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[Graknorke]

Well, depends what you mean by good. She's doing good things for the story by being relevant and interesting and driving the plot forwards (again).

[Darkmere]

That said, Vriska isn't any better, given that she still plans to engage fucking Lord English all by herself.

She and Meenah are headed off to gather an army.

I feel like support for (Vriska) is the natural outcropping of what happens when a good many of us are exposed to someone getting browbeat and abused by someone. It elicits a sympathetic reaction, and some people tend to go a bit farther with it to become very supportive of the person on that end of it. I actually have no problems with people who think (Vriska) has gone in a good direction because that's just human nature at play when reading a story.

The people who are terrible are the people who think what Vriska is doing is a good thing, and they unfortunately also exist.

It's an almost exact repeat of Jade and Jadesprite. Jade actually got physically violent when her dead self had given up the fight and moved on to find friends in the afterlife, but at the time, even though the stakes were lower, the general fan consensus was Jade being sympathetic, with Karkat stepping in to assure Jade it was normal to be disgusted with her flaws.

Now... we have the same situation where a dead personality has given up the fight and hung out with dead people. The stakes are higher and we KNOW (Vriska) is aware of what's going on, but chose to quit anyway. Vriska is calmer than Jade was (no physical violence) and didn't force the issue (Meenah chose to leave), but since it's Vriska and we're aware of (Vriska)'s circumstances, this time live!spidertroll is the villain, sayeth some reddit fans.

I find the parallels interesting.

[Rolan7]

Huh, I didn't think of it like that.  She does focus on (Vriska)'s looks a lot though, which seems petty.  I still think it's her somewhat abusive way of trying to improve people.

[Arcvasti]

Spoiler: Today's update (click to show/hide)

What. I mean, we DID need more Nannasprite, but the addition Nannasprite^2 is just silly. I wonder if Roxy can create kernels with their Voidy Majyks.

[Sergarr]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think that's the pre-retcon Nannasprite.

[frostshotgg]

The most important part of the update is the dancing hussie from the not-choice.

[Putnam]

[Willfor]

It's an almost exact repeat of Jade and Jadesprite. Jade actually got physically violent when her dead self had given up the fight and moved on to find friends in the afterlife, but at the time, even though the stakes were lower, the general fan consensus was Jade being sympathetic, with Karkat stepping in to assure Jade it was normal to be disgusted with her flaws.

Now... we have the same situation where a dead personality has given up the fight and hung out with dead people. The stakes are higher and we KNOW (Vriska) is aware of what's going on, but chose to quit anyway. Vriska is calmer than Jade was (no physical violence) and didn't force the issue (Meenah chose to leave), but since it's Vriska and we're aware of (Vriska)'s circumstances, this time live!spidertroll is the villain, sayeth some reddit fans.

I find the parallels interesting.

See, I'm pretty sure Jade didn't enjoy the process of attacking another version of herself: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=009700

Vriska revels in the destruction of a version of herself she finds inferior. I realize this is a "News at 11" sort of thing, but it changes the context of being disgusted with a version of oneself that's different. Vriska didn't need to break (Vriska) down to get what was necessary done -- the whole thing was going to be painful regardless of what happened, of course, that can't be denied -- but what she actually did here was willingly inflict as much pointed emotional pain on what she saw as inferior to satisfy her own desire to feel superior.

[Dermonster]

So apparently those guys who were originally making hiveswap stole the money for use on kings quest.

[flabort]

Those jerks. I thought only politicians were supposed to be that blatant about stealing money and being circle-jerking numbskulls who do nothing with the projects they're given.

I mean, afaik, that's what's going on with some Canadian politicians right now, but yeesh, I didn't think that game developers would stoop this low.

[Elephant Parade]

So apparently those guys who were originally making hiveswap stole the money for use on kings quest.

Well, that's depressing.

[Qmarx]

What Pumpkin had her take it down

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.

[Graknorke]

I don't get what the problem with that was. If WP are not allowed the put out official statements on it for any reason, why would they want other people to not be saying it?

[Sergarr]

Because these "Blatant Thieves"... sorry, "Odd gentleman" probably have rules-lawyered something in that non-disclosure agreement to the effect of "WP members are held liable if other people disclose information covered by this NDA".

And to think that this game was supposed to come out in October, if not for this absolute scam...

[Darkmere]

I don't get what the problem with that was. If WP are not allowed the put out official statements on it for any reason, why would they want other people to not be saying it?

Depending on how legal proceedings go and just how much of a vice they have Hussy's genetalia in, it could be part of NDA terms just to get some of that money back.

Or it could be false. Who knows, at this point?