us. We were given an unusable piece of garbage to work with, we remade an entire game from scratch in months, with a limited team, and my old boss decided to reboot the project again for a third time. What a waste of time, talent, etc…

…

My boss never helped. Repeated, friendly e-mails were ignored. Once I was fired, it’s like I didn’t exist. This was the same experience for my other team members. We thought things were fine, then one day, we were told we were all fired, and our health insurance would expire at the end of the month. No severance.

According to this report, things were going well, as reported, or at least that’s what What Pumpkin told its own team. (Also, more details from ipgd’s story are confirmed, and we learn that the amusingly bad trailer was apparently released without approval.) Then, in a complete act of betrayal, the development team was fired without warning and left without severance or health insurance.

Why Andrew killed WP NYC§

All of this begs the question: if WP NYC was doing so well, why dismantle it? The above story and other sources affirm that the 3D version of Act 1 was nearly finished, and the team was even making considerable progress on Act 2. Why fire all these good people, and why throw out all the work?

We know WP NYC was doing well and making excellent progress. The dA journal notes:

I was working on the second game already, because there was nothing to do on the first one!

And another source concurs:

at the end of 2014 the first act was in a shippable state, act 2 was nearly done. andrew decided to go another direction and scrap the work.

(WP would much later comment that Act 1 wasn’t ready to be shipped at this point, but did exist in a significant form. Notably the “act 2” cited above consists of material that was included in the shipped version of Act 1.)

It’s hard to imagine how much this cost them. Years of work discarded in order to change the art style of the project, and it’s still not clear why. We can rule out a few possibilities — there didn’t seem to be any legal issues with rights, for instance, or technical issues with the engine — but the truth is, only Andrew knows exactly why he made the decision.

According to a conversation I had with an ex-WP NYC employee, the studio was badly mismanaged towards the end:

Personally I think it was that hussie was in over his head. … I don’t want to put it all on hussie tho, despite my coworkers being super awesome I think we were also mismanaged in office and our game designer was all over the place

Towards the end of WP NYC, maybe like 4-5 months before, our art director and tech director took the reins, and started managing stuff…I mean for months we hadn’t even worked towards a vertical slice.

Like I said before, our manager and lead designer who oversaw the NY company were really nice people, but they didn’t know how to manage a game studio. I think they were also over their head.

Edit: After I wrote this article, I published a separate article with leaks about this specific topic: read my second Hiveswap article for additional insight into this.

Edit 2: Much later, and as a response to this article, Andrew gave some reasoning as to why he dissolved WP NYC. Due to the lack of substantiating evidence and the need for extensive fact-checking, I detail this in my third “fallout” article.

Forums offline§

In March 2016, the MSPA Forums went permanently offline. The only explanation or announcement was this message, which displayed when you tried to access the forums:

Untrue.

According to the MSPA Wiki:

Since March 29th 2016 when Homestuck’s Omegapause ended (two weeks away from the comic’s end), the site went abruptly offline; its main page was initially replaced with a plaintext page claiming that passwords had been compromised, but the forums could still be accessed by typing the urls of the individual subforums. Users flooded the questions subforum looking for answers, but received none. The main page was then replaced by one claiming the site was down for maintenance and a few days later, the entire forums vanished from the website. The site was shown to be closed for maintenance until February 2018, when the domain now redirects to the MS Paint Adventures’ website. In October 2019, it was revealed that the forum’s data got corrupted during one of the many server transfers, and thus all non-archived posts are virtually gone.

Many fan adventures, community projects and miscellaneous posts got lost in the process. After its passing other unofficial communities took its mantle, albeit with smaller userbases. [sic]

What Pumpkin and Andrew Hussie aren’t interested in explaining what happened. For years, the site simply read “Forums temporarily offline”, with no indication as to the problem. The main comic page still linked to the forums all that time, with no indication that they were decommissioned or given up on.

As far as I can tell, Andrew himself never made any official comment about the forums, the issues that led to the entire history and the backups being destroyed, or the choice to not replace the forums in any capacity. Until late 2019, it wasn’t even officially confirmed that the forums were permanently deleted. As for Hiveswap, the guarantee of the backer subforum hasn’t been addressed in any capacity, and won’t be in the future.

The only insight we have to what Hussie currently thinks of the forums, in retrospect (besides Makin’s post here) comes from a dramatic set of emails⁷ linked by /r/homestuck moderator Drew (no relation to Andrew) in which Hussie calls interest in the forums “obsession” and “agonizing over every little bit of minutia”. Andrew writes:

Creators usually let go of old sites and outdated work deliberately. Intensive curation of old things like this, while sometimes interesting, can also carry an obsessive energy⁶…

For the purposes of this article, though, the important point here is that the promised subforum for backer updates never happened, and since the MSPA forum was permanently destroyed in March 2016, it never will.

Tech Coast Angels side-channel fundraising§

Remember thewebcomicsreview’s story about being solicited for further fundraising? It turns out that’s not where it ended.

In October 2016, What Pumpkin had a private venture capital seed round. They offered to sell up to $500,000 of What Pumpkin Games, and ended up selling $325K: all to one party, the “Tech Coast Angels”, a US-based angel investing firm (a kind of venture capital, where one firm will invest money into a business for a share, which it hopes to sell later at a profit, after the company appreciates in value.). Apparently none of the prior attempts at soliciting individuals for investment were successful, as TCA was the sole investor in the round.

Throughout 2017, TCA would internally promote What Pumpkin Games, until exiting in 2018 and reporting a return on investment.

New release date edited into website§

The Hiveswap website quietly edited so a newspost contains the following announcement:

Hiveswap: Act 1 will be released January 2017. Follow us at @hiveswapgame for further updates.

Hiveswap: Act 1 is delayed to January 2017. There was significant confusion over the roundabout nature of the announcement:

After almost a year with very little updates (I think, I wasn’t paying too much attention during this time), hiveswap.com edits a years-old newspost to say that the game will be released January 2017. No one has any idea if it’s legit. A What Pumpkin employee seemed to confirm the news but later deleted their post.

Chuck Tingle Dating Simulator§

At some point in 2016, Cohen Edenfield (Hiveswap writer) and John Warren (Homestuck 2.0, Fanbyte) were working on Chuck Tingle Dating Simulator, a full motion video visual novel directed by Zoë Quinn (of gamergate (in)fame) revolving around the stories of Chuck Tingle, who is probably not secretly Andrew writing erotic novels behind a pseudonym and elaborate fake persona, as some have speculated⁸. Chuck Tingle Dating Simulator was funded on Kickstarter in 2016 with a release date of 2017. As of writing, the game never released, but it also hasn’t been formally cancelled yet either.

New trailer§

The Homestuck Official Youtube account posts a trailer for Hiveswap: Act 1, featuring the new 2D art style.

Homestuck Ends§

The credits page is posted to mspaintadventures.org. Homestuck is officially over, except for the epilogues, which Andrew says will come eventually.

In theory, the hard copies of Homestuck that Andrew owes the Kickstarter backers can now be produced and distributed, although as far as I’m aware there has been absolutely zero official mention of this. That backer reward technically isn’t due until all four acts of Hiveswap are finished and the hard copies are sent out. Hard copies were due to ship in 2014 but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon.

PAX West Demo§

In early September, there is a playable demo of Hiveswap available at PAX West (at the WeLoveFine booth.)

Act 1 Release§

Update #30 (Public)

HIVESWAP: Act 1 goes live on the Steam and Humble Store at 2PM EDT!

September 12, 2017: A Kickstarter update reminds everyone that Hiveswap launched on Steam. They also remind backers that signed, physical copies of the game will not be mailed out until all four acts of Hiveswap are finished and released.

Hiveswap: Act 1 (possibly subtitled “Kansas City Shuffle”??? this is never made clear) was developed and published by What Pumpkin Games, inc. and released for $7.99. A version that included the game soundtrack was also available for $11.99.

Act 1 received positive reviews on Steam and from reviewers like MetaCritic. In my opinion, it’s a solid game, and the new 2D artstyle is gorgeous and suits the material well.

To date, Hiveswap: Act 1 has sold between 100,000 and 200,000 copies. Of Steam games released in 2017, Hiveswap ranks #4470, above Doki Doki Literature Club, just under Bendy and the Ink Machine, and several spots beneath SCP: Secret Laboratory, Creativerse, and Realm Grinder.

In the announcement when WP NYC was dissolved, there was this note about the 3D work:

At some point I think I would like to gather all the 3D stuff that was done and present it as an interesting behind the scenes look at the history of this project, so people can appreciate the work the NYC team did. Perhaps at the very least this could be some nice bonus material for backers when the game comes out.

This certainly never happened.

There were some immediate issues with feature completeness, though. The Kickstarter stretch goals that were reached included linux support (at $900k) and English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish language support (at $1m) but launched with neither⁹. Also on the stretch goals (at $1.5m) was “All backers can beta test adventure game.” Of course, the $1.5m goal was reached, but this beta test, of course, never happened. None of this was (to my knowledge) ever publicly addressed or acknowledged.

Cohen Interview§

On September 13, 2017, an “interview” was posted to the What Pumpkin Tumblr page in which Cohen interviews themself about Hiveswap.

Today we’re talking to Cohen Edenfield, that is to say, me. Hi. We’re all pretty busy at the moment, with the release in <22 hours and everything, but I managed to get this handled.

What is your specific role on the Hiveswap team?

I have two full-time jobs on HIVESWAP: Creative Director and Lead Writer/Scripter. As Creative Director, I’ve worked with my team leads Angela, Rah, James and Tauhid and with our programmers to, well, “realize a creative vision.” I give notes, feedback, and broad-strokes direction on pretty much everything on the project, which I’m able to do because I can count on the expertise of the team leads doing an amazing job. I can bring them a rough, sketchy description of the overall “feel” that a piece of music or animation or art needs, and be confident that they’ll spin my straw into gold and make something beautiful. I’ll ask Tauhid for a new UI specific to Alternia, with the vague direction that it use hexagons instead of circles, or I’ll ask Angela for moving clouds, or I’ll ask Rah for a new close-up of a sexy lamp, and I know they’ll get it done. And I’ll ask James for an “8-bit college football fight song,” because he does great work, and because I want to hurt him on a spiritual level.

…

Which brings us, I guess, to my other full-time job, Lead Writer/Scripter, which includes narration, dialogue, item descriptions, etc…I wrote about 150,000 words, all together, if you’re really taking your time, trying different dialogue paths, and actually trying to use everything on everything else. If you’re not, it’s considerably less, but it’s in there.

As for the story, the broad narrative strokes of Act 1 and some specific plot beats were mapped out before I came on board, but in 2+ years of development there’s naturally been some substantial reworking and rearranging to refine things from both a gameplay and a narrative perspective. The characters have changed a fair bit, both to suit a different overall tone and because things change over the course of two years. Andrew looks the finished stuff over, and gives feedback on it, and we make changes as needed. I’ve relied a lot on his storytelling and characterization expertise. I may have penned the current script, but we wrote this game together.

…

When and how did you get your start on the Hiveswap project?

In May 2015 I got an email from Andrew asking if I’d be interested in doing some freelance writing on what I then thought of as the “Homestuck Adventure Game.” I’ve been reading Andrew’s various stuff since like…2003? We used to post on the same forum, so it was this kind of “oh right, hey, I think I know you, actually” moment. I’d finished my Masters in English Lit three days before, and I was looking for freelance work, so the timing couldn’t have been better.

…

How did you get your start in creative direction?

As we restructured the studio to our current remote-working situation, Andrew and I had a lot of talks about what HIVESWAP should actually look like. We kept going back to the gorgeous concept art by Gina and Mallory, and we realized that while the 3D development work that had been done was good, it really didn’t feel like Homestuck. The concept art, the 2D assets… those felt like Homestuck.

There’s one particular discrepancy with Cohen that I’ll mention here. They say here they joined the team in May 2015, which matches up with the timeline: What Pumpkin became the studio in summer 2015, and so Cohen would have been hired soon after as part of WP NYC. Cohen stayed on the team even after WP NYC was dissolved, was promoted to Lead Writer, and wrote the script for the game. That all adds up.

What I can’t reconcile is Update 2 from 2014, where Andrew says the writing for the game is finished. Was there a full script for the game written in 2014 that was later discarded? Assuming that update is true, it sounds like — in addition to all the 3D work — at least one full script for the game was written and discarded. Anyway, for a studio that seems incredibly tight on funds, What Pumpkin sure does end up having to redo a lot of work for no apparent reason.

Hiveswap: Act 1 OST commentary§

In late September, Cohen posted commentary to the What Pumpkin tumblr blog written by James Roach and Toby Fox, the composers of the Act 1 soundtrack.

Part 1, Part 2

Although this is official commentary, it doesn’t seem to have been preserved by What Pumpkin in any format.

Viz Media deal§

On September 14, 2017, Andrew posted a news post announcing a partnership with Viz Media:

What Pumpkin and Homestuck are partnering with Viz Media to work on a lot of cool stuff together in the future. This will include projects based on both the Homestuck and Hiveswap worlds. The possibilities are wide open, but here are a couple examples of things we know we’re going to work on already…

Viz will begin releasing the Homestuck books again, starting next year. These will be nice new hardcover editions, and the plan is to just keep turning out volumes until the entire story is in print. Each volume will be full of my Secret Notes just like the previous ones were. Viz will also be involved in the release of the mysterious epilogue project I alluded to a while ago. Details on format, release date, etc, will remain undisclosed until further notice, but you can expect more information about that to surface next year too. I wanted to do something a little unusual for it, something existing outside the confines of the web story. Working with Viz struck me as good opportunity for this. [sic]

Aside from that, anything can happen. Take a look at the sorts of things Viz has already published or produced. These are all examples of things on the table for future consideration for either Homestuck or Hiveswap. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and so do they. Maybe you do too??

To put it simply, what’s happening here is What Pumpkin is selling licensing rights of the text of the Homestuck comic to Viz, so Viz can republish the work. The details — what rights were sold, and under what conditions — were never explained and remain unclear. There are a number of ways this could go, but the first format they point out is a printed book series. (It will later turn out that Viz has an outsized influence in the internals of What Pumpkin far beyond just publishing and the comic’s IP.)

Andrew mentions “Viz releasing the Homestuck books again”, here, which is somewhat misleading. TopatoCo had already released the first few of a series of Homestuck books, but that series never finished. Unlike the wording of the news post suggests, Viz Media was never involved in the original books. Also, the first of the Viz books is just a direct copy of the TopatoCo series, albeit with additional misprints, somehow. It’s good that Viz is going to finish the Homestuck print run, though, and some fans were excited about that, until later.

There was also an announcement from Viz Media in which they summarize much the same thing, although their post has this blurb from Andrew Hussie about how great Hiveswap is:

“Fans have been looking forward to this for a long time, and I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Personally speaking, I think it’s the best adventure game I’ve ever played,” says Andrew Hussie, HOMESTUCK creator and co-founder at What Pumpkin Games. “I’m excited to team up with VIZ Media to expand on the world of HOMESTUCK, and work closely with them on a bunch of new projects involving both HOMESTUCK and HIVESWAP.”

Shortly after, Viz formally announced the “Collector’s Edition” deluxe hardcover series of Homestuck books with author commentary by Andrew.

In the capital timeline, this falls just a year after the $325K venture capital round, which lasted for approximately two years, and included the Act 1 greenlight and game release.

SBAHJ Kickstarter§

Andrew Hussie, in conjunction with comedy writers KC Green and Dril, launched another Kickstarter for a hardcover spin-off of the Homestuck sub-comic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

This campaign was a success (180% funded) and the book was written, printed, and shipped to backers in 2018. Make That Thing is a subsidiary of TopatoCo, a book publisher which previously handled MSPA merchandise.

One interesting note is that Andrew Hussie made a new Kickstarter account for this, possibly in violation of the Kickstarter terms of service, because Hiveswap is in such poor standing that Kickstarter has banned Andrew from starting more Kickstarter projects. If this account were set up just to evade the ban, that would explain it.

Troll Call§

A newspost on mspaintadventures.com announces the “Troll Call”:

Every week we’ll be revealing some new troll characters from Hiveswap until Act 2 is out. Follow the Troll Call here, and meet the first two here. Expect a few more surprises like this to drop in coming weeks.

Sure enough, a later news post announces an exciting new redesign for the hiveswap.com website, including an “extended zodiac” and a personality quiz. This is the extended set of symbols that was teased much earlier. This new set of symbols also includes some character symbols from designs as early as June 2014.

To match this new schedule, WP announced that Hiveswap: Act 2 would be released in Spring 2018. This date also keeps in line with the promise that switching to a 2D artstyle would allow new acts to come out quickly. Phew!

Scrapped Hiveswap Forum§

Some time around February 2016, What Pumpkin NYC hired a team of eight interns to build a forum platform to “alleviate growing discontent in crowdfunding backers and general fanbase” about Hiveswap. The project was headed up by Phillip Huang, an intern at What Pumpkin:

Hey guys!

I’m Phillip Huang of What Pumpkin! _{(please don’t hurt me)}

I’m happy to announce that, a few weeks ago, I was assigned to rebuild the forums!

Look, I understand WP has really been dropping the ball on keeping the community up to date with regards to the forums. I wasn’t a part of the team until pretty recently, so I can’t really speak on behalf of them or whatever policies they had to follow in the past. But I do know two things:

First, please do not think for a second that we don’t care about you guys. Andrew and the rest of the team absolutely feel the growing animosity and discontent, and we’re working as hard as we can every day to try to keep the fanbase happy. By my personal observations, the reason the forums have been on the back burner is because there are just too many other things to be working on right now (most notably Hiveswap—game development is a BEAST).

Second, starting with this post, I am going to try to make amends by increasing transparency, feedback, and communication, at least with regards to the forums and their reconstruction. Technically I’m not supposed to announce very much now, but if you have a burning hot question go ahead and ask me here (not PM pls so I don’t have to repeat myself) and I’ll see what I’m allowed to say. Once the new forums are up, I’m going to try to get some of the other WP team members to start posting on them so they can answer questions about more general things (no promises though! ). A part of this initiative is me trying to contact the old mods and other prominent community members to help shape the creation of the new universe relaunch of the forums…

So what happens now? WP probably won’t be making an Official Announcement^TM about this until the forums actually launch. I can’t make any promises on a launch date or any features. In the meantime, it’s probably best to keep this news and your hypes on the down low. … Also, please don’t pester the mods to give any info, and mods please don’t leak anything else (I SEE YOU “flowey” ).

Alrighty, thanks for your patience y’all. We really appreciate your dedication to this community throughout all of these difficulties. Hopefully I’ll see you on the new forums! _{(when they launch, which is never)}

Phillip posted regular updates on the “Fate of the MSPA Forums” thread on the omegaupdate fan forums. He gave unofficial apologies for how poorly What Pumpkin had treated people and how flippant they had been about the forums in general. Part of the project, as he understood it, was to import the old forum data once the new system was up and running. If What Pumpkin was aware that that data was unrecoverable (and it is likely they did), Phillip was kept in the dark about it. He continued giving updates and answering questions to the best of his ability until his internship ended in 2017 without the forum ever being launched.

In January 2018, Phillip returned to report that “What Pumpkin has told me that the forum relaunch will be handled professionally by a department of a larger media company” (Viz) and “Sadly, they didn’t mention any timeline regarding this relaunch. … This will conclude my involvement with this project, so this will be my last update.”

Viz media has yet to launch any such replacement forum. According to Makin, who worked on the project,

I was told after the fact by one of the people working with me that viz was the one to cancel the new forums project

because forums were passe or something

It’s also possible that Viz may not want to launch a new forum because that would be a reminder that they failed to preserve the old forums or restore the precious historical data. Either way, it looks like Viz may not ever relaunch any sort of forum, despite the huge community push and the work being already done.

Comic Contest§

What Pumpkin announced an official comic contest for on the Act 2 characters featured in Troll Call:

One of the best parts of the weekly TROLL CALL has been the great FAN COMICS. We love them, and we want to reward your enthusiasm. So, here’s the deal. Every week, we’re going to be giving away gift cards to For Fans By Fans, the central hub of Hiveswap and Homestuck merch. Second runner-up gets $25, first runner-up gets $50, and the first place winner gets $75!

Also…ALL first place winners will be entered into our GRAND PRIZE contest, the winner of which will get their fantroll added to Hiveswap as an NPC! What Pumpkin Games’ writers and animators will work with you to develop YOUR fantroll into a CANONICAL CHARACTER

The results were announced in April. The grand prize winner was announced to be fefsprites with this animated comic. Fefsprites is currently under NDA about Act 2, but plans to submit their fantroll Idarat Catlaz.

What’s notable about the contest is that, at time of writing, all official record of it seems to have been completely obliterated from the internet. The contest details and the prize announcement have been scrubbed from tumblr, and the contest rules have been removed. Even the winning comic is a 404, even though the blog is still active.

Homestuck.com redesign§

On April 02, 2018, Viz Media retired the mspaintadventures.com site in favor of a new, completely redesigned homestuck.com. Homestuck.com is designed to be mobile friendly, and converts the old flash content to static video files. There were a few news announcements for this:

More broadly than just converting Flash pages, this adaptation serves another purpose. My intent for MSPA was never to have it last forever, or to concern myself with maintaining a labyrinthine, crudely-coded website for the rest of my life. At some point, the right thing to do was always going to be figuring out how the stories hosted on it could persist long into the future. VIZ Media is about as good as any organization I can think of when it comes to publishing long-running series, and preserving them for future readers. They print many classic manga series and get those books on shelves all over the world, thus keeping those series alive and widely read, well beyond their initial publication. So the VIZ team and I are working together to preserve the original content while updating its delivery, but Homestuck’s unusual format makes this a unique challenge. (Incidentally, they’ll also be releasing the full run of Homestuck in print as well, to complement the work online.)

My hope is you will see these changes as a net-positive, and perhaps can enjoy the work again in ways that weren’t possible before (such as on your phone). Again, this adaptation will continue to evolve and improve. Any feedback you may have when it comes to the performance or presentation, feel free to contact the site team at VIZ. They’re taking everyone’s remarks seriously. Thanks again to all who continue to care enough about Homestuck to stop by and read this. We all appreciate your support.

I do want to note that one of the main reasons given for the partnership with VIZ Media was media preservation. I’m an archivist, myself, and I believe very strongly that media preservation and continued publishing of works is crucial, so I’m glad to see that preservation is one of the key expectations What Pumpkin has of VIZ media.

The homestuck.com redesign wasn’t off to a great start on this, however, as they made the old site design inaccessible. There was also no mention of making previously published Homestuck works — like Paradox Space or the SBAHJ Kickstarter novel — available again, which is another point against them. Hopefully VIZ will change its mind on these points and make an effort to preserve these works, but so far, it hasn’t done so.

The new Homestuck website was a partial success, with the glaring exception that the main promise of continued maintenance never happened.

Many of the video files are only temporary, and will be replaced in coming months, either with HTML-converted files, or higher quality videos.

Viz did not follow through on this or any of their other promises to polish the site, and a significant portion of the site is still broken in 2020. For instance, many of the flash files were recorded to video and uploaded to Youtube, who incorrectly blocked some of them, making the pages unreadable. VIZ (a media giant with its own CDN, who could easily host and stream videos itself) has not addressed this, or seemingly even contacted Youtube at all about the issue.

There are other issues with the way Viz handled homestuck.com, but further detail on that is beyond the scope of this article. As of 2021, Viz has failed to preserve the bulk of Homestuck’s flash content, and fan projects have had to step in to fill the void.

Newsrama Andrew Hussie Interview§

On the same day, Andrew also published an interview with Newsrama about the VIZ-published book versions of Homestuck:

Nrama: How did the collections from VIZ come about, and what’s the experience been like working with them?

Hussie: The VIZ people are great, and are all true professionals when it comes to manga and anime. That’s why Homestuck was the perfect fit here. You’ll never see a better anime than Homestuck.

Nrama: Have you had any talk about reprinting your other MS Paint Adventures in hard-copy form?

Hussie: There are old editions of Problem Sleuth floating around out there. You can probably buy used copies on Amazon for like $100 each. But maybe we’ll make new and better editions of those for VIZ too, who knows.

Nrama: What are some aspects of multimedia storytelling you’d like to see explored, both in terms of what you’re creating, and from other creators? It often feels like there’s a lot of untapped potential out there.

Hussie: I tried to make Homestuck the thing that taps all the untapped potential. At least when it comes to the web format, circa 2009-2016. I don’t know if you could do much more with it than was done, unless you start grasping at straws for new ridiculous things to try out. Which Homestuck did a lot of itself, the further it went along. There’s always more to try.

Nrama: What’s next for you?

Hussie: I’ll probably just keep making things.

He has not. He has not made “next” things “after the adventure game”. He has not even finished the adventure game.

Update 2021: Andrew has, in fact, made another thing: Psycholonials, which I’ll discuss later. He did not finish Hiveswap or Hauntswitch before abandoning them, though, which might be worse.

What Pumpkin puts Hiveswap on formal hiatus§

On April 3, 2018, What Pumpkin posted an announcement on their Tumblr page that they were dramatically changing their business plans:

What Pumpkin Games is going through a transition period, which has involved restructuring the company, the way we develop games, and the types of projects we focus on. First, the most important thing to address is, Hiveswap’s development absolutely will continue. The approach to its development will evolve as this transition goes forward, but ensuring the release of the full Hiveswap series remains our priority. We should have more specific information about what exactly this means for Hiveswap in coming weeks.

In the more immediate future, WPG is shifting focus to making smaller, fun, lightweight games that can be produced more quickly. The type of content we can release along the way between acts, continuing to build upon the Hiveswap world, and give fans things they can enjoy while they wait. These games are somewhat in the vein of what we did with the Troll Call, but more engaging, providing more depth and background to the characters that were previewed.

Now, I do have to immediately interject here. In the first paragraph, the announcement reads “ensuring the release of the full Hiveswap series remains our priority”, but now they’ve just said that they are not “focusing” on the mainline Hiveswap series, and are “shifting focus” to other games. This is, in fact, the opposite of prioritizing the mainline Hiveswap series — What Pumpkin is making the decision here to stop working on Hiveswap and instead start a new series of games.

In September, James Roach mentioned that Hiveswap Act 2 was officially on hiatus, confirming this interpretation of the announcement: Hiveswap is out.

The post continues

The first such game will be available very soon. The format is a “Friendship Simulator”, much like dating sims or visual novels you may have played before. The idea is, instead of trying to date a character, you just try to befriend them, and in the process, you get to know them better, and ridiculous things happen along the way. The first volume features two trolls from the Troll Call, and was written by Andrew Hussie.

We hope you enjoy this type of game! If it’s well received by the fans, then there should be more of these to play in the future. We appreciate your patience and support as WPG makes this transition.

What Pumpkin doesn’t officially announce why they’re making the “transition”, but given that we know they’ve used the allocated funding, it seems reasonable to assume that What Pumpkin wants a profitable game so that Hiveswap doesn’t eat into potential comic profits. I’m also guessing that a spinoff series gives What Pumpkin an excuse to charge Kickstarter backers for Hiveswap again, as it will turn out that they won’t be giving backers any of these new games. This seems exactly like, as Jess put it, “Oh crap, we only have money to make a quarter of the game! Let’s raise some more!”

They don’t say if this shift is going to involve restructuring and, say, firing anyone. The tone here is very positive and optimistic, though, so there’s probably nothing to worry about.

What Pumpkin Fires Everyone§

In April 2018, John Michonski from Video Game Choo Choo published the article “WhatPumpkin Layoffs Due to VIZ Media Purchase”, reporting recent sweeping layoffs at WhatPumpkin, and that they were due to VIZ Media:

Recently, WhatPumpkin, the primary force behind the webcomic Homestuck as well as video game spinoff Hiveswap, had a round of layoffs. Specifically, a large amount of the primary development team behind Hiveswap was let go. Due to NDAs, those who were ready to speak to us were cautious about what they could say, and didn’t want to be named, but many of them pointed to the new owner of the Homestuck IP, VIZ Media, as the reason behind the layoffs, instead of WhatPumpkin itself.

An anonymous source claimed the layoffs were purely due to VIZ restructuring, and they didn’t take the needs of WhatPumpkin staff into account. Upper management at the company stood by those in the crosshairs, and fought to keep their jobs.

VIZ has recently announced that, while development of Hiveswap is continuing, they will be shifting focus for the time being to the smaller “Friendship Simulators” called Friendsims, where you befriend characters that were previously announced for the next episode of Hiveswap. According to other public posts by the former development team, a good chunk of their work will still be used in the final version of Hiveswap’s Act Two.

…

The scope of the layoffs was massive. Seemingly everyone who was involved with the project was fired, including the core team. Most of the people involved in Hiveswap posted something about having worked on Hiveswap in the past tense, being newly unemployed, or needing new work, including James Roach, Cohen Edenfield, Shelby Cragg, Hillary Esdaile (rah-bop), and John Warren.

James Roach wrote:

I.. enjoyed much of my time at WP, even the late nights and ever-shifting needs of a project that never felt like it would be done. I am the sort of person who finds themselves very lost without work to do. When you work at a small company like WP, you end up doing a lot more than is in your job description. There were so many times where i’d be like filling out a spreadsheet at 3 AM thinking like “man if all those people that thought they wanted this job could see what it was actually like”

The few of us that have been around since the beginning- before the studio changes, before the controversies and hurdles of development.. shit before even the shift in leadership- those few of us.. have been through a lot. There is so much I wish I could have shared with you guys. A lot of little triumphs and celebrations but also a lot of disappointment and frustrations. My constant worry is that I would be letting the fans down, because that was me.

The reason I cite the Michonski article above is that he was able to interview members of the Hiveswap development team and confirm that the layoffs were directly due to VIZ Media’s involvement. The fact that VIZ Media has the authority to prompt this at all speaks to it having an outsized influence in the internals of What Pumpkin far beyond just publishing and the comic’s IP. Again, the exact details are unknown, and there has been no transparency as to this, even to the Kickstarter underwriters.

A few of the fired developers, including James Roach, were re-hired a few months later to do work on the new games that What Pumpkin was making instead of Hiveswap.

Hiveswap Friendsim Ends§

What Pumpkin releases the last update of Hiveswap Friendsim

Of the thirty-seven stories in the game, Andrew Hussie wrote two. The most prolific writer by far was Aysha Farah, who wrote twelve routes.

Skaianet Systems§

In late December 2018, What Pumpkin deleted their tumblr blog and wiped their Twitter account. This was may have been part of an ultimately misguided ARG, although it’s unclear how destroying years of records was meant to be related, if at all, to the ARG, or anything else. None of these accounts have been restored, despite the ARG fading into obscurity and embarrassment, and the only thing erasing the records has accomplished is slightly obscuring What Pumpkin’s many failures, and further miscrediting the WP NYC team by hiding evidence of their contributions.

Weeks prior, What Pumpkin mentioned in a footnote that they would be “retiring” the Tumblr account, citing “maintenance.” “Retiring” here apparently meant erasing the blog and all the content. No explanation was given.

Epilogues Fact Sheet§

The epilogues also had a fact sheet for publishers like the mainline books did, this time reading:

• Homestuck is one of the biggest pop culture phenomena of the past decade, a unique and massive internet-based hybrid work consisting of webcomics, chat logs, gifs, video games, animation, and music.
• Over 1,000,000 users a day visited the hosting site, MS Paint Adventures, during the height of the Homestuck serialization. To date the comic has over 2,500,000,000 pageviews.
• The Homestuck Official YouTube channel has over 3,200,000 views.
• Direct-to-consumer merchandise sales have generated over $10,000,000 in revenue.
• Ten official soundtrack albums have been released on Bandcamp.
• The first episode of Hiveswap, an independent video game series set in the Homestuck universe, released in September 2017 for PC and Mac and immediately became a top ten best-selling game on Steam.
• Homestuck has spawned innumerable fanworks in all genres—art, fiction, music, videos, crafts, cosplay—along with fan events all over the world.

Again, this seems to have been for internal use only, but some stores still listed it as-is.

The ad claims Hiveswap “immediately became a top ten best-selling game on Steam”, which is remarkable, because — as far as I can tell — it’s a blatant lie. Steam actually publishes top 100 lists for best-selling new games by year, and Hiveswap didn’t make it, even if we narrow the domain down to the month. I looked up the data for Steam 2017 — even if we (generously) assume they mean it was in the top ten best-sellers of 2017 — by the end of 2017 200,000 people owned Hiveswap at maximum, including people with free review copies. That puts them somewhere below rank 200. It seems like What Pumpkin literally just claimed they were a bestseller and hoped nobody would check.

We also get this internal figure that “Direct-to-consumer merchandise sales have generated over $10,000,000 in revenue”, which was definitely not meant to be publicized. This is yet another confirmation that Homestuck is still a multi-million dollar brand, and should not be hurting for money.

Hiveswap: Act 2 Steam Page§

On October 2019, the @whatpumpkin twitter account posted an announcement:

What Pumpkin Games@whatpumpkin

Hiveswap: Act 2 Steam page is up! - store.steampowered.com/app/1181840/HI…

Thu Oct 31 14:08:09 +0000 2019

The Steam page for Hiveswap: Act 2 was available, and there was a trailer featuring the Troll Call characters. There were a few gameplay screenshots, but the store page mostly consists of the trailer video and character animations.

The game is listed as being developed by What Pumpkin Games, and published by Fellow Traveller.

The steam page also promises that “Hiveswap: Act 2 is the anticipated second entry in the four-part series of narrative adventure games from the universe of Andrew Hussie’s smash hit webcomic Homestuck.” and “James Roach and Toby Fox (creator of Undertale) return for another genre-spanning original soundtrack.”

The release date on steam is listed as “tickets available soon.”, which was probably supposed to be funny.

Bandcamp Changes§

Without any sort of announcement, What Pumpkin (possibly in cooperation with Viz Media) “reorganized” the official Homestuck bandcamp page, making several major changes:

• Deleting all the track art
• Deleting many albums
• Grouping albums into less-expensive bundles
• Exclusively selling bundles and not albums

Originally they promised that any removed albums were temporary and would be restored soon, but the removed albums were never restored. Some of the original artists re-uploaded their Homestuck work on their own channels, but some albums were permanently lost. This seems to go somewhat against What Pumpkin’s directive of preservation, but they’ve made no comment about it.

The track art and original album organization would have been permanently lost as well, if not for a hero’s complete track archive.

Currently, the tracks from the Grubbles album are only available as part of the Hiveswap: Act 1 OST, and they come with every copy. That album is $4.13 (reduced from $7.99 by), price significantly reduced from the original cost of $12.99.

Homestuck^2§

Kate Mitchell and Aysha Farah, as Snake Sollutions Studio LLP, launch “Homestuck^2”. It’s to be an experimental, semi-official¹², “dubiously canon” fan-adventure-slash-story-continuation in the vein of other fan continuations like Act 8 and Act Omega, only with Andrew involved. It’s produced jointly with What Pumpkin, but the writing and production is done by Snake Solutions and their team.

According to their introduction, the comic is supported by Patreon, with exclusive content available for Patreon backers:

This update comprises the “main” update for the month of October. The next update posted to this site will be the main update for the month of November. Additional *~*bonus updates*~* will also begin in November.

What’s this about bonus updates, we hear you ask? To find out more, please make sure to check out our Patreon page! Pledging to the official Homestuck Patreon is a great way to support the independent creators behind the comic, and to get your grubby little hands on some bonus Homestuck content that you won’t find anywhere else!

The Patreon label reads “Homestuck is creating Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon”.

This wouldn’t be relevant to Hiveswap at all until a later Patreon update:

Act 2 Trailer§

Homestuck@homestuck

Sun Oct 25 20:12:59 +0000 2020

A new trailer is posted for Hiveswap Act 2. It opens with “years ago, but not many” as a reference to how slow the development process has been going, I guess?

Hiveswap Act 2 is delayed to November 2020.

Hiveswap.com is also updated with a more “streamlined” design. The new design removes many links to other projects and independent artists that were previously only accessible through the Hiveswap home page, so all of that content is now inaccessible unless you have a direct link already.

In the background, the entire whatpumpkin.com domain now force-redirects to hiveswap.com, breaking innumerable important links like this one and this one and that one.

The new website also has a screenshot with this troll who has not previously been seen in promotional material or as part of the Troll Call. This is Fefsprites’ fantroll Idarat Catlaz, in the game due to them winning the comic contest. Nice!

Fellow Traveller closes social§

This message was posted to the Fellow Traveller discord server on 11/01/2020:

Hey @Homestuck Traveller, we hope you’re excited for the release of Act 2 in November!

We wanted to give you an update on some business housekeeping.

As the release date of Hiveswap: Act 2 nears, Fellow Traveller and What Pumpkin have made a few adjustments to our publishing arrangement. What Pumpkin Games will be expanding its operations to take a more direct role in player support for Hiveswap. This means that going forward, any questions and concerns about Hiveswap should be sent directly to What Pumpkin Games. Fellow Traveller will continue to work with What Pumpkin as the publisher of Pesterquest and Friendsim.

With these changes, we will be closing the Homestuck and Hiveswap channels in our Discord. We will close the channels on November 9 2020, but What Pumpkin has created a new Discord to make sure you can continue your conversations, memes and theories. Once everything in the new Discord is set up, they’ll be handing over moderation to you, the fans. You can start making your transition with this invite: https://discord.gg/krfzwma

The Pesterquest channel in our Discord will remain for discussion of Friendsim and Pesterquest, and we’ll have some news to share there soon.

Keep an eye on What Pumpkin Games social channels for news about future Hiveswap community projects.

Fellow Traveler announced that they would be shutting down their discord channels for Homestuck and Hiveswap, so that What Pumpkin could take a more aggressive role in managing community forums for Homestuck.

The links for Hiveswap acts 1 and 2 were still on the Fellow Traveller website, with no indication of any changes in publishing.

Act 2 Release Date§

On November 15, the @homestuck twitter account uploaded this youtube link:

Homestuck@homestuck

act 2 gameplay trailer

youtube.com/watch?v=x-TkWS…

Sun Nov 15 18:21:11 +0000 2020

They teased this especially hard, and promised that the release date (which, again, was already announced to be sometime in November) would be revealed at the end of the video.

However, instead of announcing this directly, they used YouTube Premiere to delay the video and have a live announcement. The video itself went live at on the 16th, a full day later.

Act 2’s new release date is November 25, as announced on Twitter with this screenshot of the youtube video.

Homestuck@homestuck

Hiveswap act 2 coming to a computer near you

Tue Nov 17 00:16:15 +0000 2020

The body of the video itself is all gameplay footage of Act 2, complete with mouse cursor a la YouTube LP.

There is also a new press kit for Act 2 with both Act 2 trailers and gameplay screenshots.

Act 2 Credits Outcry§

When Act 2 released, people immediately realized something was wrong; the game released without any crediting of any kind. The credits button was missing from the main menu, there was no postgame credits reel, and even the soundtrack DLC didn’t have the artists listed.

Alienoid@AlienoidNovace

Okay but is anybody going to talk about why (Hiveswap Act 2 spoilers (I guess???)) uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh

is anybody gonna talk about why there's no credits?? like, at all?????? main menu, post-game, what??????????????

Thu Nov 26 19:00:29 +0000 2020

gio :⁾@giovan_h

Replying to giovan_h:

I’ve had “Homestuck doesn’t credit artists properly” as a problem on my radar for a while now but this is the most egregious thing yet

Thu Nov 26 19:33:50 +0000 2020

sarah zedig! 🍉🐐@hmsnofun

hot take but everyone who laid hands on a game should get credit for the work they did. a central issues of labor organization in entertainment industries 100 years ago was the right to be credited! it's insane how many games eschew credit if you left the team before it shipped.

Fri Nov 27 03:21:43 +0000 2020

BabyFawnLegs@BabyFawnLegs

Replying to giovan_h:

@giovan_h it's really direly upsetting to me that HS, of all things, can't be a model representation of the labour ethics that are closely embraced by the independent creators in its fandom

Thu Nov 26 21:13:45 +0000 2020

dualitySimplified ∞ 🟩@simpleduality

Replying to RumpusFruity:

@RumpusFruity you don't have to explain that you laid off most of the people that originally worked on the game if you don't credit anyone at all

Fri Nov 27 17:50:37 +0000 2020

After prolonged outrage on Twitter and Reddit, as well as targeted review bombing on Steam, the new “homestuckteam” curiouscat account posted this statement:

teamstuck@homestuckteam

For those of you wondering about credits: in an effort to avoid the targeted harassment that many members of our team have previously experienced, the team agreed to only credit the studio initially. More thorough credits will be patched in as launch hype dies down.

Fri Nov 27 18:51:39 +0000 2020

Members of the Hiveswap development team quickly responded saying that they did not agree to only credit the studio initially, and that this tweet was a lie. Former members of the Hiveswap development team, whose work was used uncredited, were also not consulted, and agreed to nothing of the sort.

Shadolith@Shadolith

As someone who last worked with the Hiveswap team in 2018, I wasn't contacted about this. I'm glad measures are being taken to mitigate harassment, but an opt-out option would have been vastly preferable to only being credited after the hype dies down.

Nov 27 13:25:00 +0000 2020

I also talked about this myself on Twitter:

Suffice it to say, nobody bought that.

The game was silently patched with credits one day later, on November 28. Metadata for the credits page was actually in the game all along, but the credits slide itself had been removed, indicating that the credits functionality was implemented but later specifically disabled for release. The soundtrack was not updated, and still does not credit the musicians, although James Roach later posted the credits himself.

No announcement was made on Steam or Twitter, nor was the “targeted harassment” issue brought up again. A few entries on the credits page were, however, left anonymous or pseudoanonymous. As was discussed on Twitter, leaving credit entries anonymous or pseudoanonymous is an effective way of handing this.

Act 2 Cut Content§

Act 2 also had a significant amount of cut content, including several minigames and entire characters who were heavily featured in promotional material.

Sirs not appearing in this game

One of the few remaining minigames, a bee-themed rhythm minigame, was retroactively (and silently) removed from the game several days after release. It was simply cut, and not replaced with any sort of explanation. teamhomestuck made the following statement about this when asked:

Q: What drove the decision to remove the bee minigame? I really liked it :(

A:

We received reports that the bee game was a hard block for people with certain mobility issues. Engineering solutions like a skip button might’ve taken several more days to implement. We preferred to get out an accessibility solution ASAP so we opted to just remove it. But we’ll consider our options about what to do with it in the future.

We have had limited availability from a handful of people to take care of urgent issues as they come up due to the holiday, so we apologize for the delays.

Starting this week we’ll take a good look at what improvements we can make based on your feedback. Thank you all for your patience and help tracking down the last few bugs since launch.

On Twitter, they followed this with

teamstuck@homestuckteam

Replying to homestuckteam:

To reiterate, it is a weekend. Typically, workers prefer not to work on the weekend, and we do not want to demand our contributors put in excessive weekend overtime. We chose a solution we could push immediately so people with accessibility issues could complete it right now.

Sun Nov 29 23:52:49 +0000 2020

As I brought up at the time, just a few days prior, James Roach himself tweeted about finding the bee minigame really hard. Then WP said they were blindsided by accessibility needs and had to scramble to make the game playable. I have a hard time reconciling those two facts.

Either “the bee game was inaccessible because nobody told us” is a lie or WPG is extremely dysfunctional. or both. probably both.

Also, WP turning around and framing this as “we’re indie devs, people are making unreasonable demands of us” is insulting and absurd given they had ample time to do testing themselves but choose not to. But “we are the victims of this problem we caused ourselves” seems to be the go-to line from WP

Despite their implication that fixing the accessibility issue was an urgent priority that would almost be enough to drive them to work over the weekend, the bee minigame would not be fixed until 2021-01-14, when the game was patched with no update description on steam and no announcement on social media.

Key reselling scheme§

On November 30, @homestuck made an announcement:

Although the announcement does not specify the cut What Pumpkin is claiming to give to charity, the web page linked says 10%. This is only a third of Steam’s 30% cut, so What Pumpkin actually makes 128% percent of their usual profit when you buy from their site directly, even though they’re giving a cut to charity.

(Although December came and went, it is unclear whether the 10% cut is still going to charity, or if now that the specified charity period ended, What Pumpkin is now pocketing the full amount of new purchases. The storefront page has not been updated to reflect a change, but this could be in error.)

While Steam does provisionally allow key selling, they explicitly reserve the right to deny keys to developers who misuse keys in various ways. Steam may take action against What Pumpkin for explicitly working to cut Steam out of the loop and keep them from getting their fee, although they have not done so yet.

Psycholonials§

Andrew Hussie began publishing promo materials for a new project. This would turn out to be a new episodic visual novel called Psycholonials, apparently unrelated to Homestuck or Hiveswap. (This didn’t stop the official Homestuck Twitter account from promoting it, though.)

gio :⁾@giovan_h

I was just handed a note saying “Psycholonials is going to be episodic” and fell over, dead

Fri Jan 22 06:35:54 +0000 2021

According to a schedule on the Psycholonials web page, the ninth and final episode is scheduled to release on 4/20/2021. At this point there is not an expected date for Hiveswap acts 3 and 4, nor is there a schedule for Hauntswitch. Psycholonials, however, will be fully published within two months.

(At time of writing I have not played Psycholonials and have no particular comments as to its content. If I do play Psycholonials any comments I have about its content are probably not relevant to the history of Hiveswap anyway.)

HS2 Patreon Cancelled§

Homestuck^2, the comic, had been on an announced hiatus since December 2020. According to the team,

We’re taking a bit of a break to recharge and refresh, and to do some reshuffling of tiers, update schedule, and bonus content.

The hiatus had no planned end date, and it continued through February.

On February 11th, the previously discussed Homestuck Patreon posted an announcement from Andrew Hussie. This long post blamed misogyny, transphobia, racism, “internet bullying”, and “large segments of the fandom” for the general failures of Homestuck^2. Ultimately, this led up to Andrew cancelling Homestuck^2 as it currently exists and ending the Patreon funding model. Homestuck^2 will now be posted all at once when the comic is finished. There is no estimated schedule for this. This post also did not address previous assertions on behalf of HS2 that the serial format was intentionally chosen and a strong part of Homestuck^2 as a work.

The Homestuck^2 website was also updated to remove the “news” section and replaced the “About” page with the single blurb:

Homestuck^2 is an officially commissioned story which explores a continuation of the narrative after the events of The Homestuck Epilogues. It began in October of 2019 and updated regularly for about a year until it was paused indefinitely. The creative team is now being commissioned to finish the story privately. All content will be posted here at once when the story is complete.

According to the post, it will be funded by “previously saved Patreon funds”. It seems unlikely that there is a vault of Patreon money that could fund the rest of the comic by itself, but notably absent is any sort of financial support from What Pumpkin.

Act 7 Answers§

Update #36 (Backers only)

On 4/13/2021, seemingly in response to a video essay that includes a summary of my Hiveswap research, the Hiveswap Kickstarter posted Update #36, for backers only. It is a very formal document that addresses some of the accusations made about Hiveswap development.

(On the same day, What Pumpkin threatened the video itself with legal action of some variety, as they are known to do. As of writing, neither What Pumpkin nor anyone claiming to be associated with it have contacted me about inaccuracies, discrepancies, or “libel” in any of my articles or research. What Pumpkin still seems unwilling to directly accuse me of any misconduct, but does seem more than willing to slander me behind my back.)

It appears to have not been written that day as a reaction to the video, but rather something What Pupmkin had on file as a nuclear option, in case they were forced at figurative gunpoint to be transparent to backers. Andrew later confirmed this:

From my perspective, it seems like backers only began to get transparency after [the Sarah Z video] came out, which seems a bit odd to me.

I think there’s an implication behind this statement which I’ve seen a few times in other places. Which is something like, if WP was able to respond so quickly after [the video] with a new Kickstarter update sharing that information, why not just share that information a long time ago, which could have theoretically averted a sitaution like this?

The answer is that the recent backer update really wasn’t as trivial as it seemed. It was more of a measure of last resort. WP had a post like that on file, which is why it was able to be posted pretty quickly. It was just somewhat edited to suit the purpose, and address some of the specific claims. More thorough accounts like that have been prepared in advance to post in case anything unforseen happened, examples being like, if TOG began sharing some distorted version of events, or if Gio and his accomplice started doing really insane stuff instead of just posting misinformation on a low-traffic blog. A backer update like that was a measure of last resort because posting it at all carries risk.

The first half of this is a confession. “Yes”, Hussie says, “we had this information available in a form that was ready to be shared to Kickstarter backers, but we withheld it because we really didn’t want to share it. We weren’t planning to ever admit to any of this, and the video — not our obligations — is what forced us to.”¹³ I don’t need to tell you how far this project has devolved from “weekly backer updates”, do I?

In an email between Sarah Z’s management and WP President and CEO Cindy Dominguez, WP claimed that posting this required WP to “invest significant time and resources into combatting [disinformation]”, and that they “may need to pay thousands in legal fees in the process of reviewing the necessary documentation related to our settlement”, but this later turned out to be mostly bogus, as Andrew mentioned above.

This almost feels like low-hanging fruit at this point, but I’m just going to note here one more time that Andrew Hussie is saying here that they intentionally withheld information from people who were entitled to it in order to make a profit off that deception, which, among other things, is an actual dictionary definition of fraud. And that’s not even something I’m going out on a limb and accusing them of, that’s what they’re saying here! That’s their excuse! At the risk of editorializing here, that’s astonishing.

Then there’s a personal attack against me and my work (mixed in with a thorough misunderstanding of how journalistic sources work) and offhand remark that there are even more transparency reports that have been pre-prepared, but WP is still choosing to withhold. It ends with a mention that “posting it at all carries risk.” I’ll talk more about this “risk” at the end of the blow-by-blow, because “risk” is something the announcement touches on too.

Let’s get directly into the content of the Kickstarter update:

Over the years, a lot of misinformation as well as deliberate disinformation has spread around about the history of Hiveswap. The purpose of this post is to clarify these matters for backers who’ve been wondering what the truth is.

The post talks here for a bit about George Rohac, WP’s former Director of Business Development (as of Namco High). (I’m not sure why they choose this moment to involve him, but they do.) I went back and included this information with the campaign details.

Then we get some detailed financial numbers from the Kickstarter campaign. For the first time, although the campaign was nearly a decade ago.

The crowdfunding campaign finished out at a gross total of $2,485,506, as well as a gross total of $207,930 from PayPal pledges. But because of platform fees, as well as the costs of producing and shipping merchandise to backers of the campaign, the effective budget was significantly lower than the gross pledged total

This finally, for the first time, confirmed the actual total amount of money raised by the campaign: $2,693,436. This chart also includes detailed breakdowns of platform fees and merch costs, which leaves $1,627,004 in the game development budget, before taxes. And this confirms that the number this article reported was correct.

After determining the final budget for the game, What Pumpkin signed an agreement with the contracted game company (hereafter “[TOG]”) to develop Hussie’s game concept. WP and [TOG] entered into a development contract on November 30, 2012, shortly after the conclusion of the Homestuck Kickstarter. WP paid $788,000 to [TOG] in late 2012 for development.

They won’t mention the name “The Odd Gentlemen”, for some reason (likely the settlement), but we get more details about the contract: $788,000. This is exactly the number in ipgd’s story, confirming that much. They don’t confirm where the rest of the money went at this point, whether it was set aside for future Hiveswap work or simply added to regular Homestuck operating funds. This is an odd thing to leave ambiguous, for reasons which will come up later.

But then we get to the real meat of the story. What Pumpkin addresses the allegations that TOG did contract work on the Homestuck comic, specifically Act 7.

Because there was an understanding that delivering the complete game development documents would take some time, during which it would be difficult for [TOG] to make meaningful progress on the Hiveswap game build, [TOG] inquired about getting involved with other Homestuck-adjacent projects to do immediate work. WP let [TOG] know about the Act 7 animation plans. With an assurance that this work could be done in parallel with a flexible timeline and would not impact the development cycle of Hiveswap itself, Hussie and What Pumpkin saw this as a good opportunity to establish a working relationship with this organization prior to the start of development and agreed to contract [TOG] to do animation work for the Act 7 project.

WP and [TOG] agreed that this project would have a separate budget from the Hiveswap Kickstarter money, paid for from WP’s regular operating funds. As the existence of this animation itself would not be revealed until its release in 2016, this was not publicly announced at the time. [TOG] and the lead animator on the project specifically requested not to be credited upon release of the animation.

What Pumpkin unequivocally states they secretly contracted TOG to do significant work on Act 7, but claim that the funds used were separate from the $788,000 game contract. Instead, they claim the money used came from “regular operating funds”, which they imply does not include any of the other money raised from the Kickstarter campaign. Oddly, this is merely implied; the word choice used is weirdly ambiguous about this, given its importance.

What Pumpkin also claims that the reason TOG’s involvement was kept a secret was that TOG specifically requested that the studio not be credited. They don’t say when this request was made, which is extremely significant. They’re implying that this request was made around 2013, before the unpleasantness and settlement, but it is entirely possible TOG made this request nearer to 2016, not wanting to be publicly involved with WP because of the painful legal battle, or even due to the terms of the settlement.

Hussie initiated the “Megapause” on April 14, 2013 in order to devote his full attention to finalizing the Hiveswap development documents. What Pumpkin soon provided its story documents so that [TOG] could formally begin core systems development. … In 2013 following receipt of WP’s deliverables, [TOG] enthusiastically assured WP that it was positioned to begin development.

Now we get back to the design documents. What Pumpkin says here that the “story documents” were provided sometime around April 2013, and WP submitted the deliverables in 2013, as opposed to the previous estimate of October 2014. This… can’t be correct. We know WP hadn’t completed all of the Hiveswap deliverables by 2013 by WP’s own account; Andrew posted that the documents weren’t done in Update #15 on June 2014, making that the earliest possible date they could have been submitted. Either this 2013 number is false or one of those earlier updates was.

The Prototype§

[TOG] would deliver its first prototype in early 2014. [The attached prototype] was sent to WP on 2/18/14. At this point, it was becoming a significant concern among backers that WP had yet to show proof that the game was being made, so WP was looking for any sort of tangible progress update from [TOG] that was suitable to share with the public. But Hussie and WP found the quality of the prototype somewhat alarming, and decided that sharing any shots from the game would only cause embarrassment for [TOG].

Here we get the astonishing: a playable build of the legendary broken 2014 prototype. It is indeed not very good, and it’s entirely understandable that What Pumpkin didn’t release any gameplay screenshots or footage at this point. Also, this is just generally a really cool artifact to have.

The prototype build is essentially as advertised. HiveSwap_1stPlayablePrototype.exe is a stock 3D unity game where you can move a t-posing Joey around in an untextured room and examine a few objects. There are a few conversation stubs consisting of fixed camera angles with placeholder text. There’s no pathfinding, so trying to move to certain objects gets Joey stuck on geometry and softlocks the demo.

Under the hood, the demo seems to be written entirely in Adventure Creator for Unity, a Unity asset store toolkit that advertises itself as a way to “Develop a 2D or 3D adventure game in Unity without writing a line of code.”¹⁴ The code itself has class names like KickStarter, so it’s possible this version was more of a proof-of-concept than a serious base game the developers meant to iterate upon (especially given the presence of Adventure Creator). There is a surprisingly robust menu system with a save/load system, but I suspect this is Adventure Creator built-in functionality, rather than work done specifically for this demo.

Back to the announcement, WP then repeats the claim that TOG didn’t end up improving on the prototype or producing a good game which, at this point, is pretty much established.

There’s an email here from part of a chain trying to coordinate an office visit:

May 15, 2014 - from [TOG] to Hussie

That’s awesome about being on the west coast. It’d be great to have you come to the studio.

Dev has slowed a bit on our end, as we wanted to take a step back and really evaluate what was needed and the best way to achieve the features that have been coming online in the docs. We’re continuing to break that all down so we can build and plan most effectively moving forward. We also wanted to find some simple formats for input from your writing team for dialogue content and are getting that squared away.

The best time to come by would actually be right after E3. Things are a bit nuts until then.

Here TOG apparently admits that development progress has been slow, claiming that the work was spent more on design. They also mention that they’re extremely busy due to E3 (presumably with Wayward Manor, based simply on the date) and ask to postpone the visit. They continued postponing visits from Hussie and representatives through August.

TOG produced the concept art from Update #15 over the summer. Update 15 focused on the art and design rather than detail the development troubles.

And then the document suddenly and abruptly changes gears. Remember Act 7? The secret contract for Act 7’s back, and we’re shifting gears to aggressively defending that choice and keeping it secret. I’ll let them make their case:

There was no indication from [TOG] that the Act 7 animation project was in any way in conflict with Hiveswap development. [TOG] was enthusiastic about taking on this project, and bidded against other animators for the contract. They saw it as a useful tie-in to concept art work on Hiveswap, as [TOG] leadership conveyed in an email to WP in early 2013:

It was great chatting with you. We’ve been running through this and we think we have something that will work well for everyone.

We’re with you and totally want to make this something that has way more legs than just the animation — though, of course, we want that to stand alone as something incredible and work as a fantastic lead in to the game using this same style.

To that end, what we think works best is that with this animation not only will me make an amazing finale, but we will also utilize this time to fully define and lockdown the style of the game while using this added conceptual time to increase the overall fidelity by defining pipelines and getting a head start on all of the art

WP also does not have any reason to believe that the Act 7 project in practice created a conflict that was not disclosed by [TOG] to WP. Act 7 was a 2D animation project, and Hiveswap at the time was a 3D game, so it did not pull [TOG]’s programmers or 3D artists away from work on Hiveswap. [TOG] never mentioned the development needs of a separate project at all to WP, or cited any such reason as distracting from work on Hiveswap; [TOG] instead repeatedly provided WP with various assurances that everything was still fine with Hiveswap.

Had [TOG] communicated that they had scheduling conflicts or some other impediment preventing them from developing Hiveswap, WP would have terminated the contract even sooner.

So that’s their story. The Odd Gentlemen worked on Act 7 (according to WP, with funds that are implied not to be from the Kickstarter), but What Pumpkin thinks this didn’t create a project or conflict. Since Hiveswap and Act 7 required different skillsets, TOG could divide their staff between the projects without under-staffing either. And, had TOG experienced a conflict and told WP, WP says they would have cancelled the contract. (They don’t acknowledge how this incentivises TOG to keep news of problems from WP, though.) Even today, with the benefit of hindsight, WP doesn’t believe there was a conflict or distraction.

One obvious oddity with the idea of avoiding conflicts and doing both jobs together: earlier in this same update, one of the reasons Act 7 was an appropriate contract was because they knew it would take time to get design documents together. If the goal was to have two teams working together, working on Act 7 and idling until the design documents are ready doesn’t accomplish that.

One thing to note in that quoted section: there were, in fact, plans to coordinate the Act 7 animation with Hiveswap, somehow. It’s unclear exactly how this would have worked, but this matches details of the original Act 7 allegation that Act 7 was meant to be more tightly related to Hiveswap than what ended up happening.

Next the update summarizes the termination of the agreement with The Odd Gentlemen and the establishment of the WP NYC studio. There’s not a specific reason given here, other than Hussie presumably being dissatisfied with their performance and responsiveness, as previously mentioned. This was around the time of Update #16.

What Pumpkin says “at this point, negotiations were very amicable”, but implies that recovering the unused money from the contract was surprisingly difficult. They don’t go into detail about this at all, presumably due to legal obligations. They do specify, though, that the funds recouped were much less than they originally expected.

What Pumpkin then says that the NYC studio ran into trouble because it was established with the expected budget, but TOG ended up returning less than the expected amount.

The WP NYC project manager had designed the schedule based on the good faith presumption that most of the development funds would be recouped. When it was finally revealed the return was far short of what was expected, and the repayment plan could in no way keep up with the schedule as currently drafted, it threw the project into a period of chaos as plans were quickly redrawn. The length of Act 1 was slashed, and other modifications were made to try to fit the rest of Act 1 into the newly shortened runway. But in the end, the revisions still weren’t enough to save the game as it existed, and the studio needed to be closed in order to reserve what funds remained to finish the project in some form.

This may have come across as a sudden or spontaneous decision. Part of this is because the WP NYC senior staff and WP ownership were doing everything in their power to save the project, including injecting WP regular operating funds into the project, until it was determined that going any further would be disastrous for the future of Hiveswap. Another is that WP was legally unable to give any detailed disclosures about the financial troubles, even to many of the WP NYC staff.

The way this is described, upper management had an understanding of the problem in advance. But why were the employees blindsided? Why were backers? What of the horror stories of people getting fired and losing healthcare? What Pumpkin pins the blame on… the TOG settlement, the details of which are still secret.

They then claim that they were originally going to re-open the studio (if they could put together a new budget). It should be noted here that while the studio was meant to be frozen, the staff was really truly fired, not put in any sort of limbo. But the re-opening itself ended up not happening because… an employee was ambiguously bad?

It should also be noted that originally the NYC studio was not going to be permanently closed, but only frozen for a reassessment of the project. But during this freeze period, there were some dramatic events. One staff member behaved in a destructive and threatening manner. … This version of the project was then abandoned for many reasons, including these events.

There are really no details here for me to even comment on, but this is… just an odd thing to partially attribute the studio closure to, no? I’d be interested in hearing more about this, although I realize that’s highly unlikely due to the potentially personal nature of the issue.

Next, we get an explicit response to the various accounts that the 3D Acts 1 and 2 were shippable and in-progress, respectively:

Some misinformation claims that at the time the WP NYC studio was shuttered, its iterations of Act 1 and 2 were complete. This is wrong. Act 1 was very far from a shippable state and absolutely no work on Act 2 had been completed besides some concept and 3D art. Here you can see a video documenting one of many major bugs with critical path progression in the final build produced by WP NYC, where it becomes impossible to re-focus on the Simon Says toy if Joey fails and then exits out of the puzzle: Link

That response is a resounding “no they weren’t.” The footage linked shows a near-playable version of the game, but there are still clearly missing text labels and game-breaking bugs. This is clearly not ready to ship, and they were right not to. There is, however, most of a game here, it just needs more work. But it seems that the claim “at the end of 2014 the first act was in a shippable state” was at least an exaggeration. Likewise, the “Act 2” being worked on would not have been comparable to the current Steam release of Act 2, but would look more like the second half of Act 1.¹⁵

To WP’s knowledge every artist whose work was used in the final release of Act 1 was included in the credits. The final version of Act 1 was in large part built off concept art and storyboards drawn during the WP NYC era, and many of the artists who made them continued to work on the team that produced the final version of Act 1; the roadmap for the completion of Act 1 was specifically planned because WP had determined that the existing 2D concepts could easily be refined into a final product that would both be visually appealing and more economic to produce. Unfortunately due to the transition to 2D WP no longer had a place for the 3D artists or the original 3D engine, and all of those assets were dropped. They were not used as a basis for the finished assets in Act 1, and visual similarities to WP NYC 3D assets are due to the fact that final Act 1 assets are in large part refinements of the original concept art. Any artist whose work was used incidentally was included in Additional Contributions.

This appears to be a direct response to my criticism of Act 1’s crediting. There’s a lot here: implicit dismissal of the artistic legitimacy of design work, how many 3D resources match up exactly with the final game except with a style shift… Most obviously it directly contradicts Update #22, where What Pumpkin says the WP NYC team produced a stockpile of 2D assets that were used in the 2D version. In the middle of this very paragraph they explicitly say that some 3D concept art, storyboards, and 2D assets made by people who didn’t stay at the company is in the final game.

What Pumpkin makes the claim that they credited all the incidental artists, but I’ve spoken to ex-WP employees who have told me, straight-up, that their work was used or traced but they aren’t named in the credits. I can’t force you to believe the people instead of the company, but that’s just not what I’ve heard. I’ve spoken to multiple people who directly testified that they weren’t credited for their work or offered a position at the new company. If they’re all to be believed, What Pumpkin is simply lying here.

As an addendum, WP has identified the primary source of a disclosure to a well-circulated document of the Hiveswap development process. WP has been aware of a pattern of false claims this former employee has made since the end of their employment at the beginning of 2014. As this individual was not present during the end of the development contract with [TOG], nor the WP NYC development period, all of the information they have shared is based on speculation and conjecture.

I believe this person to be my primary source for the Act 7 article. According to What Pumpkin, this is a disgruntled ex-employee who left the team in early 2014, meaning anything they said later than that is speculation. In addition to the obvious — that a whistleblower doesn’t like the practices they’re whistleblowing — this would mean they were not privy to the events of 2014 or later, making anything they said about that only semi-informed speculation.

This makes sense. For instance, “Act 1 was in a shippable state at the end of 2014, and Act 2 was nearly done” turns out to probably be incorrect, as mentioned above. The source was wrong about this, but exaggerated to make What Pumpkin look as bad as possible.

That being said, they made significant claims (TOG working on Act 7, for instance) that this very update confirms. I’m editing the article to note the additional unreliability, but the source’s contributions cannot be entirely discarded.

At this time, WP does not wish to invite more controversy into the lives of anyone previously involved with this project, and considers these matters to have been resolved long ago.

These matters should have been resolved long ago. This is ancient drama, and the fact that it took what it did to get this level of transparency is shameful. Instead, I’ve gotten threats and targeted harassment by the core team over simply acknowledging the history. The drama around Hiveswap and Hauntswitch is kept alive by What Pumpkin, and no one else.

Since preservation of the project was the primary responsibility to the backers, making destructive disclosures that put the project at risk along the way would have been at odds with that responsibility.

Here’s that risk again. This makes it very clear: the risk What Pumpkin fears is to the company, to the “Hiveswap project”. Transparency creates risk to the project, because the facts about what What Pumpkin did and does is so hideously bad. What Pumpkin isn’t willing to do right, or meet basic obligations, or just generally be decent to the few people who actually like it. It’s too far gone, too committed to itself to do anything. The only thing left for it to try to manipulate is the optics of the situation. Somewhere the goal became to lie and omit for personal gain. This is the goal that any truth poses “risk” to.

What Pumpkin:

It’s not true that your primary responsibility is to the preservation of the project. It’s not true that your primarily responsibility to the fans who funded your project was to ensure your own survival first. Your responsibilities are not to the company, they’re to people. Listen to yourself. Keeping the “project” alive and saving face was not worth the expense of your own artists and employees. You say disclosing what happened would have been “destructive”? That the thing that put the Hiveswap Kickstarter at risk would have been the disclosure? You’re seriously ending this update by saying you did everything right? That you made all the right choices?

Well look how that turned out.

All in all this is an astonishing press release (is it a press release if it’s labelled as for backers eyes only?); perhaps one of the ballsiest things WP has done. It simultaneously says that some of my claims were lies (even legally actionable!), admits that they did many of the things I claimed they did, and insist that it was fine and good that they did all of them.